111. THE FOG OF WAR - Student Questions Arising From The Situation In Ukraine
Read More“This week, understandably, I have been asked a lot of questions about the ongoing situation in Ukraine.“
110. THERE IS NO JUST WAR - There Is Just...War
Read More“It is the concept of nations that lies at the root of the problem of war. It is the global economic systems of manipulated scarcity, inequality and hoarding that motivates taking by violence what can’t be gained legitimately. When we ignore the underlying motivations of invasion and speak only of the good and the bad, we sweep under the rug the tricky truth that we are all culpable for maintaining a global political system that nurtures the conditions for war far more than it inculcates the conditions for peace.“
- FEBRUARY HALF TERM 2022 -
We’re taking a week off for half term. Hey, if the UK government can do it when they’re running an entire country then I can do it when I’m just running a humble blog, right? Enjoy our archives - we’ll be back with you at 6am every Monday during term-time again from Monday February 28th.
109. QUITTING MY JOB - The Thought Behind Making A Change
Read More“I told my form on Friday that this would be my last year at the school. I hadn’t been keeping it a secret, but there also hadn’t really been a relevant opportunity to bring it up.“
108. THOUGHT POLICE - Why Thoughts Might Matter As Much As Deeds
Read More“Imagine the police-force where you live offer you the choice of one of two officers to be your local law enforcement from now on:
1) An officer who holds prejudiced thoughts against people like you (taken to mean whatever characteristic you want it to that identifies you specifically - i.e. ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, hair colour, accent - whatever).
2) An officer who holds no prejudice against people like you.
Both officers have taken a pledge not to discriminate against certain groups of people and have received training to support this pledge. There will be sanctions in place if such discrimination happens and Officer #1 is fully aware that their prejudiced thoughts would not be condoned if turned into discriminatory action.
Which officer would you choose?“
- Pause For The Plague -
Sorry folks. I have covid for the second time. Came down with it on Wednesday. Too groggy-headed to make much philosophical sense (and little else on my mind) and too much work to do setting cover for my classes, etc. with the uncertainty of self-isolation since then. So no new PU this week. Should be back to normal service Feb 7th all being well. 🤞
107. MUST BORIS GO? - On Empty Symbolism
Read More“Boris being forced to resign might make me feel momentarily happy, but fundamentally it does nothing to address the actual wrongdoing or make things better. It is symbolic, but the symbolism is largely empty.“
106. WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS - On Our Failure To Communicate
Read More“Often we hear people say something that they didn’t think they said at all. They might accuse us of not listening, or being ignorant of certain things, but the fact remains that if you say X and I hear Y, then you did not communicate X to me, you communicated - whether intentionally or not - Y.“
105. MY SPIDEY-SENSE WAS TINGLING - Have We Forgotten How To Deal With Conflict in Civil Society?
Read More“sometimes living together means compromise and not doing exactly what you want.“
- CHRISTMAS BREAK 2021 -
We’re on holiday until Monday January 10th and hunkering down amidst gaudy lights, baubles and tinsel until the New Year. While we’re taking our break remember we’re still open for submissions if you want to write for philosophy unleashed, so send us your essays, and we’ll be back in 2022, every Monday at 6am with some new PHILOSOPHY UNLEASHED. Have a happy Christmas if you celebrate that sort of thing, and a happy end-of-December-time if you don’t. Basically, whoever you are: be happy. Get vaxxed, get boostered, wear a mask and don’t get Omicron!
104. DOWN ON DOWNING STREET - Refocusing The Ethical Inquiry Away From Christmas Parties
Read More“Because if this government falls - and it should - it should be for their far more egregious moral wrongs than this purely selfish complaint: how come they got to have a party last year when we couldn’t have one ourselves?“
103. SAYING NO TO WHAT IS DONE - On The Tyranny of Appealing to Decorum
Read More“But recently I have been thinking about a pet peeve of mine. Possibly the most frustrating appeal to authority of them all. I shall call it the appeal to decorum…“
102. NICK FLETCHER IS A ROLE MODEL OF STUPIDITY - Using Philosophy To Show Exactly Why This MP Is An Idiot
Read More“Fletcher was certainly sexist. But his sexism extends to the logic of his argument too. It’s easy to show how…“
101. TEACH MORE PHILOSOPHY IN SCHOOLS - Why Philosophy Deserves Distinct Curriculum Space
Read More“Not all study of Philosophy ends in revolution. But it could. Certainly the careful and methodological scrutiny of our ideas and concepts - shining a probing light on the underlying arguments which uphold them - and learning how to question the fundamentals of logic make it harder for the manipulations of rhetoric and emotive reasoning to deceive us and might therefore lead to outrage if such deceptions are exposed in the Philosophy classroom. But this ought to be welcomed if one of the end goals of our education system is a student’s ability to be an informed citizen of a cooperative democracy. One might therefore see Philosophy’s diminished, corrupted, place on the school curriculum as evidence that producing such capable citizenry is not, therefore, one of the actual aims of this current education system.“
100. UNVACCINATED NEED NOT APPLY - Ethics, Healthcare Jobs and Mandatory Vaccination
Read More“The anarchist in me naturally balks at any enforcement of mandatory rules from on high. But the ethicist in me can see the moral reasons why those people either looking after the most at risk of dying from Covid-19, or most likely to come into intimate contact with large numbers of members of the public, specifically for health-related reasons, should want to do what they can to protect both themselves and others.“
99. DUNE BUGGED ME - On Being Bored of War
Read More“We have been primed to be ready for war. We have been conditioned to expect it imminently. We have been told that a time will come when we have to pick a side and that we may not even be able to trust our closest friends. We have been fed the ideological norms of conflict escalation and had massacre and genocide normalised. All in the name of entertainment. To assume such repeated and sustained messaging will have no impact is to ignore the evidence of all other successful marketing strategies.“
- Character Flaws: An Anarchist Critique of Character Education in England's Secondary Schools -
DaN McKee’s new paper Character Flaws: An Anarchist Critique of Character Education in England’s Secondary Schools has been published in the latest ANARCHIST STUDIES journal. You can read it, open access, here: https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/anarchiststudies/vol-29-issue-2/abstract-9445/
- OCTOBER HALF TERM 2021 -
We’re on holiday until Monday November 8th after a killer half-term pretending there’s no such thing as Covid in classrooms and living recklessly like it’s 2019 again. While we’re taking our well-deserved break and restoring some sanity until then, remember we’re still open for submissions if you want to write for philosophy unleashed, so send us your essays, and we’ll be back in November, every Monday at 6am with some new PHILOSOPHY UNLEASHED. Have a happy Halloween and as you light your fireworks on November 5th remember the beauty of rebellion and the sedition that inspired it.
98. INTERPRETING THE RESULTS - What Do Votes Ever Really Tell Us?
Read More“the arguments for democracy are independent from the mechanics of voting and, too frequently, true, authentic, democracy is impeded by those unfit mechanics, not aided by it“
97. BLACK HISTORY MONTH - On Tackling My Continuing Blind Spots
Read More“As it is Black History Month here in the UK I thought it would be worth remembering the most influential black philosopher in my own life so far - the young, black, A-level student of mine from about six years ago who asked me a simple question to which I had an embarrassingly limited answer: “are there any black philosophers?”“