Apr 30, 2025 06:30 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 30, 2025 06:58 PM by C C.)
Has the “Journal of Controversial Ideas” become irrelevant?
https://merionwest.com/2025/04/22/has-th...rrelevant/
EXCERPTS: The first issue of the Journal of Controversial Ideas was published in April of 2021...
[...] At the time, it was common to see headlines about professors and researchers being chastised for asking the wrong questions. Perhaps most famously, in 2017, philosopher Rebecca Tuvel scandalized the academic world by publishing a defense of transracialism (the idea that a person can transition from one race to another) in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia...
[...] In an environment like that, it made sense for an academic journal to emerge that was dedicated to publishing controversial papers...
[...] Since the journal’s founding in 2021, a series of seismic shifts have occurred: The progressive agenda lost both politically and culturally. Academia’s prestige has plummeted. Ideas traditionally deemed the flagship controversies of the age have become banal. And ideas that are actually controversial in the culture are—let’s face it—too stupid to warrant philosophical debate.
As a result: No one cares if academics solely write articles that are slavishly dedicated to a failed progressive agenda. To the general population, ideological progressivism in academia is no longer seen as threatening; it has become eye-roll inducing... (MORE - details)
Classical liberalism (incrementally develops to open-ended progressive orientation)
https://daily-philosophy.com/gregory-har...iberalism/
EXCERPT: There is much reference to the political spectrum in the daily news discourse, and it’s important that students and readers understand that the liberal center is where most people reside. The US has centrist-liberal population.
There is no one on Capitol Hill who is “leftist.” There are indeed some small political parties in the United States that are legitimately leftist. (Yet, they have no presence in Washington.) But, for all intents and purposes, leftist thought is just that: it’s thought. It resides in books. It does not have a life outside the library.
[...] If the population followed its current positions to their logical conclusions, this is where the country would find itself: a truly progressive political orientation. (MORE - details)
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As has been stated before, progressives are actually capitalists, who merely commodify the output of left-wing literary intellectuals, for their own purposes. They are symbolic capitalists, which in the political world are analogous to decorator crabs in the sea. They drape themselves in the trendy narratives, totems, and social agendas of the various ideological descendants of the French Revolution, while still retaining fealty to traditional commerce.
https://merionwest.com/2025/04/22/has-th...rrelevant/
EXCERPTS: The first issue of the Journal of Controversial Ideas was published in April of 2021...
[...] At the time, it was common to see headlines about professors and researchers being chastised for asking the wrong questions. Perhaps most famously, in 2017, philosopher Rebecca Tuvel scandalized the academic world by publishing a defense of transracialism (the idea that a person can transition from one race to another) in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia...
[...] In an environment like that, it made sense for an academic journal to emerge that was dedicated to publishing controversial papers...
[...] Since the journal’s founding in 2021, a series of seismic shifts have occurred: The progressive agenda lost both politically and culturally. Academia’s prestige has plummeted. Ideas traditionally deemed the flagship controversies of the age have become banal. And ideas that are actually controversial in the culture are—let’s face it—too stupid to warrant philosophical debate.
As a result: No one cares if academics solely write articles that are slavishly dedicated to a failed progressive agenda. To the general population, ideological progressivism in academia is no longer seen as threatening; it has become eye-roll inducing... (MORE - details)
Classical liberalism (incrementally develops to open-ended progressive orientation)
https://daily-philosophy.com/gregory-har...iberalism/
EXCERPT: There is much reference to the political spectrum in the daily news discourse, and it’s important that students and readers understand that the liberal center is where most people reside. The US has centrist-liberal population.
There is no one on Capitol Hill who is “leftist.” There are indeed some small political parties in the United States that are legitimately leftist. (Yet, they have no presence in Washington.) But, for all intents and purposes, leftist thought is just that: it’s thought. It resides in books. It does not have a life outside the library.
[...] If the population followed its current positions to their logical conclusions, this is where the country would find itself: a truly progressive political orientation. (MORE - details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
As has been stated before, progressives are actually capitalists, who merely commodify the output of left-wing literary intellectuals, for their own purposes. They are symbolic capitalists, which in the political world are analogous to decorator crabs in the sea. They drape themselves in the trendy narratives, totems, and social agendas of the various ideological descendants of the French Revolution, while still retaining fealty to traditional commerce.
