Philosophy

Philosophy articles feature reflection and analysis about public life, values, ethics, and morals.

All philosophy articles at Brownstone Institute are translated into multiple languages.

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The Attempt to Burn Me at the Stake

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Perhaps for this reason: people might start to take seriously the idea that the corona crisis was primarily a psycho-social phenomenon that marked the transition to a technocratic system, a system in which the government would attempt to claim decision-making rights over its citizens and, step by step, take control of all private space.

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intellectual sanctuary

Why Did So Many Intellectuals Refuse to Speak Out?

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Here is why in our time, as in all times, there is a crying need for intellectual sanctuaries for those brave souls who are willing to stand up and be counted, risk cancellation, put their professional careers on the line, simply to say what is true. They need protection. They need care. And they deserve our congratulations, for it is they who will guide us out of this mess. 

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Quo usque tandem abutere, Corona, patientia nostra?

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The big open question, however, is what the political fallout will be from science’s return to truth. If it helps the constitutional state turn away from its absurd noble goals – war against a virus, fight against a climate change – and make it adhere to its real task – regulating the peaceful coexistence of people while respecting the freedom and dignity of the individual – then the many victims of the Covid hysteria will perhaps not have suffered entirely in vain.

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pandemic Australia

Pandemics Bookended Our Careers

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Covid has laid bare a medical profession no longer with input into health policy. Financial interest influences decisions enacted by bureaucrats, driven by the pharmaceutical industry, and woven into political agendas. A cultural blindness to objectivity begins with medical journals failing to publish any article outside of the narrative.

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churches during lockdowns

Churches During Lockdowns: Near Disaster 

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The compassion-hacking of American churches did not in itself save anyone’s life, but it did help to break down another civil-society barrier standing in the way of governmental totalization. As Hannah Arendt warned us, authoritarian and totalitarian schemes do not work without mass buy-in from the constituency. Buy-in requires people to be isolated, lonely, atomized, and stripped of all meaning.

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speed bumps

The Deeper Truth about Speed Bumps 

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These are classic “controlling practices” designed to gradually leach from each and every one of us—and most infuriatingly those not yet fully socialized—what is arguably our greatest instinctual drive: the desire to weave stories of our own in the company of others that remind us not of what they tell us we are and must be for them, but of the sense of dignity that we all want to feel and, to the best of our abilities, extend to others.

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The Pandemic Response Unleashed Two Kinds of Nationalism

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For nearly three years, most people in the world have been treated like lab rats in an experiment in bio-technocratic central management by state power, at the urging of once-respected global institutions, and this has resulted in economic crisis, demographic upheaval, and utter political panic. It will be many years before this is sorted out. 

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Lancet COVID-19 Commission

A Critique of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission 

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The commission members appear convinced that lockdowns and mass vaccination were a net benefit, but It also appears that in two years of consultation they have not considered the alternative. The loss of decades of progress on infectious disease, human rights, and poverty reduction caused by lockdowns has not given sufficient pause for thought. 

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The New Parasitic Leviathan

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The consolidation of a non-democratic form of governance that relies on external sources of authority should be a matter of concern to all. A state that functions via emergency rule based on authority that does not derive from citizens is a dangerous one. It is a hollow state that can only function with external justifications and is no longer a democratic state.

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Are We Falling as Rome Did?

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If our civilization collapses, it won’t be because of an outside attack, like Bedouin charging in from the desert. It will be because of those among us who, like parasites, destroy us from within. Our civilization may collapse and it could be due to any number of factors—war, the economy, natural disasters—but the silent killer, the one that may get us in the end, is our own moral catastrophe.

Are We Falling as Rome Did? Read Journal Article