Why subscribe?
I published democratic individuality, a blog named for my book Democratic Individuality (Cambridge University Press, 1990) between 2009 and 2018. The book advanced an historically based moral argument about a decent life for humans, marked by discoveries about a free and cooperative life for individuals, as represented especially by most Indigenous communities, the Greek democracies which, also, however exploited slaves and women and those dominated by their empires, and the long struggle to see that that life and conscience of each of us, immigrant as well as citizen, deserves protection and the opportunity to thrive. At its best, that would be in an ideal democratic regime, based on equal basic or human rights of each person, or the participatory regimes of many tribal nations.
As Biden’s arming of Israeli genocide in Gaza and the blanket refusal of the corporate US and British press to recognize Jews like me who speak out against it or attack us – a salute to Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now – as well as its devaluing the humanity of each Palestinian highlights, that is a long way up from here…
It is widely though falsely believed in academia that ethical values are relative and none – even the prohibition of murder or rape… - is superior to the opposite. That holds among many in philosophy and in social science which espouses a putative “value-freedom.” Hilary Putnam and Amartya Sen have also long argued against this…
Now avoiding bias is important. But we only know bias because we know things that are true. It is true that the United States was a “Protestant” “’white’ supremacist” and misogynist regime built on genocide against Indigenous Americans and bondage for Blacks; that the US waged aggression against and seized half of Mexico, as Thoreau and Lincoln underlined in protest, and that the elite treated all Catholic and Jewish immigrants as “inferiors.” It is also true that many fought these oppressions from below.
Further, seeking the truth is a value. Does value-freedom mean that ideology – what most bosses like Schultz at Starbucks mouth - is as good as the truth about working conditions? That plagiarism is as justified as doing your own work…?
Moral relativism, as I show in the book, at its best, hopes to avoid ethnocentrism, but becomes self-refuting (if someone exclaims “I do not exist,” not as a joke…); it then alleges that the misogynist bigotry of Hitler, Putin and the KKK is of “equal epistemological value” with respect for each person, and assumes – without argument - that no one can give a rational and evidence-based argument to the contrary. If one can listen to Trump or Vance (“childless cat ladies,“ “21 gun-toting grandmas”) and believe this – a murderous revulsion against decency and the future – good luck…
As a political theorist and philosopher, this substack will provide essays with a different and liberating perspective against corrupt corporate media discourse. In addition, I write poems, and the substack, like the blog, will contain roughly 8 entries per month. People can receive and share the essays freely, but if you want to support this effort and join the discussion, please subscribe for $7 per month (or $70 per year).
Subscribers get to join the discussion as well as access to essays on the history of “’white’ supremacist” misogyny and the surprising resistance to it. This includes American and European genocidal skull collecting (I am working on a book entitled Skull Collecting, Genocide and the Delusions of “’white’ supremacy”: the Smithsonian, Paris, London, Strassburg, Chicago, Berkeley and Denver). I welcome conversation, thoughts and advice…
I also welcome students and will discuss a lower rate if you need this I respond to student emails, including on the substack and you can reach me at Alan.Gilbert@du.edu.
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I am the author of Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War of Independence (University of Chicago Press, 2012), cited at the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History as one of 5 books or essays to read, and on a list of the 10 best books about the American Revolution
Plato’s Severed Lovers: Alkibiades and Sokrates, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard, Washington and Athens, 2022, https://chs.harvard.edu/read/platos-severed-lovers-alkibiades-and-sokrates/
Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy? Princeton University Press, 1999
andMarx’s Politics: Communists and Citizens, Rutgers and Martin Robertson, 1981, pb. Lynne Rienner, 1981
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