Independent Scholar and Writer.

Democracy

Why I Believe in Communicative Action: A Response to Geuss

Discursive democracy is a culture and a praxis rather than a matter of theory

July 8, 2019 • by Laura Nelson

Raymond Geuss begins his insightful yet occasionally misleading essay, “A Republic of Discussion,” with the following three questions, each an entry point into his critical account of Jürgen Habermas’s treatment of deliberative discourse in his Theory of Communicative Action and elsewhere. Here’s my gloss on them: “Is ‘discussion’ really so wonderful?” Occasionally yes, equally occasionally no. ...

Feature

Civil War by Other Means

Or: Somewhere, Carl Schmitt is Smiling

May 21, 2019 • by Laura Nelson

In a piece I wrote for Public Seminar in September 2015, I argued that Donald Trump’s campaign augured a turn to the kind of “Friends/Enemies” political imaginary cooked up by the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt was unimpressed by the niceties of liberal democratic practice, and saw politics as a Kampf between irreconcilable parties, where ...

Feature

Warhol: The Revolution that Failed

A review of the Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again exhibition at The Whitney Museum.

March 27, 2019 • by Laura Nelson

The recent reappearance of Andy Warhol’s paintings, films, sculptures, and silkscreens at The Whitney in New York City reminded me of the writings of Arthur C. Danto (1924-2013), a professor of philosophy at Columbia University as well as art critic for The Nation from 1984 to 2009. Like many philosophers of his ...

Feature

Remembering Philosopher Stanley Cavell

1926-2018

July 31, 2018 • by Laura Nelson

One of the persistent themes in the work of American philosopher Stanley Cavell (1926-2018) was that of voice -- both in the sense of having a distinctive voice of one’s own, and of giving voice to experiences and truths that may (or may not) have escaped notice. The voice that Cavell displayed throughout his career in ...

Feature

You Can’t Always Get What You Want, or In Defense of False Choices

Žižek on Macron and LePen

May 5, 2017 • by Laura Nelson

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you’ll find you get what you need” -- Mick Jagger Blackmail is ugly. Political blackmail is more than ugly: it undermines the political as a distinct mode of human action, and transforms it into a manipulative battle of insult ...

You Can’t Always Get What You Want, or In Defense of False Choices

Feature

The Resuscitation of Truth

A Pragmatic Defense of Political Integrity

May 1, 2017 • by Laura Nelson

Time magazine recently re-purposed a cover-graphic and feature article from 1966, changing the title-question from “Is God Dead?” to “Is Truth Dead?” The central figure in this feature was, as you might expect, the current president of the United States. Donald Trump’s fondness for the lie, whether big or small, has ...

Education

Three Philosophical Lives

Hubert L. Dreyfus, Benjamin R. Barber, Robert Pirsig

April 28, 2017 • by Laura Nelson

(1) Hubert L. Dreyfus, who passed away on Friday April 21, was a figure of quiet importance in the discipline of philosophy. He belonged to the philosophical cohort that includes Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jürgen Habermas, and Richard Bernstein, but unlike the aforementioned Dreyfus was not widely known outside ...

Politics

Focus, Please

A plea to the Left

March 22, 2017 • by Laura Nelson

The split on the left is less functional than polemical and ideological. Center-left liberals, a.k.a. “the Democratic establishment”, still smarting from Hillary Clinton’s Electoral College defeat, view the Trump administrations’ Russia-troubles, not to mention his executive orders, with white-knuckled alarm. Thus they tend to view his regime as at least ...

Uncategorized

The Uses and Limits of Anti-Neoliberalism

February 7, 2017 • by Laura Nelson

There is a generalizing story circulating about the 2016 presidential election that is, I think, a clear example of how trust and suspicion not only can but must coexist whenever we reflect on events: call it “the anti-neoliberalism narrative.” The story goes like this: the establishments of both the Republican ...

Reviews

The Banality of Woody

Reviewing Irrational Man (2015) and Cafe Society (2016)

November 15, 2016 • by Laura Nelson

Irrational Man, a film by Woody Allen (2015) Café Society, a film by Woody Allen (2016) (Caution: mild spoiler alerts) “You’re a comedian. You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes”, says the space alien in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980), which still, despite its ambitions, falls into the category ...

Literature

Sunday Readings: Texts and Commentary

November 12, 2016 • by Laura Nelson

The Left is very good at both recrimination and self-recrimination. While salutary, both can be carried to extremes, and thus become self-defeating. Public protest about the election of Trump is both understandable and righteous – after all, he has publically and I assume sincerely expressed contempt for the norms and ...

Moral Equivalence and the Heart of Politics

November 2, 2016 • by Laura Nelson

We are all very tired. I think I can say this with confidence. Tired, that is, of this damn election. When one is tired – nerves frayed, eyeballs heavy – it is understandable when one snarls and snaps at any provocation, real or imagined. While it’s understandable it’s not commendable. Intensity ...