Another quick blog addressed to sociologists. It raises a couple of issues, hypotheses of sorts. The first suggests that for all many of us are committed to the view that society is an ‘open system’ – that is, a system within which beneath-the-surface structures and causal mechanisms generate on-the-surface events without necessarily leading to neat… Read More »
When I attended the celebration of Mike Bury’s career and writings last Thursday (3/9/26), there was much discussion of the concept of ‘frailty’. Dictionary definitions refer to physical weakness or a loss of bodily resilience that makes a person vulnerable to sudden health declines from minor stresses. It is of course associated most readily with… Read More »
This is my third blog on Branko Milanovic’s ‘The Global Transformation’, which suggests I’m both enjoying reading it and finding doing so challenging and rewarding. My first comments have to do with his claim that we have entered what he calls a new era of national market liberalism. In four areas, he contends, there is… Read More »
It was a great pleasure today to attend and speak at a meeting in Senate House in London to celebrate the career and writings of Mike Bury. Not least of the day’s pleasures was reacquainting with numerous old friends and colleagues. Many of the old London medical school group: David Armstrong, Judy Green, Charlotte Humphrey,… Read More »
My last blog addressed Branko Milanovic’s evidence-based statement that the ruling class in countries like the USA has taken on a new look – a fusion of the professional-managerial class and the top capitalists (see his ‘The Great Global Transformation’). In this second effort to draw on Milanovic’s thesis, I sketch his analysis of the… Read More »
This blog draws on Branko Milanovic’s new book entitled ‘The Great Global Transformation’, an impressive volume that offers an evidence-based assessment of the present state of geopolitics. My immediate focus in on his concept of ‘homoploutia’. This is his way of articulating the emergence of a new ruling class in ‘the new capitalism’. He notes… Read More »
Like Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a catalyst, a take-off point for many divergent thinkers. Left-Hegelians diverged one way, Right-Hegelians another. There is no one reading of Hegel. Nor can his considerable body of work be captured in a mere blog. I will do the best I can. Hegel charged himself with replacing… Read More »
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential of ‘modern’ philosophers, covering a lot of ground in an impeccably fine-tuned and systematic manner. Offering any kind of summary of his works in a thousand or so words is impossible, so I may err on the side of profligacy on this occasion. But I’m assisted… Read More »
1 An Introduction to Habermas Jurgen Habermas is less discussed than he was even a decade ago, but having written of the relevance of his work for health and health care I am still occasionally asked to give talks on applications of his theories to the health domain. Hence this first in a short series… Read More »
Michael Worton, one time Professor of French Literature and a Vice-Provost at UCL, once told me Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was the most important philosopher of the 20th century. Against that I once heard A J Ayer explain to Malcolm Muggeridge live on TV that Heidegger misused the verb ‘to be’. Maybe the truth is somewhere… Read More »