Philosophy

Philosophy articles provide deep reflection and analysis on public life, values, ethics, morals, human nature, and the philosophical foundations of liberty, freedom, and society — challenging technocratic trends, institutional failures, and threats to authentic humanity.

We examine critical themes such as AI and totalitarianism, Neuralink-style control, post-pandemic moral recovery, church closures, enlightenment critiques, sovereignty vs. state power, arrogance in governance, and pathways to reclaim personal dignity, truth, and human-centered philosophy.

All philosophy articles from Brownstone Institute are translated into multiple languages to support global readers, foster international dialogue on ethics and liberty, and promote thoughtful reform worldwide.

Brownstone Institute - Make Beauty Beautiful Again

The Cartelization of Beauty

By / / , / 7 minute read / Articles
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Keeping it real thus also means making a conscious effort to find those spaces where the mediating practices of the elites are few and the chances for direct esthetic pleasure are many. And finally, and most importantly, keeping it real means ensuring that such mediation-free sanctuaries are readily available to children so that their personally constructed sense of beauty, with its wonderfully generative fantasies, is not canceled before it even has time to take flight. 

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Brownstone Institute - Authority Isn't What it Used to Be

Authority Isn’t What It Used to Be

By / / , / 12 minute read / Articles
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My final rejection of ‘mainstream’ claims to authority happened during the Covid debacle. Whether a new, revitalised sense of legitimate authority could eventually be generated in the place of the spurious claims to authority on the part of those representatives of the supposed ‘New World Order’ who still wield power, only time will tell.

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Brownstone Institute - The Hostile Takeover of the Air Force Academy

The Hostile Takeover of the Air Force Academy

By / / , / 9 minute read / Articles
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The transformation of the Air Force Academy (AFA) from a military institution to a progressive, liberal arts school has been incremental, relentless, and calculated. The goal to politicize the training and perspectives of cadets, who constitute about 20% of annual Air Force officer commissions, guarantees a source of influential officers who will apply and promote these ideas throughout their military and civilian careers. 

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Brownstone Institute - The Complexity Science of Medicine Requires Freedom

The Complexity Science of Medicine Requires Freedom

By / / , / 10 minute read / Articles
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As I write this, medicine is still “In the Wilderness,” but I can see a brightening horizon. We still need to formulate a counter to the nihilism of Postmodernism and Critical Theory. We still need to re-establish free speech and intellectual freedom in healthcare delivery and education. We still need to raise truth above ideology. But I now think that is a possibility.

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Brownstone Institute - They Inch Towards Total Technological Control

They Inch Towards Total Technological Control

By / / , , / 12 minute read / Articles
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In a move that casts George Orwell’s 1984 in a distinctly passé light, these well-nigh invisible flying objects will be programmed and used by organisations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) for population surveillance, to detect so-called ‘thought crimes’ on the part of citizens. Needless to spell out, this will be done with a view to controlling people in a failsafe manner, anticipating supposed ‘criminal’ action before it is committed. 

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Brownstone Institute - How to Repair Our Post Repentance Culture

How to Repair Our Post-Repentance Culture

By / / , / 8 minute read / Articles
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Maybe I’m blind to their existence, but outside the largely narcissistic and comfortably non-personal woke rituals of remorse, I see few institutional pressures in our culture for young people, or anyone for that matter, to undertake the serious and always consequential act of examining their behaviors in the light of moral principles. Just the opposite, in fact. 

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Brownstone Institute - Science-Totalitarianism Now Threatens Liberalism

Science-Totalitarianism Now Threatens Liberalism

By / / , / 11 minute read / Articles
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Faced with the techno-scientification of everything, those of us wedded to the ideals of liberalism urgently need to recognise this threat. We need to recognise that though it is often useful, science cannot transcend the human condition. However much opportunity it brings, it cannot save us from being the limited, complex creatures that we are. 

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Brownstone Institute - Did Liberalism Fail the Test of Covid?

Did Liberalism Fail the Test of Covid?

By / / , , / 10 minute read / Articles
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I am completely obsessed with the question of whether liberalism failed in response to Covid. As I’ve written before, I think it is perhaps the most important question in the world right now. If liberalism failed then we are now seeking an alternative to liberalism. If liberalism did not fail (or was lynched) then perhaps we are seeking a return to liberalism (or the introduction of “true” liberalism for the first time). I believe that figuring out this question will provide a map to guide us out of the valley of death that we are currently in.

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Brownstone Institute - Exiles in Our Own Land

Exiles in Our Own Land

By / / , , / 9 minute read / Articles
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Authoritarians like our current crop have an Achilles’ heel to which they are almost invariably blind. They assume that everyone else views the world as hierarchically as they do; that is, as a place where dignity matters little and where the wisest course is always the supposedly practical one of “kissing up and kicking down.” 

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