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:: Latest Features

• Habermas, Adorno, Politics

  

  Habermas has a rare and enviable capacity to sense the issues that are relevant to the present. In the mid-1980s he was among the most vocal opponents of the right-wing historiographers in the Historian Controversy, whom he accused of wanting to relativize the crimes of the Nazi regime, in the interests of normalizing West German foreign policy. More recently he has engaged in debates around gene technology and their threat to our self-understanding as autonomous moral persons. He has been true to his own view that the task of the public intellectual is to “stir up critical developments when everyone else is still doing business as usual.” Philosophers should do more of that. As a bunch, we tend to be too inward looking.

  Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Gordon Finlayson.

• Drone

  

  The weird passed again into normalcy. There were meals. The exercise was good; body was juiced at the lack of dope. I shared a triple bunk with Wilt and Johns, who were always together and much alike, so I never clicked who was who—we were pals. After we’d got some shape back they fitted us for flamethrowers. It was fun torching the straw men, but our fuelpacks weighed a motherfucking ton.

  Job was to penetrate some pines and flush out the ferals who lived there. Halfway through, the officers stopped calling them “ferals” and said “mud-eaters.” The mud-eaters, inbred trash that went into the swamp a century back and walked on all fours, had killed a resource exploration crew. With rocks. The story made us mad.

  By Miles Klee.

:: Interviews

• Habermas, Adorno, Politics

  

  Habermas has a rare and enviable capacity to sense the issues that are relevant to the present. In the mid-1980s he was among the most vocal opponents of the right-wing historiographers in the Historian Controversy, whom he accused of wanting to relativize the crimes of the Nazi regime, in the interests of normalizing West German foreign policy. More recently he has engaged in debates around gene technology and their threat to our self-understanding as autonomous moral persons. He has been true to his own view that the task of the public intellectual is to “stir up critical developments when everyone else is still doing business as usual.” Philosophers should do more of that. As a bunch, we tend to be too inward looking.

  Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Gordon Finlayson.

• without concepts

  

  A science of concepts would be like a science of Tuesdays. As you can imagine, not all psychologists are thrilled!

  But this view has a silver lining for psychologists. If I am correct, there are a bunch of exciting empirical questions that have been ignored by psychologists, and that should be tackled urgently. These include, How are the concepts organized? Do some concepts have priority over others? How are resulting conflicts resolved? Are they triggered in different contexts? And what is the relevant mechanism? How are different types of concepts acquired?

  Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Edouard Machery.

:: Non-Fiction

• The luck of the game

  

  It gives us a picture of Blair’s Britain which is, refreshingly, less than flattering. Britannia is unremittingly icy, not cool. Crime-based films have long shown London at various stages of its history and Croupier is no exception. The Long Good Friday captured London on the eve of the East End’s transformation from dead docklands to financial hub whilst Mona Lisa portrayed Soho on the verge of change, post-Groucho Club new sophistication, pre-rainbow-flagged gay village gentrification, and with old-style gangsters still around.

  Nicky Charlish on the 15th anniversary of Mike Hodges‘ Croupier.

• Black Bread White Beer

  

  I’ve been taking photos quite seriously for a couple of years now, both digitally and on 35 and 120mm film. Some of these photographs formed part of my mood board as I was writing Black Bread White Beer. Taking photographs, thinking about them, was an integral part of the writing. Everything from these images were absorbed into the book.

  By Niven Govinden.