Myanmar — what are the limits of political violence?
The military coup, which overturned the results of last November’s national election, has plunged Myanmar into a cycle of escalating violence. This poses quite specific questions about the legitimacy...
View ArticleThe ethics of space tourism
A new “space race” is underway – except this time, it’s not between the United States and Russia, or even China and India. Instead, billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson are...
View ArticleCan national shame lead to political change?
Could the full acknowledgement of the extent of our complicity in the injustices of the past, constitute a galvanising principle, the basis upon which a new political community is formed? Is shame...
View ArticleHow much dissent is permissible in a public health emergency?
The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a wave of “emergency politics”, in which the normal processes of democratic deliberation and public accountability have been suspended. In a public health crisis,...
View ArticleThe ethics of dobbing
Snitching, ratting, dobbing, grassing — these are all words for behaviour that we are taught, at a very young age, to find reprehensible. Is our reticence to “dob” an expression of a worrying...
View ArticleWas US failure in Afghanistan inevitable?
Does the swift collapse of the US-backed Afghan government suggest that places like Afghanistan are ungovernable by anything other than brute force and unimpeded corruption — or does it suggest that...
View ArticleShould journalists stay away from social media?
Over the last year, there have been a number of high-profile cases where journalists have either landed themselves in legal trouble, or have sparked fierce backlash, due to their conduct on social...
View ArticleAustralian politics – is the divide geographical, not ideological?
In the face of the latest COVID-19 outbreaks, there is little that has differentiated the governing strategies of Liberal and Labor state governments — certainly not at the level of practice. Are we...
View ArticleFrom Abu Ghraib to Nakhon Sawan — why does torture persist?
The events of 9/11 are inseparable from the horrors of what was subsequently revealed about the use of torture against detainees in locations like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. What does the...
View ArticlePRESENTS — This Much Is True
Even in a scientifically enlightened, media-savvy age, conspiracy theories have proven strangely resilient. They just don’t seem to want to go away, and many people seemingly can’t get their fill....
View ArticleShould we avoid humiliating the unvaccinated?
If levels of strident “vaccine hesitancy” in Australia are extremely low, and the push to help the population reach the necessary vaccination threshold is more logistical than it is ideological,...
View ArticleHas democratic politics become too contemptuous of everyday life?
In modern politics and moral philosophy, what is most meaningfully human is regularly ignored in the interests of solving “real problems”. While this is often understandable, it also points to a...
View ArticleHas the pandemic shown the unassailability of utilitarianism — or its...
As the philosopher Bernard Williams anticipated, utilitarianism has largely disappeared from public view, not because it is no longer adhered to, but because it has become the “operating system” that...
View ArticlePersuasion — is it possible, or even desirable?
Far too much debate today is more like a play of competing monologues, or forms of self-promotion designed to perform for one’s tribe. Should we give up on the fantasy of persuasion through...
View ArticleHow much should we care about climate change?
There is a growing evidence that people have accepted the reality of climate change and the need for action. But there is significant divergence in attitudes toward the salience of the problem — which...
View ArticleWhat are we doing when we “quote”?
How might we avoid bad faith quotations, served up in vain interests, and locate ourselves, our hearers, our readers, in a community of mutual interest and intellectual wonder — not so much using...
View ArticleShould we enjoy sports that ruin athletes’ lives?
Every so often, fans are forced to reckon with the high price that sports can exact on the lives of athletes. In such moments, we are compelled to ask: Is our enjoyment worth the cost?
View ArticleWhy don’t we talk more about class?
It’s become a sad commonplace in our time to hear the lines along which democratic societies are now divided. What is often absent, however, is mention of class. Why? Do Korean films like Bong...
View ArticleThe ethics of political U-turns
How much leeway should we give politicians to change, if not their minds, then at least their positions? Under what circumstances are political “U-turns” not liable to condemnation or censure? When...
View ArticleMelbourne’s protests — last gasp or harbinger of things to come?
Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen a new wave public protests grow in both size and palpable anger in Victoria. With politicians already trying to make the most of these demonstrations in the lead-up...
View ArticleThe ethics of “sh*t-stirring”
In a time when so many opinions are clamouring for views in our debauched attention economy, “sh*t-stirring” has become an irresistible strategy to get oneself noticed. But it does so at a cost, not...
View ArticleShould wealthy nations be procuring booster doses?
Now that vaccines are enjoying widespread coverage among wealthy nations, and with the recent emergence of the Omicron variant and rapidly rising rates of infection in the United States and throughout...
View Article“Prestige television” and the moral life
One of the most notable cultural changes to have taken place over the past two decades is the emergence of “prestige television” — which is to say, television as the visual equivalent of literature,...
View ArticleIs "opinion" doing more harm than good?
Opinion writing plays a disproportionate role in our media eco-system: it drives online traffic, fuels emotion, feeds the forces of polarisation, and promotes an incapacity to understand one another....
View ArticleShould journalists stay away from social media?
Over the last year, there have been a number of high-profile cases where journalists have either landed themselves in legal trouble, or have sparked fierce backlash, due to their conduct on social...
View ArticleEmojis: Universal language, or harbinger of an age of moral illiteracy?
They seem innocuous, but since their invention more than two decades ago, emojis have come to permeate our forms of online communication. Indeed, they are the perfect expression of what communication...
View ArticleWhat are we doing when we "quote"?
How might we avoid bad faith quotations, served up in vain interests, and locate ourselves, our hearers, our readers, in a community of mutual interest and intellectual wonder — not so much using...
View ArticleWhy don’t we talk more about class?
It’s become a sad commonplace in our time to hear the lines along which democratic societies are now divided. What is often absent, however, is mention of class. Why? Do Korean films like Bong...
View ArticleNovak and Boris — why have they elicited such strong public emotions?
Over the past two months, the conduct of two prominent figures have evoked fierce expressions of public emotion. What explains the intensity of feeling? Have these emotions distorted the public’s...
View ArticleAre we suffering from too much moral language?
The misuse of moral language in public debate is nothing new. But in our social-media saturated age, this misuse has taken on a distinct and rather perfidious form. Morally weighted language is...
View ArticleHow essential is compulsory voting to Australia’s democratic culture?
The practice of compulsory voting, along with the two other pillars of Australia’s electoral system — preferential voting and non-partisan election administration — have kept Australian democracy...
View ArticleWas the Religious Discrimination Bill destined to fail?
The debate over the Religious Discrimination Bill has exposed a tension at the heart of the liberal vision of a pluralistic society, in which citizens commit to living together despite their profound...
View ArticleDoes Australia have a concept of “solidarity”?
Two years ago Scott Morrison raised the drawbridge, effectively sealing “Fortress Australia” off from the rest of the world. What effect has the act of separating Australian citizens and residents...
View Article“Succession” — A Theatre of Cruelty
Works of art, both high and low, can inform and inflect a moral vision of the world. It makes sense to approach works of art with an attentiveness to the light they shed on our lives and our life...
View ArticleWhat’s worse in politics — lying or hypocrisy?
Lying has become so commonplace in politics that it has almost become expected — if not quite accepted. Many politicians who are notoriously promiscuous with the truth even remain relatively popular....
View ArticleWhat’s at stake in the conflict in Ukraine?
It is hardly surprising that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been met by fierce, swift, and unified opposition on the part of the West and their allies — who have offered strategic support to the...
View ArticleLive from WOMADelaide: Should children get the vote?
The question of whether the franchise should be extended to children has become an increasingly pressing topic in political theory. But why would we want them to vote? Is it in the interests of...
View ArticleIs anger corrosive to the moral life? A conversation with Christos Tsiolkas
There is no doubt that emotions like anger can be a proper response to the persistence of injustice or inequality or prejudice or cruelty in the world. But it can also be exhausting and insatiable in...
View ArticlePurification and the Moral Life: Transforming Desire
What if the impediments to moral growth are not purely or even primarily external to us? During the month of Ramadan, we explore the inner tension between our tendency toward egotism, craving, and...
View ArticlePurification and the Moral Life: Chastening Speech
Of all the ways we interact with the world and with the moral reality of other persons, none is as fundamental as speech. In a time when we are saturated with words, what might it mean to purify our...
View ArticlePurification and the Moral Life: Disciplining the Eyes
There are habits of seeing which can corrupt our moral lives, or clutter our vision, or defile our imaginations. Just as there is a “contemptuous gaze”, as Iris Murdoch puts it, there are also “eyes...
View ArticlePurification and the Moral Life: The Ethics of Hunger and Eating
Few of life’s activities are as morally complicated as eating. If food has become, in our time, a source of nourishment for what Iris Murdoch calls the “fat relentless ego”, what might it mean to...
View ArticleSovereignty, security, and the Solomon Islands
By turning the Solomon Islands into a federal election “issue”, Australia has emphasised the national security implications of their agreement with China. PM Manasseh Sogavare has, in response,...
View ArticleIs it ethical to be ambivalent?
We live in a time when “hot” emotions prevail. It could be that an alternative sentiment, in some ethically complex circumstances, is ambivalence — which is to say, a willingness to withhold judgment,...
View ArticleHow do you solve a problem like housing affordability?
There is an inescapable conflict that any policy meant to address housing affordability must contend with: in order to make home-ownership more achievable for some, the value of houses must decrease —...
View ArticleWhat is the significance of Australia’s federal election?
Does the 2022 federal election tell us anything about the future of Australian democracy? We know that the Coalition was resoundingly defeated. But does Australia’s new patchwork parliament hold out a...
View ArticleThe ethical dilemmas of crowd-funding platforms
Social media platforms have been the objects of unrelenting public and political scrutiny over the past decade. Rather less attention has been paid to their more benign cousins — so called...
View ArticleWhat would a First Nations Voice mean for Australia?
Five years after the historic gathering at the red centre, Anthony Albanese used his election night victory speech to “commit to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full”. Professor Megan Davis...
View ArticleWhat’s the point of political comedy?
While political comedy has long been a distinguishing feature of truly democratic cultures, one of the more notable shifts over the past two decades has been the merger of comedy into political...
View ArticleIs Julian Assange entitled to a “free speech” defence?
Julian Assange’s defenders claim that the free speech protections afforded to news organisations should apply to Assange as well — and that his impending extradition to the US therefore poses a threat...
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