Ethics, Cultural Criticism

The critical social philosopher is the auditor-general of contemporary society and culture. These essays speak for themselves. Their content may be popular, but their reflections may not be. By promoting our abject failures as successes – my children respect me, our schools are superior, we love nature, we defend freedom, our God is great, and so on – we have found a way to bypass the critical reality check that the wider world around us would present.

We have found a way to escape the critical human freedom that is our universal birthright. This is where the auditor of the human condition, with only hope and a narrow glance to make him equal to that unreality, steps in. If the book’s essays and editorials have any merit, it must fall on the side of the world as it is, and not as we, with desperation and misplaced conviction, with jealousy and even rage, desire it to be.

In thirty essays and editorials written between 2016 and 2020, social philosopher G.V. Loewen examines some of our most pressing contemporary issues, finding that they are linked, inevitably and inextricably, with some of the most profound and perennial aspects of the human condition.

With wit, candor and compassion, these short analyses connect our often short-circuited attention to the deeper meaning of the state of the world, spanning the conflicts of nations, sexual identity politics, the climate crisis, global inequalities, the education and raising of children, and our understanding of the darker recesses of our own selfhood.