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“... What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?’ Immanuel Kant’s three questions, set forth in his Critique of Pure Reason as encompassing all the interests of his reason, were also those which Jean-Paul Sartre pursued throughout his life, however different he intended his answers to be from those of Kant. Few thinkers in our time have pressed these questions with Sartre’s perseverence and imagination: but his subtle exploration of the first question contrasts with the shallowness of his various answers to the second, and with his growing disposition to posit improbable political utopias in response to the third ...”

“... I was born in London on the 20th of May, 1806, and was the eldest son of James Mill, the author of The History of British India.’ The father-author thus announced at the beginning of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography dominated his life from early childhood on. Did he in any sense author his son’s life as he authored his books? John Stuart Mill wrote his own Life in large part to work out an answer to that question ...”

“... if one’s spies were also other people’s spies – but in all areas of government. As Sissela Bok’s book illustrates, it is a deep and nearly universal desire of those in power; Des Wilson’s collection of articles powerfully documents and eloquently attacks its special intensity in this country, the most officially secretive among ...”

“... become a Venus fly-trap for the buzzing PhDs. They will write of it as moral philosophy (invoking Sissela Bok), as a discourse upon Book Ten of the Republic, as a commentary on Le Neveu de Rameau and the Paradoxe sur le Comédien, as a brilliant experiment in textuality, as an instantly self-deconstructing text. ‘Am I a prisoner in the midst of a sign ...”

“... reason to avoid scrutiny of neglect, mistakes and abuses,’ the Swedish-American philosopher Sissela Bok wrote in Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (1983). ‘As the number of secrets grows, bureaucracies and executives seek the stamp of secrecy to protect themselves, not just the nation.’ Wellerstein isn’t a huge fan of the ...”