Sublime

Joshua Mitchell

It is the question of whether in these days the claims of government are to leave anything whatever of the rights of man.

“The hypothesis which I wish to advance is that in the actual world which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world I have described.”10

The priority of modern politics is economic growth. But humanity’s struggle towards material security will only be worthwhile if we understand and find ways to attenuate the psychological afflictions that appear to continue into, and are sometimes directly fostered by, conditions of abundance. The problems of the thirty or so rich countries describ

Mill held that truth emerges from an unfettered competition of ideas and that individual character is most improved when allowed to find its own way uncoerced. That vision was insufficient for 20th-century American liberalism.

But for Black people and for Latinos, who tend to live in cities and who together comprise the majority of the imprisoned, the logic of the situation is clear. Their imprisoned bodies are converted into someone else’s right to elect people who build more prisons.

En 1969, Peter Wiles décrivait l’idée centrale du populisme de la manière suivante : « la vertu réside dans le peuple, qui est majoritaire, et dans ses traditions collectives181 ». On ne saurait donner meilleure définition anticipée de la conception que se fait Christopher Lasch de ce phénomène. Le problème est qu’il identifie le peuple à une entit