Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Power

  • on authority [and rousseau’s fork]

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Hannah Arendt maintained that one has authority, when one commands obedience from others, not by exercising power over them, but because they recognize and respect one’s right to do so. [1] To accept authority, then, is to accept hierarchy, which, in turn, is to accept a substantial if not formal…

  • knowledge is power

    by James Pannucci ____ Knowledge is power. We’ve all heard this, but what does it mean, and where did this concept come from? Historically, it is attributed to Francis Bacon, an English philosopher from the late 1500’s and early 1600’s. He was a key Renaissance philosopher making major contributions to scientific methodology and the topic…

  • There are Four Lights: Trump and Postmodernism

    by David Ottlinger We should have known something was seriously wrong when Oxford dictionaries declared ‘post-truth’ the word of the year for 2016. (1) It was a sign that a deep confusion had taken root in the fertile soil of our public’s widespread philosophical illiteracy.  “The nature of reality is an open question in the…