Författare: Jesper Ahlin Marceta

Ny forskningsartikel om individualism och att ha mening i livet.

Hubbleteleskopet sägs ibland vara det mest värdefulla vetenskapliga instrumentet någonsin. Men när det 1990 sköts upp i rymden såg det mörkt ut. Bokstavligen talat. Det två miljarder dollar dyra teleskopet gav en suddig bild. Problemet berodde på instrumentets huvudspegel. Spegeln är två och en halv meter i diameter och designad med en liten kulle i mitten. Den är så liten att om spegeln vore lika stor som Atlanten skulle uppbuktningen inte vara högre än fem-tio centimeter. Företaget som gjorde spegeln hade slipat den fel. De hade gjort spegelns kanter för platta. Felet var mindre än tjockleken av en femtiondels hårstrå.…

Ny forskningsartikel om att på metodologiskt sunda grunder utvärdera olika modeller av människan.

The conflicting interests of employers and employees are central to political theory and practice. In her book Private Government, philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that firms—literally—are private governments. Bosses in firms govern workers. Employees are subjected to arbitrary dominance, which negatively affects their freedom. Regardless of whether one agrees with this description, the underlying analysis should be recognized as valid. According to Anderson, the ideal of a free market society used to be left-wing. Egalitarians in the 17th through 19th centuries pictured a world of self-employed individuals, or individuals in small family-owned businesses, as an alternative to monopolies run by states,…

This post was first published on the website Transforming Evidence (May 7, 2020), which now appears to have gone offline. I was asked to write it after the journal Evidence & Policy had published my article “The Evidence-based Policy Movement and Political Idealism”. The article is selected by the journal’s editors as one of three articles to be made available for open access until January 31, 2021. A summary of the article is available in Swedish here. So-called evidence-based policy idealists consider themselves as ideologically neutral in all matters but one. Their only political view is that public policymaking should…

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC–43 BC) was a Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher. Cicero is perhaps most famous for his extensive comments on Greek philosophy. His writings on stoicism, epicureanism, and skepticism, among other things, demonstrated that philosophy could be done in latin and preserved much ancient Greek thought for later generations. Cicero lived in the final days of the Roman republic, which is why his books and letters are often treated as historical documents. However, Cicero can also be read as a philosopher in his own right. He is no Plato or Aristotle, but Cicero’s philosophy is insightful and…

Filosofen John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) beskrivs ibland som liberalismens fader. Bland annat formulerade han den så kallade skadeprincipen, som ofta betraktas som en hörnsten i liberala samhällen: Denna princip är att det enda ändamål för vilket mänskligheten är berättigad, individuellt eller kollektivt, i att inskränka handlingsfriheten hos någon av dem, är självförsvar. Det enda skälet för vilket makt kan rätteligen utövas över någon medlem av ett civiliserat samhälle, mot hans vilja, är att förebygga skada på andra. Hans eget välbefinnande, vare sig fysiskt eller själsligt, är inte tillräckliga skäl.1 Men Mill kallade sig själv för socialist. I sin självbiografi skrev…

In the 15th through 13th century BC, Mediterranean societies thrived. It was the time of Egyptian faraos such as Ramses II and mythical or historical events such as the Trojan war. Politics, trade, and diplomatic relationships were similar to ours, with globalized economies and power struggles. Then everything changed. Empires and kingdoms came crashing down on a scale comparable only to that of the Roman Empire fifteen hundred years later. What happened, and why? In his book 1177 B.C., historian Eric H. Cline tells the story of the first great collapse of civilizations. The book is chronologically ordered, with four…

This is an excerpt from a manuscript (work in progress) on individualism. The most recognized contemporary criticism of individualism is commonly associated with Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Michael J. Sandel. Their general view is that the individualist individual is socially and metaphysically untenable. Sandel has developed his critique taking Immanuel Kant’s ethics as starting point. Kant thought that moral principles should be learned through reason alone and developed his categorical imperative via a transcendental argument (DePaul and Hicks 2016). According to Kant, to acquire moral knowledge we need to consider the moral subject, i.e., human beings, independent of experience.…

Igår publicerades min replik “Matti och Onn uppvisar liberal naivitet om politisk debatt” i Liberal Debatt. I repliken argumenterar jag att liberaler sällan, kanske till och med aldrig, borde debattera med högerextremister. Här är några tillägg som inte fick plats i repliken. Öppna och fria debatter är politiska institutioner i liberala demokratier. Genom debatt för politiska aktörer fram sina idéer i ett civiliserat forum. Bra idéer görs bättre, dåliga idéer sorteras bort. På sikt överlever de bästa idéerna och tillåts att påverka samhället. Genom att debattera gör också aktörerna sig själva transparenta. De redovisar inte bara sina idéer, utan visar…