I just saw Michael Sandel on The Colbert Report expressing outrage at the idea of allowing votes, citizenship, and improved prison cells to be marketable commodities.
I don’t have much of a dog on either side of this fight, since the three institutions he mentions (at least in anything like their present form) are all ones I think should be abolished. So Sandel’s question moves me about as much as the question “should the right to beat one’s slaves be a marketable commodity”?
My latest contribution to the symposium is finally up, as is a “best of the blogs” roundup.
The symposium continues with a second contribution from Zwolinski and Tomasi, a third contribution from Friedman, and a solo reply from Zwolinski. I just finished another entry, which should go up tomorrow.
In the newest upcoming Batman animated series, “Batman teams up with swordstress Katana and his gun-toting ex-secret agent butler Alfred Pennyworth to face the criminal underworld led by the twisted Anarky ….”
Oh, wonderful.
The Molinari Society
Call for Papers
for the Society’s Symposium to be held in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division meeting December 27-30, 2012, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Symposium Topic:
Explorations in Philosophical Anarchy
Submission Deadline:
May 18, 2012
The past two decades have seen a resurgence of interest, both in activist and academic circles, in Anarchist politics and theory, with new and challenging work from several different directions. Renewed academic interest in Anarchism has drawn attention to the importance, vitality and philosophical fruitfulness of key Anarchist arguments and concepts – such as the conflict between authority and autonomy; tensions between collectivism and individualism; critical challenges to hierarchy, centralized power, top-down control and authoritarian conceptions of representation; and the development of concepts of spontaneous social order, decentralized consensus, and the knowledge problems and ideological mythologzing inherent in relations or structures of domination.
Most of this discussion has, naturally enough, taken place within the field of political and moral philosophy. But Anarchist theory (like marxist or feminist theory) embodies more than a policy orientation or a system of moral or political theses. The Anarchist tradition offers a wide-ranging, diverse and vigorously argued literature, concerning the nature and foundations of human society, with implications for every aspect of philosophy, including not only political and moral theory but also aesthetics, social-science methodology, epistemology, and the philosophies of science, religion, history, language and logic. We are looking for papers that address possible connections, approaches, challenges or insights that anarchy and its conceptual environs may suggest for philosophy broadly – or that philosophy may suggest for anarchy – beyond the familiar territory of political and moral theory, especially in such areas as epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, and metaphilosophy or philosophical method. Papers from all analytical and critical standpoints (both with regard to philosophy and with regard to Anarchism) are welcome.
Please submit complete papers of 3,000-6,000 words for consideration for the 2012 Symposium by May 18, 2012. Papers should be of appropriate scope and length to be presented within 15-30 minutes. Submitting authors will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of their papers by May 31, 2012.
Submit papers as e-mail attachments, in Word .doc format or PDF, to longrob@auburn.edu or feedback@radgeek.com.
For any questions or information, contact us at the above email addresses.
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Some possible topics include – but are by no means limited to:
Please spread the word to anyone who you think would be interested in the symposium topic!