According to Thomas Falk, an authoritarian insurgency against the institutions of liberal democracy operates along both political-economic and phenomenological axes. By corrupting language and stimulating vigilance, this insurgency endeavors to diminish the perceptual and communicative capacities that allow us to articulate a shared reality and…

Two philosophers of education, Sarah Stitzlein and Lauren Bialystok, have recently expressed criticisms of so-called "Parental Conscience Acts," which allow parents to opt their children out of aspects of the public school curriculum that they find objectionable. (These laws and policies should be distinguished from those which allow…

The ability to think critically is a defining characteristic of humanity, setting humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. To perceive future consequences of an action, idea, or decision and then adjust these actions, ideas, and decisions accordingly is an integral part of existing as conscious beings in the world. Moreover, critical…

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman characterizes this era as a time of "liquid modernity." Rather than settled meanings, categories, and frames of reference, Bauman contends that meaning is always in flux, open-ended rather than closed. This flux is in large part driven and exacerbated by a culture of consumerism. This phenomenology of the…

The concept of freedom is one of the key ideas in political philosophy. In a liberal society one can do, live, and like whatever he/she pleases, but at the same time there are certain constraints on the individual that balance between one's desires and the common good. In this paper, the author examines the notion of freedom in the age of digital…

The author examines one particular systematic and normative theorization of social justice in Barry Bull's "Social Justice in Education." Bull embarks on a timely and ambitious theory-to-practice project of grounding an educational theory of social justice in Rawls's seminal, liberal, distributive justice tome. The author…

In light of the importance and the potential danger of education during childhood for politically liberal societies, the author has devoted much of his professional career to thinking about and formulating the moral principles that should govern such a society's educational institutions. However, this task cannot be accomplished for all such…

In this article, William Ayers constructs his Phil Smith Lecture as a call to action. Grounded in democratic principles of equality and social justice, the author invokes a liberal conception of human worth and the universal right to educational opportunity. The author critiques the passivity of the American polity in the face of Barack Obama's…

The English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) is one of the most prominent figures in the development of liberal Anglo-American political thought. Locke's writings had a significant influence on the American Revolution and founding principles of the United States in fundamental ways. The author argues that Locke's influence is…