Articles from Sophist In Training

This speech by the late writer David Foster Wallace is such a wonderfully articulate defence of a liberal education through an existentialist lens. Needed a share. Here is an extract:

Judith Shklar’s Liberalism of Fear

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Here is a link to renowned political theorist Judith Shklar outlining her well known concept of the ‘Liberalism of Fear’. Shklar, following the tradition of political realism, develops a theory of liberalism without illusions, without morality and free of ahistorical concepts of ‘social justice’.

Finally! More Independent Gay Opinion in Aus

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University of Western Australia

This post is just a plug for this piece on Online Opinion by Dr Rob Cover, Associate Professor in the School of Social and Cultural Studies at The University of Western Australia (who kind of looks like a gang rapist in the photo, but I’m sure is lovely).

Thoughts on Charging the Trolls

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Many of you would have read today about Charlotte Dawson’s hospitalisation following some pretty horrible harassment on Twitter. Threats, insults and mockery seem to be a large part of online discourse, and have on many occasions posed questions as to whether new law should come to force hosting websites to reveal the identity of on

The Poor Politics of ‘Sexual Liberation’

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I come from a generation that greatly admires the idea of a 1960s “sexual revolution” – an era supposedly marked by increased freedoms in sexual pleasure by throwing off authoritarian cultural, legal and biological (If you think of the pill) constraints. This is often viewed as a progression from frigid, repressed individuals into free thinking, self aware pleasure seekers.