While fasting is an observance associated with Ramadan, versions the practice are broadly familiar to us — from the forms of “self-restraint” that are bound up with physical fitness, to advice commending the health benefits of a regular 14-hour fast. But are these forms of “self-care” just further preoccupations with “the self”, rendering us forgetful of the needs of the moral life?
One of the defining features of our time is the overproduction of what could be called “useless knowledge” — ranging from gossip and empty speculation, to undeniably important “news” which makes no claim on our moral lives other than that we have an opinion about it. In a world full of competing distractions, could it be that one of the greatest moral challenges is how to limit what we know?
With the proliferation of digital distractions and addictive technologies, many of us live in a state of perpetual half-attention. We tend to move from one “sugar-hit” to the next — stimuli which elicit strong if transitory emotions, but discourage us from being present, entirely, to one person, one text, one idea. What is the lack of attentiveness doing to our moral lives?
Will the experience of working-from-home make employees reluctant to resume the daily struggle with traffic or public transportation, or to put up with irritating co-workers and unproductive work environments? Or will we discover that we’ve missed something precious in being deprived of interactions with others?
It’s understandable that so much anger should be directed at the federal government, and that the federal government’s numerous missteps and failures to respond appropriately to what this moment demands have added insult to injury. But if the problem is culture-wide, can federal politics be the solution?
One of the perhaps underappreciated aspects of COVID-19 is the way the pandemic has dealt a blow to these daily interactions which reinforce our commitment to a common life. What is ‘civility’? What is the regulative role it plays in our common life?
Does our limited conception of moral responsibility stem from a profound failure to recognise our interconnectedness, the extent to which our lives are implicated in the suffering and wellbeing of others – human and nonhuman?
In the absence of a police investigation into an historical allegation of sexual assault against the Attorney-General, many Australians have pinned their hopes on an independent, arms-length, confidential inquiry. Professor Rosalind Dixon joins us to discuss the legal and moral grounds for such an inquiry.
They seem innocuous, but since their invention more than two decades ago, emojis have come to permeate our forms of online communication. Indeed, they are the perfect expression of what communication has become in a social-media saturated age.
The measures Facebook has taken over the past week have precipitated a long-overdue reckoning. Now that the “social network” has lifted the veil on its ambitions and civic disdain, how can news media companies continue, in good conscience, with their Faustian pact?
Professor Rita Felski joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to explore whether a better understanding of the nature of aesthetic experience – of what art does to us, and why – can give us a better sense of the nature of moral disagreement, and of how it is that we might come to discover a shared world.
Do Republicans have an obligation to convict and impeach Trump, for the sake of the health of the body politic? Can democracy itself survive when each “side” casts its electoral success as necessary to the survival of the nation, and the “other side” as an existential threat?
Opinion writing plays a disproportionate role in our media eco-system: it drives online traffic, fuels emotion, feeds the forces of polarisation, and promotes an incapacity to understand one another. But is there a different way to think about opinion?
Perhaps the most consequential event over the last two months was decision of social media companies to ban Donald Trump — permanently or indefinitely — from their platforms “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”. Why are some vaguely uneasy about this move? Are there valid ethical objections?
How does liberal democracy manage incommensurable disagreement? Do the moral and political demands for justice and inclusion trump the principles of free expression and open debate? What is the moral status of "opinion"?
It is the nature of technology to insinuate itself into our daily lives, and to convince us that it is both benevolent by design and utterly indispensable. Little wonder that we have invited digital domestic assistants into our homes and lives at an alarming rate — but at what cost?
Over summer last year, Australia witnessed the devastation of forests and the immolation of wildlife on an unimaginable scale. The emotional or even the tragic content of the bushfires has been — understandably — reserved for the loss of human life and home and livelihood, and for the loss of some non-human animals. But why do we grieve fauna and not flora? What if these fires present to us an invitation we refuse to heed: an invitation to rediscover moral companionship, moral community with tre...
The vice of impatience reflects a particular relationship to time: the notion that time is a finite commodity that ‘must be made the most of’, not an opportunity for encounter or an invitation to attentiveness and mutual discovery. Better put, impatience is ultimately about control.
Can pride be ‘redeemed’, and form the basis of human dignity, or is pride as such a form of moral corruption, a debased form of moral vision?
This is a year that has thrown up a sometimes dizzying series of crises and moral conundrums. On this, our last show of 2020, we try to take stock of the major events and try to discern the underlying themes that come to light. What have we learned — about us, about our world, about our common life?
Is "woke politics" really a form of moral judgment, or is it merely a brand of moralism that seeks to side-step the hard work needed for genuine moral and political transformation?
Have we come to accept a degree of corruption as part of the price we pay for democracy? Is administrative competence more important to us than political incorruptibility?
The Brereton Report compels us to reflect on what it might mean to say that soldiers express a nation’s “values and laws” – which is to say, that soldiers and civilians belong to the same moral community.
While Trump’s conduct, cruelty, and incompetence disqualified him in the eyes of a majority of Americans, very nearly half of the nation voted for and remain fiercely devoted to the president. America is divided, but so is the Democratic party. What does this mean for the future?
Should we think about the story of Australia’s halting “recognition” of its First Peoples as an expression of the ongoing conflict between political philosophies and conceptions of what properly constitutes the common life of a people?
During the week in which American voters cast their verdict on Trump’s term in office, it makes sense to ask: To what extent is Trump to blame for America’s political malaise? In what ways might Joe Biden’s nomination be a sign of democratic hopefulness?
It is the nature of technology to insinuate itself into our daily lives, and to convince us that it is both benevolent by design and utterly indispensable. Little wonder that we have invited digital domestic assistants into our homes and lives at an alarming rate – but at what cost?
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed, rather than alleviated, the nature and extent of inequality in many modern societies. As the recent federal budget demonstrated, Australia is a case in point. What is ‘inequality’, and why is it problematic?
We have become increasingly interpersonally punitive and unforgiving, believing this to be a sign of our moral seriousness or our commitment to justice. But perhaps Shakespeare’s late plays — especially Cymbeline and Winter’s Tale — hold out a different moral vision.
What should our reaction be to the news of that Trump tested positive to COVID-19? It is wrong to feel glad, or to hope that he experiences severe symptoms, or that he dies?
