August 2018

New Philosopher

For curious people

New Philosopher1 min read
Power
Whether it’s using, seeking, circumventing, benefiting from, being subjected to, or railing against it, it’s impossible to deny the influence of power on our lives. We are born powerless, into a structure that demands that we rely on the benevolence
New Philosopher5 min read
Contributors
Keith Dowding is Professor of Political Science at ANU, with a special interest in power, freedom, and politics. Formerly Professor of Political Science at London School of Economics, Dowding received a degree in Philosophy and Politics from Keele Un
New Philosopher5 min read
Power Struggle
It’s not often that you’re likely to be faced with a line of military vehicles bearing down on you, as was the case for ‘Tank Man’ in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The unidentified protestor was one of tens of thousands of students who made a stand again
New Philosopher2 min read
Power Shifts
The Donation of Pepin provided a legal basis for the erection of the Papal States, which bestowed political and secular authority to the Popes beyond the duchy of Rome. Pepin the Short (the Frankish King and father of Charlemagne) granted this to Pop
New Philosopher5 min readPsychology
Strategically Incompetent
There are certain secrets for getting ahead in life that only work because they remain secret: as with magic tricks, they cease to be effective once everyone knows how they’re done. So I probably shouldn’t be using the pages of this magazine to sprea
New Philosopher1 min readPolitics
Power Stats
Americans with incomes of $70,000 per annum shoplift 30% more than those earning up to $20,000 per annum. In 2018, Forbes identified Xi Jinping, the current leader of China, as the world’s most powerful living person. In America, 71% of parents
New Philosopher5 min read
Underwater Psychopath
When Kim Wall boarded infamous Danish inventor Peter Madsen’s submarine, she sank under the water watched by those she loved: her boyfriend and friends who had come to wave her off. Wall thought she was doing a routine interview. Months later the 30-
New Philosopher4 min read
Somebody’s Watching
Early this century there was an outcry about the extent of CCTV surveillance in the UK. Britain had long been bristling with cameras, but the news that Londoners in particular were reportedly being caught on camera up to 300 times a day was particula
New Philosopher5 min read
The Aim Of Torture
The South African writer J.M. Coetzee has pinpointed the typical aim of torture: In the torture room, unlimited force is exerted upon the physical being of an individual in a twilight of legal illegality, with the purpose, if not of destroying him,
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The Great Morality Scam
Thrasymachus sprang at the panic-stricken Socrates “like a wild beast”, looking as if he was about to tear the hapless philosopher to pieces. Thus Plato introduces us to the ‘villain’ of his classic dialogue on morality and the ideal society, The Rep
New Philosopher4 min read
Hacking Power
In his new book The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab, the British author and researcher Carl Miller describes the mindset of a hacker taking control of a digital device. First comes exhaustive attentiveness: learning how something works,
New Philosopher4 min read
Power Scripts
There were scripts I learned very early while growing up in an African-American community in the urban South. In the 1960s and ‘70s, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson taught us to say, “I am somebody!”, “Speak truth to power”, and “Black is beautiful
New Philosopher2 min read
Power Cuts
Driven from London by revolution in 1642 and defeated in two successive civil wars (1642-1646 and 1648), King Charles I was put on trial by the radical leaders of the New Model Army and their supporters in a purged ‘Rump’ Parliament. He was beheaded
New Philosopher4 min read
The Ethics Of Political Power
Machiavelli was a diplomat, public official, and theorist of political power who rose to prominence in the Italian city-state of Florence at the turn of the 16th century. After his death in 1527, his name became a byword for evil. He was depicted or
New Philosopher4 min read
Uncontrollable Feelings
The Ancient Greek slave and Stoic philosopher Epictetus believed that you could control your feelings. He filed feelings under “things that are up to us”, in contrast to something like reputation, which he categorised as out of our control. If your f
New Philosopher5 min read
Money Talks
The unnamed narrator in Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, a smug, Wall Street lawyer comfortably nestled among the fortunes of wealthier, more powerful men, loves to repeat the name of John Jacob Astor – the ruthless New York landlord for who
New Philosopher12 min read
Systematically Lucky
Zan Boag: Have you arrived at your own definition of power? Keith Dowding: No, I don’t really have one, actually, and I’m not sure that that’s the right way to go about science. I mean, it seems to me that scientists don’t define energy and then
New Philosopher3 min read
Ethical Dilemma
It seems to me that it is those without power who complain about political and social structures; whereas those who have power have few complaints. And so it is at my workplace: the powerless complain, while those with power rule. But the power seems
New Philosopher2 min read
Ethical Children
Why do adults get to tell me what to do, but I can’t do it to them? Isn’t it frustrating when someone else tells you what to do? Most of us like to make decisions for ourselves – we want to be free. When someone tells us what to do, they’re basical
New Philosopher5 min read
Is Knowledge Power?
I used to think that knowledge was power, that it could be wielded like a weapon, or built up like a wall, then used to justify the limits and boundaries of any given group. If you possessed certain knowledge you were ‘in’ and if not you were ‘out’ –
New Philosopher3 min read
Power
How mild, by comparison with the despatches in the daily newspapers, will seem this chronicle of women’s militant struggle against political and social injustice in one small corner of Europe. Yet let it stand as it was written, with peace – so-calle
New Philosopher10 min read
Three Dimensions Of Power
Nigel Warburton: Power is a major theme in some philosophers’ work, and it seems to be a major theme in politics too: it’s something that people are very much concerned with, either gaining or keeping hold of. But it’s not always clear exactly what
New Philosopher6 min read
The Enfranchisement Of Women
That women have as good a claim as men have, in point of personal right, to the suffrage, or to a place in the jury box it would be difficult for anyone to deny. It cannot certainly be denied by the United States of America, as a people or as a commu
New Philosopher6 min read
On Ants, Life, And Spinsterhood
A note on entomology: A type of ant has been discovered that engages in suicide bombing. This ant, the Colobopsis explodens of Borneo, wriggles so hard when threatened that its body breaks, releasing a toxic slime that repels predators. The ant, of c
New Philosopher6 min read
The Decision To Create Life
Recently I’ve been delivering the news to loved ones that my husband and I are expecting our first baby. This has been an overwhelmingly joyful experience. But at the same time, I’m struck by the dissonance between the unequivocally delighted reactio
New Philosopher2 min read
Our Library
To put it very simply, psychiatric internment, the mental normalisation of individuals, and penal institutions have no doubt a fairly limited importance if one is only looking for their economic significance. On the other hand, they are undoubtedly e
New Philosopher2 min readPolitics
Around The Web
“Digital-age movements tend to be organisationally toothless, good at barking at power but bad at forcing ultimatums or chewing through complex negotiations. When the Gezi Park occupation intensified and the Turkish government expressed an interest i
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What’s On
Launched in 2017, this monthly philosophy discussion series is held on the second Thursday of each month beneath the vaulted gables of an 1840s warehouse at the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart, Australia. Bright Thinking is participatory rather than
New Philosopher5 min read
Can You Keep A Secret?
In the ancient Greek poem Works and Days, Zeus orders the gods to create Pandora as an evil for humankind. They make her as enticing as a goddess but they also give her treacherous ways. When she comes across a tightly-sealed jar that conceals all th

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