An interdisciplinary journal published by MIT on behalf of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, each quarterly issue invites a number of prominent writers addressing a particular theme.

Articles Featured in our Library:

In this essay, Judith Shklar (not a Buddhist) ponders the implications of placing cruelty first (as the Buddha did). She shows how this position stands at odds with both Christian piety and neoliberal apathy and carves out a more realistic humanism than either extreme.

We contend that even in situations of apparent procedural equality, deliberation’s legitimating potential is limited by its potential to increase normatively focal power asymmetries. We conclude by describing how deliberative contexts can be modified to reduce certain types of power asymmetries, such as those often associated with gender, race, or class.

Targeted groups came to be attributed a biological or timeless essence, not because this was inevitable, we argue, but because of these failures to historicize inequality.