Slider – Page 35 – Julian Baggini

Amy Coney Barrett and the myth of Christian family values

October 19, 2020 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays, Slider

Jesus was anti-family, opposed the condemnation of sexual sinners, and was completely silent on abortion. It is a mystery how evangelicals today square this with their righteous condemnation of the behaviour of others and their desire to control it by law. The Jesus who said “Judge not, that ye be not judged: condemn not, that ye be not condemned” would be appalled to see his so-called followers today look to the Supreme Court to enforce their values.

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Think Jacques Derrida was a charlatan?

October 6, 2020 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays, Slider

Derrida’s “nagging fear that those who saw him as a charlatan were right never left him.” Given his whole project was one of radical doubt, he could hardly have felt otherwise. He was in this respect more truly a philosopher than those who question everything except the peculiarities of their own methods of questioning.

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The pandemic shows what freedom means

September 30, 2020 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays, Slider

Perhaps we will soon look back and say, as Sartre did: ‘The circumstances, atrocious as they often were, finally made it possible for us to live, without pretence or false shame, the hectic and impossible existence that is known as the lot of man.’

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‘Freedom-loving Brits’? It’s not that simple

September 23, 2020 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays, Slider

What we should be seeing in this pandemic is that freedom from constraint is empty if it leaves us unable to live safely. No truly liberty-loving nation would need persuading that the freedom to stay well and to earn a living requires both government action and the willingness of the population to follow the rules for the collective good.

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Should we “cancel” David Hume?

September 16, 2020 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays, Slider

For decades after its construction in the 1960s, the only controversy about the naming of the University of Edinburgh’s David Hume Tower was whether Britain’s finest philosopher, if not the world’s, deserved a better memorial than this modernist monstrosity. Yet this week, owing to far more serious controversy, the building was renamed 40 George Square, a response to the dishonour of his deplorable views on race.

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