Chris Horner teaches, studies and writes about philosophy and many other things. He is the co-uthor (with Emrys Westacott) of the CUP book ‘Thinking Through Philosophy’. He has studied at the University of Sheffield, University of East Anglia, Goldsmiths and Roehampton University and has a PhD, the subject of which was Hannah Arendt and Kant’s Theory of Reflective Judgment. He has a strong interest in politics, history, literature, the visual arts and music. He is a keen landscape photographer. Email: chris.horner2 [at] btinternet.com
by Chris Horner There’s a widespread belief that the world is really run by dark forces, or hidden actors we cannot see or know, but which operate like puppet masters somehow ‘behind the scenes’. On this view, only by a painstaking piecing together can we arrive at the truth about what is really going on.…
by Chris Horner Two Scenarios First scenario: you attempt to criticise, condemn or otherwise focus on an unjust regime, act of aggression, atrocity, or cruelty. An example: a school has been bombed and children have died. It is a war crime and you name it as such as an evil, criminal thing. Soon after the…
by Chris Horner Equality v Equity How should society go about the business of redistributing resources? Many people will be acquainted with the image featured at the top of this article. It is supposed to show the superiority of the notion of ‘equity’ – that is, giving people what they need to succeed, thus satisfying…
by Christopher Horner Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Jerusalem on June 1st 1962, a little after midnight. He had been found guilty by an Israeli court of ‘crimes against the Jewish people’ and ‘crimes against humanity’. One of the reasons he is still remembered – apart from the sheer scale of the crimes committed by…
by Chris Horner It is everywhere: the production of words designed to promote the fiction that something positive and good is happening, even though it isn’t. It comes courtesy of the people you work for, the retail outlets you shop from, and the government organisations that regulate your life. An example: a large organisation develops…
by Chris Horner Among the books of the nineteenth century that have something important to say to us now Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820) deserves a prominent place. It’s not the obvious contender for a popular read in the 21st century. He doesn’t make it easy for himself, if getting readers was…
by Chris Horner De gustibus non est disputandum —Roman Maxim How can I know what I think until I see what I say? —EM Forster When I first began to take photography seriously, as a practitioner as well as a viewer, I naturally discussed the activity with other photographers. It wasn’t long before I noticed…
by Chris Horner The political world is changing again. In place of the neoliberal politics of the last decades, capitalism and the nation state is undergoing one of its periodic metamorphoses. The period of what Nancy Fraser has called ‘neoliberal progressivism’ – broadly progressive stances by many governments on issues of sexual choice, reproductive rights…
by Chris Horner This year marks the 200th anniversary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death in exile on the island of St Helena. And it was 206 years ago last June that his career came to a bloody end at Waterloo, with defeat at the hands of an allied army led by Britain’s Wellington and Prussia’s Blucher.…
by Chris Horner One day, I used to say to myself and anyone else who’d listen, I’m going to write a book called ‘everything you know about these people is wrong’. I have given up on the idea, and I expect anyway that someone else has already done it. What prompted the repeated thought was…
by Chris Horner Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing. – Hannah Arendt. The quotation from Arendt is often thought to apply to the aftermath of the events…
by Chris Horner How should people on the ‘progressive’ side of politics view patriotism? That question continues to vex those who would connect with what they suppose are the feelings of the bulk of the population. The answer will vary a good deal according to which country we are considering – the French left, for instance,…
by Christopher Horner When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. —The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (dir. John Ford) No man is a hero to his valet. —proverb The highest act of reason…is an aesthetic act. —Holderlin (attrib) Sometimes it seems that growing up and learning things is one long process of disillusionment. Dis-illusion:…
by Chris Horner The world we live in is changing, and our politics must change with it. We are in what has been called the ‘anthropocene’: the period in which human activity is threatening the ecosystem on which we all depend. Catastrophic climate change threatens our very survival. Yet our political class seems unable to…
by Chris Horner I won that election —Donald J Trump The truth is out there —X files There is a story that Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, was in conversation with some German representatives during the Paris peace negations in 1919 that led to the Treaty of Versailles. One of the Germans said something…
by Chris Horner Two series have been streaming recently, to considerable success – The Queen’s Gambit (a Netflix miniseries, now concluded) and Succession (HBO, two series so far and more planned). They are interesting for a number of reasons – both for what they show, and perhaps more for what they do not, possibly cannot,…
by Chris Horner A Task for the Left ‘Freedom’ must be about the most popular term in the world of politics, and not only in that world. But what does it actually mean, in social and political terms? How should people who want to be broadly progressive understand it? Too often the Left finds it…
by Chris Horner Not long ago there was an article circulating on Facebook about ‘Hating the English’, originally published in a large circulation newspaper. The Irish author says something to the effect that once she thought it was just a few bad ones etc., but now she hates the lot of them. It’s been stimulated, I…
by Chris Horner In the presidential election of 2016, around 45% of adult eligible to vote in the USA did not vote. It isn’t disputed that voter suppression, disproportionately affecting people of colour, was one of the causes. Another seems to be a cynicism, or apathy about the process itself. And there may be other…
by Chris Horner Beauty is nothing more than the promise of happiness —Stendhal How can beauty promise happiness? And what kind of beauty would this be? What sort of happiness? Happiness and Beauty have been central issues for thinkers since antiquity, and the question of what they really are, and whether we should even prize…