The printing press had a very liberatory effect that meant individuals - small groups could produce radical pamphlets - could use it for organizing.

It's necessary to address the concerns and beliefs of those who are taken in by the fraud, or who don't recognize the nature and significance of the issues for other reasons. If by philosophy we mean reasoned and thoughtful analysis, then it can address the moment, though not by confronting the "alternative facts" but by analyzing and clarifying what is at stake, whatever the issue is. Beyond that, what is needed is action: urgent and dedicated, in the many ways that are open to us.

It was during the Reagan years that defiance of international law and the U.N. Charter became entirely open.

There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.

States are not moral agents.

If scientists and scholars were to become "collectively self-organised and consciously activist" today, they would probably devote themselves to service to state and private power. Those who have different goals should (and do) become organized and activist.

The beam in our own eye is harder to detect, although - or more accurately because - to detect it, and remove it, is vastly more important on elementary moral grounds, and commonly more important in terms of direct human consequences as well. Intellectuals have historically played a critical function in performing these tasks, and [Ivan] Illich is right to observe that claims to scientific expertise and special knowledge are often used as a device.