The Secular Mind
History of Doubt and Freethought
- Nixey — The Darkening Age
- Ryrie — Unbelievers
- Whitmarsh — Battling the Gods
- Jacoby — Freethinkers
- Kneale — An Atheist's History of Belief
What is this?
A personal reading project spanning political philosophy, economic history, classical antiquity, urban theory, and the long history of doubt. The reviews here focus on a single metric: the internal quality of the argument. I am indifferent to the author’s reputation, the prevailing consensus, or whether the conclusions are comfortable.
Heretic Logic is a disposition, not a programme. Logic applied without deference to received authority tends to produce heresy. That seems like a reasonable starting point.
Reading Sections
Origins of Authority
Debunking Myths of Kings and Gods
- Graeber & Sahlins — On Kings
- Whitmarsh — Battling the Gods
- Graeber & Wengrow — The Dawn of Everything
The Inequality Lab
Wealth, Labour, and Capital
- Piketty — Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- Marx — Capital, Volume 1
- Honneth — The Working Sovereign
The Urban Future
City-Building and Social Ecology
- Mumford — The City in History
- Newitz — Four Lost Cities
- Bookchin — The Ecology of Freedom
Democratic Guardrails
Preventing Authoritarianism
- Levitsky & Ziblatt — How Democracies Die
- Walter — How Civil Wars Start
- MacMillan — War: How Conflict Shaped Us
Queer Sexuality
Desire, Identity, and the Politics of the Body
- Butler — Gender Trouble
- Foucault — The History of Sexuality
- Sedgwick — Epistemology of the Closet
- Muñoz — Cruising Utopia