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The United States has long been admired as the world’s most stable and enduring democracy. However, many experts now believe there is a growing and real risk the country could plunge into civil war. Deep political divisions, weakened institutions, racial unrest, allegations of voter fraud, and partisan news coverage are eviscerating social cohesion and political compromise. Red and Blue America are separated by more than ideology; their disagreements are about basic fundamental values that are in irresolvable conflict. The key pillars of a functioning democracy have been destroyed, and the country is courting a period of sustained violent unrest. Others argue that predictions of widespread civil conflict are overblown. Civil Wars require cohesive and large geographical fighting blocs. So called “red” and “blue” states like Texas and California are not nearly as homogenous as pundits claims (46.5% of Texans voted for Joe Biden). Protests, battles, and blockades are a much more likely scenario than a descent into full scale civil war. And finally, the widespread belief that an overwhelming number of Americans support political violence is factually incorrect, and promoting this narrative is dangerous. Those who prophesize the demise of US democracy must remember that conflict can escalate from misperceptions of the intentions of rival groups and stoking fear can lead to actual violence.

Arguing for the  motion is David Blight, award-winning civil war historian and the Sterling Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University.

Arguing against the motion is Akhil Reed Amar, American constitutional and legal scholar and the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University

QUOTES:

DAVID BLIGHT

“Until we find a way out of the straight jacket that the undemocratic Senate and the electoral college holds over us, we are on a collision course with more and more elections like 2020.”

AKHIL REED AMAR

“While we are deeply divided, in every state there are shades of purple. And that means there is less likely to be the sharp geographic divide of the sort that characterized the 1850s”

Sources: 

CNN, Fox News, CBC, HBO, PBS

The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.  

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This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/

Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz

Editor: Reza Dahya

Jennifer Egan reads her story “What the Forest Remembers,” from the January 3 & 10, 2022, issue of the magazine. Egan is the author of six books of fiction, including “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011, and “Manhattan Beach,” which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal in 2018. A new book, “The Candy House,” will be published in April. 

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This episode I'm joined once again by writer and occultist John Michael  Greer, to discuss his book After Progress: Reason and Religion at the End of the Industrial Age, alongside discussions on belief, Christianity, Nietzsche, peak oil and more...

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In this episode I'm joined by Justin Broackes (Brown, USA), Gary Browning (Oxford Brookes), and Alison Scott-Baumann (SOAS)to discuss Murdoch's lifelong engagement with the fiction and philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. From her first meeting with him in Brussels in 1945, right the way through to 'Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals'. Have your copy of Sartre: Romantic Rationalist to hand!

On this holiday weekend we're revisiting a special episode with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri (“Interpreter of Maladies”, “The Namesake”). In vivid, writerly detail Lahiri describes being raised in a family “spread out in various places” (5:05), her late mother’s recurring presence in her writing (10:20), the comfort (and pain) of being an observer (17:45), and the vibrancy she found in Rome (26:32), which inspired her new novel (written in Italian, translated in English) “Whereabouts” (29:45). On the back-half, Jhumpa reflects on the metamorphosis that occurred in her mother’s final days (35:00), how her familial ties (from Kolkata to Rhode Island) informed her early work (42:20), and, finally, why she writes (46:47).

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Ondra Kvapil, École Normale Supérieure de Paris / Charles University in Prague. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online.

ABSTRACT: My paper will focus on Sartre’s meditations on death. Sartre formulates them as a critique of Heidegger – and the majority of commentators adopt his approach. I will however claim it more fruitful to read Sartre’s conclusions in the light of Husserl’s analyses of death. These were indeed unknown to Sartre, nonetheless the two share key presuppositions: Because our death cannot be grasped in reflection on our subjectivity, it cannot belong to the ontological structure of subjectivity itself; death is then classified as a mundane event, as well as a limit-problem of phenomenological description. I will demonstrate how Sartre radicalizes this notion. Death is not a limit-problem only for transcendental reflection, but already in pre-theoretical and pre-phenomenological attitude. Not only can we never live to seeit coming, we cannot even anticipate it, as the instant of death is principally indeterminate. The only meaning we can attribute to our death is that of the end of our –meaningful, or meaningless – existence. Our death is thus categorically different from all that is intended in the world. There is also a tacit consequence to the exclusion of death from subjectivity: mortality is reduced to bodily vulnerability. Death is the final strike, which may come in various disguises – perhaps that of a virus. Coming from the world, where we nevertheless cannot intend it, death remains essentially exterior to us. In sum, I will unravel the missing link between Husserl’s unpublished reflections on death and Levinas’ grasp of death as radically Other. Moreover, it will emerge that death, which as a mundane fact becomes a subject to a variety of disciplines, at the same time exceeds all empirical facts and thus engages philosophy. Far from being limited to academia, death engages thinking of each and every one of us – no matter where we come from.

BIO: I am a postgraduate researcher at École Normale Supérieure de Paris and Charles University in Prague, currently working on my dissertation The Philosophical Significance of Death. Previously, I have also studied at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. I have taught several courses in phenomenological philosophy, mainly on Heidegger, at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Charles University. My research concerns phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics, as well as 19th-century continental philosophy, with particular research interests that include death and mortality, relation between being and nothingness, and the problem of time.

This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/

Named “Top 20 Philosophy Podcast” for 2021!

STORY SUMMARY: The narrator is walking down a small-town street when he comes across the devil, relaxing on vacation for the holidays. The narrator knows it is the devil because of his horns and goat legs. He also has a few small demon children in tow. The narrator, surprised, stops the devil to talk to him. The devil is cordial and says he has outsourced most of the “hell work” and spends his time traveling around the world moving from place to place. He likes the small towns during the holidays and enjoys the peace and quiet. The narrator feels he should do something, perhaps confront the devil, rather than allowing him to exist in peace. Finally, the narrator has second thoughts, in part because he doesn’t have a suitable weapon. The devil and his children continue in peace on their way.

DISCUSSION: One of our shorter stories and more to the traditional form of what we tend to discuss; a single interesting question put into a short story framework. In this case, the question is just wonderful, that being, do you always have an obligation to fight evil when you see it, even when you are fighting alone and feel (or know) that your efforts are futile, and are likely to go unnoticed? This story serves as a wonderful allegory for fighting against political or corporate abuse and how small our single vote or purchasing choice feels. Feeling, as the story says, that we are equipped with nothing more than a set of knitting needles. And yet, someone like Greta Thunberg was just a single person and her lone voice did, and does, matter. Maybe the lesson is fight futile battles and lose them in a public way?

BOOK LINK: Download the accompanying short story here.

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Fabulous stories, overheard conversation and a panoply of characters? It's the sound of Planet Poetry basking in the glowing Technicolor of Martina Evans's funny, moving and brilliantly inventive new collection American Mules (Carcanet). Meanwhile a  croaky-with-Covid Robin props herself up on one elbow to re-read a favourite collection by Kei Miller. As Cop26 is in the news, Peter considers eco-poetry in the light of work by novelist Richard Powers and philosopher Timothy Morton's 'All Art is Ecological'.

But wait... Where's that self-promotional trumpet? The new website at planetpoetrypodcast.com is finally UP! (And if you could tell absolutely everyone about it, that really would be awfully decent of you.)  

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The new season of the podcast starts with a special on the author, essayist, critic, spy, journalist and much else besides, Elizabeth Bowen. She was a friend of Iris Murdoch (whom she influenced) 'I was very fond of her...she should have been Queen', Virginia Woolf, and many more. She's now seen as a major figure of Twentieth Century culture.