Articles

Power and Authority

The last 10 days have seen the Supreme Court reject the dangerous Independent State Legislature theory that would have allowed, amongst other things, state legislatures to deny the will of the voters and direct their electors on whom to cast that state’s electoral college votes. The Court also ended affirmative action in colleges and universities calling it a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, said that the effort to use an emergency authorization law passed in the wake of 9/11 does not give the Secretary of Education the right to administratively forgive student debt, and decided that a web designer does not have to take on clients whose views violate her firmly held religious beliefs. While the decision denying the State Legislature theory has been praised by liberals and some conservatives, the decisions on affirmative action, student debt, and the conflict between free speech and equal protection have been wildly unpopular amongst liberals. The result is that many on the left are once again calling for reform of the Supreme Court. 

The Age of Constant Change

Roger Berkowitz
That AI is an engine that affirms our lying world does not mean the world is static; on the contrary, the world that AI above all reflects back to us is the world created by academics, journalists, writers, artists and those content producers—those members of the cultural elite that N.S. Lyons calls “Virtuals.” Virtuals make their living, Lyons writes,  “by manipulating, categorizing, and interpreting symbolic information and narrative. “Manipulate” is an important verb here, and not merely in the sense of deviousness. Such an individual’s job is to take existing information and change it into new forms, present it in new ways, or use it to tell new stories. This is what I am attempting to do as a writer in shaping this article, for example.” In this way, Virtuals bring about a world that is in constant change, a world of “fast culture” and unending progress. 

The Seductiveness of AI’s Coherent Fiction

Roger Berkowitz
Babette Babich turns to Nietzsche to think about the question of why we are enthusiastic about AI. One reason, of course, is the belief that AI will "solve" our social problems. Diseases will be cured, welfare reorganized, poverty overcome. AI will solve the irresolvable social problems that we humans have not been able to. Of course, this belief in the power of AI to solve problems of human organization depends, first, on our willingness to outsource human challenges to inhuman logic, and, second, to our willingness to actually implement solutions to human problems that we humans can't understand. 

The Danger Zone of Heightened Sensitivity

Roger Berkowitz
There are many criticisms of identity politics. Perhaps the most damning is the one simply follows through the logic of identity politics to its ultimate dystopian endpoint. This worry about the profoundly anti-human impact of identity politics is at the heart of “The Doctor,”  Robert Icke’s adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play “Professor Bernhardi” that is currently running at the Armory in New York City. Jesse Green reviews the play and offers a thoughtful critique of identity politics. 

Caving In

Roger Berkowitz
Francine Prose writes about Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision to pull the publication of her new book in response to protests from Ukrainian activists. The offense in Gilbert’s book is simply that it is set in Russian, albeit Stalinist Russia. These activists who take offense have not read Gilbert’s book. They simply believe that since the book is set in Russia, it will be offensive and do harm to Ukrainians. Prose takes issue with this worry and Gilbert’s decision to cave-in to such pressure.

Normalizing Corruption And Its Limits

Roger Berkowitz
Why is the first-ever indictment of a former President being met with such equanimity from so many in the Republicans Party? Of course some like former governor Chris Christie have rightly condemned the President’s spoiled-child-I’m-above-the-law act and defended the prosecution. But the nihilistic wing of the Republican Party openly suggests that violence may be the appropriate response to Justice Department overreach. And even the usually more critical Wall St. Journal—which acknowledges that “Republicans deserve a more competent champion with better character than Mr. Trump”— headlines its lead editorial “A Destructive Trump Indictment”.

On Truth and Power

I’m grading papers for a new seminar I taught this past semester on Truth and Politics. It was one of the most exciting courses I’ve taught in a few years, with simply fantastic students who brought incredible passion and curiosity to perhaps the burning question of our moment. Structured around a close reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s short but brilliant “How The True World Became a Fable," the students came to understand what Nietzsche means when he says that “truth is a lie,” or “truth is a woman,” or “truth is a fable.” Plato invented truth because of a distrust of opinion. Confronted with the trial and death of Socrates, Plato was convinced that political opinion in a democracy was dangerous, unstable, and irrational. What was needed was training of the best, those able to see beyond the shadows and deceptions of the human world, those who could step out of the cave of human affairs and focus their attention on the supersensual truths of the ideas. These philosophers claimed to know the rational truth, and from this they claimed the right to rule as philosopher kings. The question of the course became simply: If truth is a lie, is it a lie we should cherish and protect? 
 

The Banality at Cannes

Roger Berkowitz
Apparently Hannah Arendt was on everyone’s lips this year at the Cannes film festival. Alissa Wilkinson does a nice job of parsing the allusions to Arendt. 

Living Amidst the Shadows

Roger Berkowitz
Suzy Hansen writes about the photographs and the journey of Turkish photographer Emin Özmen as he has documented Turkey’s descent from a democracy on the cusp of joining the European Union to an autocracy. Hansen collaborates with Özmen whose haunting photographs make palpable sense of powerlessness in Erdogan’s Turkey.