My dad is dying. He’s been in hospice for a few weeks now and I feel alone and helpless. I live far away and cannot be there to hold his hand — I feel at once close to him and far, far away. …

The Ideas of Linda R. Hirshman — I had not heard of Linda R. Hirschman until reading her obituary just now, but I’m sorry that I hadn’t heard of her work earlier. But when I read that Ms. Hirschman managed to offend both men and women with her views on feminism, I knew the obit, however short…

I’m going to keep this one short. My article here is a response to a review of a movie “Fair Play” by the New York Times columnist Jessica Grose. In her article she writes this: Real equity would require more men to pull back from so-called greedy work with long…

Notes Towards a Theory of Moral Choice — Why does it sometimes take so long to bring wrongdoers to justice? There are recent cases, from Harvey Weinstein to Jeff Epstein and Donald Trump, or older ones such as the Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia or the Nuremberg Trials in Germany, where years, even decades elapse between the public…

In the opening of the Second Part of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality he famously describes the origin of inequality thus: “The first man, who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘this is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of…

I go to the gay gym/sauna quite often, usually twice a week. One of the things I find strange is the minuscule number of naked gay men there. Inevitably, I am nude, and am generally the only one fully nude. …

Sure, white supremacy is everywhere. It affects everyone. But from the attention paid to it, you would have to think that it, and perhaps male supremacy were the only kinds of supremacy that exist. …

It is a basic truism of all societies, whether these be animal or human, that they are, without exception, organized into hierarchies. The apparent exceptions, for example, bonobo society, are not really exceptions once you look carefully at the research. …

Perhaps the key concept of postmodern ethical thinking is the idea of victimization. Are you “oppressed,” have you been a “victim” of someone else’s behaviour? Do you believe that others have suffered less than you? …