N. Gabriel Martin is a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics, and Ethics at the University of Brighton. He writes about the fraught relationship between politics and knowledge, and is currently working on a book about disagreement. In addition to 3 Quarks Daily, Gabriel writes for thevimblog.com and The Philosophical Salon. He also performs at Stand-up Philosophy events in London and at the Edinburgh festival, and podcasts at The Vim Podcast. Email: ngabrielmartin [at] gmail.com.
Website: http://www.ngmartin.com/
by N. Gabriel Martin In 1869, less than two years after its confederation, Canada purchased Rupert’s Land, the vast country stretching over a thousand miles from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains, from the Hudson’s Bay Company (“the company” as it was called). Even before the sale took effect, the Canadian government sent surveyors to…
by N. Gabriel Martin Henry Ward Beecher was one of the most prominent and influential abolitionists in the US prior to and during the Civil War. He campaigned against the “Compromise of 1850” in which the new state of California, annexed in the Mexican-American war, was agreed to be made a state without slavery in…
by N. Gabriel Martin “It was wrong to underestimate the ignorance of the ruling class.” —Graham Greene, The Confidential Agent The old libel that the masses are too ignorant and irrational for democracy is having a moment. Elections of populist demagogues in the US, Brazil, India, and other countries, together with the failures of many democratically…
by N. Gabriel Martin In 2017, the Nobel prize in economics attracted more attention than it usually does, when it was awarded to Richard Thaler. Articles in leading newspapers everywhere explained Thaler’s revolutionary insight: whereas economic orthodoxy was premised on the belief that humans are essentially selfish, Thaler’s work assumed that we are also stupid.…
by N. Gabriel Martin When I was younger, I gravitated to conservatism’s deference to the actual. In my suspicion towards the progressive preference for ideas over what just is, it took me a long time to understand that conservatism misunderstands the future and therefore what it is attempting to achieve. Conservatism’s purported ambition to preserve…
by N. Gabriel Martin Among the most frequent and important complaints against President Trump and his administration is that it has contributed to the degradation of public institutions. The title of an Op-Ed in The Atlantic this year referred to his “war on American institutions,” and even prior to his election an Op-Ed in The…
by N. Gabriel Martin Is it still possible today, in the age of widespread and outlandish conspiracy theories, algorithmically induced filter-bubbles, and bullshitting demagogues, a generation after the US Republican party adopted a strategy of unprincipled obstructionism to anything that their democratic counterparts proposed, to believe that reason has a place in politics? When we…
by N. Gabriel Martin The pandemic has increased our awareness of the moral significance of our day to day habits. While there have always been moral perfectionists who agonise over every choice and action, most of us tended to draw a line under our day to day habits, taking them for granted and reserving moral…
by N. Gabriel Martin Perhaps there is no greater testament to the triumph of individualism than the pro-gun slogan “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” It takes an extremely narrow conception of responsibility to deny that lax gun laws are to blame for high rates of gun violence, but that view is pervasive anyway.…