How Not to Read

Raymond Geuss is an influential political philosopher, and I hope to review his new book, Not Thinking Like a Liberal,(Harvard, 2022) on another occasion.  Geuss is a confirmed enemy of liberalism, both classical and modern, He dislikes both Rawls and Nozick; in fact, his attitude toward Rawls falls little short of hatred. This interferes with his ability to read these thinkers with care.  He says that one feature he dislikes  of the way philosophy has come to be done  ”is the one which Robert Nozick described in the preface to one of his books.

Degradation and Nationalization: The Inevitable Ways of Russian Autocratic Economic Policy

As Russian political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky has quite rightly said, one should not consider the five-thousand-plus sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation as of this writing as sanctions in the normal diplomatic and economic sense. They are a conditional “second front,” a blow aimed at dismantling the Russian economy, the Russian social structure, and the institutional framework in response to the corresponding actions of the Russian authorities, with the West’s clearly stated position not to mirror such actions.