Destroying Unique Works of Art

I do not contend that this post contains anything of great originality, but it is sincere and from the heart. Its message has been reiterated often, but, evidently, not often enough. It is based on little beyond my own personal sentiments, my own conviction of its logic and my belief that compassion should be stronger than hate. It is unashamedly single-sided, for I will not tolerate those who would call for another’s death.

The United States cannot be considered to have reached any point of civilization until it names, whether by Supreme Court ruling of unconstitutionality, or by constitutional amendment, the death penalty for what it truly is: a monstrosity of anti-humanism that is degrading to its victims and, in their self-assuredness, the perpetrators.

On Regulative Ideas

The author gratefully acknowledges the fruitful conversations with Julian Cottee which helped shape these thoughts.

What is the ethical?

Searching for this elusive point of presence in an unlikely place (an essay by a post-structuralist thinker on the September 11th attacks: Jacques Derrida) yields, perhaps unsurprisingly, a twofold answer defined, primarily, in negation. The ethical cannot be a system of logical rule following, for this both forbids, and is governed by, deferral; there can be no changing one’s mind; action has begun; no decision is involved; it is no longer one’s own responsibility. The ethical also cannot be the purely dutiful for, as Kant has observed, this duty is, at base, a compulsion, a coercion. Does this situate the ethical in the realm of the impossible, beyond even a “regulative idea”? (Derrida, 133-134) While I would, by no means, cast myself as a Derridean, in this instance the writer heralded as a practitioner of “obscurant terrorism” (see Mitchell) provides a useful backing against which to conceptualise such problems.

Lily Allen vs. Richard Stallman: From “Shame for You” to “Not Fair”

If you have been following the more subtle undercurrents of entertainment news this week, it is likely that you will have encountered the odious Lily Allen, her anti-”piracy” blog, the subsequent discovery that major portions of said blog consisted of somebody else’s copyrighted work and that she was distributing other artists’ work, for free, in order to promote her own career.

It is also likely that astute readers will have encountered arguments both for, and against, file-sharing. To address such concerns is not, entirely, the point of this article. Instead, I would like to focus upon one singular — and to my mind, most important — aspect of the debate, the history that surrounds it and the implications for the digital age.