The Philosophers Beard Blog Posts

• How to justify a ban on the burqa (or anything else)
  on May 10, 2013 in ethics religion feminism
  Bans on wearing the burqa and other face-covering religious garb (such as are under consideration or recently passed in several European countries) fall under a class of restrictions by government on the free choice of individuals over private matter...
• Exile the rich
  on Feb 1, 2013 in society liberalism justice politics democracy
  We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.  (Justice Louis Brandeis)The rich may be identified by their independence from and command over others. Those two f...
• Against Prison
  on Jan 30, 2013 in crime justice
  Prison time is a very severe punishment. JS Mill likened it to being consigned to a living tomb.* Any society that employs it should do so with care and restraint. Yet we do not. Partly because we think that prison is a humane punishment, it is drast...
• Freedom of the press is not the same as freedom of speech
  on Jan 4, 2013 in media
  Freedom of the press is often conflated with freedom of speech, a conceptual error that leads to excessive deference to media corporations. Properly understood, freedom of the press requires that mass-media corporations be free from government contro...
• Human rights, the rule of law, and British parliamentary sovereignty: the debate about prisoners' right to vote
  on Dec 7, 2012 in UK justice
  7 years ago the UK was found in breach of its legal obligations to uphold the European Convention on Human Rights for its blanket ban on prisoners voting (Ruling of the European Court of Human Rights).Yet the British parliament has still not managed...
• Human rights, the rule of law, and British parliamentary sovereignty: Prisoners' right to vote
  on Dec 7, 2012 in UK justice
  7 years ago the UK was found in breach of its legal obligations to uphold the European Convention on Human Rights for its blanket ban on prisoners voting (Ruling of the European Court of Human Rights).Yet the British parliament has still not managed...
• The concept of 'Religious Defamation' has no foundation in liberal principle. Only liberal fear
  on Sep 21, 2012 in liberalism religion
  The recent furore over the internet video, The Innocence of Muslims, has raised familiar concerns about the limits of free speech.  Here I want to explore, in a revised version of a previous post, the intellectual qualities of the arguments that...
• Debating climate change: The need for economic reasoning
  on Sep 10, 2012 in economics ethics environment
  The global climate change debate has gone badly wrong. Many mainstream environmentalists are arguing for the wrong actions and for the wrong reasons, and so long as they continue to do so they put all our futures in jeopardy.My diagnosis is a twofold...
• What to do about the rich
  on Aug 1, 2012 in society liberalism justice politics democracy
  We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.  (Justice Louis Brandeis)The rich may be identified by their independence from and command over others. Those two f...
• Why prison doesn't work and what to do about it
  on Jul 25, 2012 in crime justice
  Prison time is a very severe punishment. Mill likened it to being consigned to a living tomb.* Any society that employs it should do so with care and restraint. Yet we do not. Partly because we think that prison is a humane punishment, it is drastica...
• Politics Vs. Economics?
  on Jul 3, 2012 in economics politics democracy
  A modern polity is made up of several autonomous but overlapping components. Two of the most significant are the political and the economic (culture and society are the others). The greatness of democratic politics is its relationship to the gen...
• Has contemporary Art become a con?
  on Jun 21, 2012 in art
  For many years I did what I was supposed to. I visited contemporary Art museums regularly, if not frequently, and wandered about them trying to understand, to become cultured in and civilised by the deep meaning of Art. I failed of course, and now...
• If Obama is a socialist, so was Adam Smith
  on May 25, 2012 in economics Adam Smith Deidre McCloskey America
  James Otteson, professor of philosophy and economics and author of learned books on Adam Smith and other weighty subjects recently wrote a short paean to capitalism - An Audacious Promise: The Moral Case for Capitalism. He begins by noting...
• What to do about the rich?
  on Apr 27, 2012 in society liberalism justice politics
  We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.  Justice Louis BrandeisThe rich may be identified by their independence from and command over others. Those two fe...
• National responsibility for historic crimes
  on Apr 18, 2012 in identity justice
  Your country has probably done some very bad things. Perhaps recently, perhaps before you or even your parents were born. How do you feel about that? Does your present government have a duty to make amends for the bad things it has done, for example...
• Economists and the Crisis: a story of denial and opportunism
  on Mar 29, 2012 in economics heterodox economics
  It is now generally understood that our present economic crisis was not caused by external factors but by dynamics internal to the system. Economists as a profession - in academia, government, international institutions, and the financial industry -...
• The secularisation of religion
  on Mar 23, 2012 in religion
  Once upon a time religion was in the world and made the world. Religion made the messy chaotic world legible to human understanding and amenable to human purposes. It fixed things in place, like the stars in the sky and the distinction between men an...
• Reading Jane Austen as a moral philosopher
  on Feb 23, 2012 in ethics literature
  Jane Austen wrote romantic comedies about middle-class girls looking for a good husband among the landed gentry. If that were all there was to it we wouldn't take her any more seriously now than the genre hacks published by Mills and Boon. But Au...
• Was Jane Austen a better moral philosopher than novelist?
  on Feb 21, 2012 in ethics literature
  Jane Austen wrote romantic comedies about middle-class girls looking for a good husband among the landed gentry. If that were all there was to it we wouldn't take her any more seriously now than the genre hacks published by Mills and Boon. But Au...
• Justice as fairness: all gender and no class?
  on Jan 27, 2012 in society justice
  These days middle class liberals seems far more concerned with equity than equality; with ending discrimination on the basis of irrelevant characteristics like gender and sexuality rather than ending poverty. What makes discrimination against women...