Political Theory 101

Michael Downs joins Benjamin to discuss the political thought of Nick Land, its relationship to the work of Deleuze and Guattari, and the degree to which it has influenced the contemporary left and right.

We discuss how Plato used dialectical thinking to deal with objections to the theory of the forms. Then we discuss how this kind of thinking enriches our ability to make use of all sorts of political concepts and abstractions.

We discuss the work of John Morley, a British viscount heavily involved in the government of Ireland and India during the late 19th and early 20th century. Morley was a liberal, but he was often in situations in which his liberalism was pushed to its limit. We discuss how he thought about liberty as a young man, and how he worked to put his beliefs into practice in difficult circumstances.

Daniel joins Benjamin to discuss Plato's Philebus. We traverse the dialectic of limit and unlimit and discuss the difference between memory and recollection, connecting all of this to Plato's political thought.

Elizabeth Dearden-Williams, a former student of mine from Cambridge who is currently pursuing a masters, comes on to discuss the work of the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz.