Adrian Walsh

Adrian Walsh reviews 'Being Evil: A philosophical perspective' by Luke Russell

March 2021, no. 429 • 17 December 2020

In the aftermath of horrendous acts of lethal violence, such as the murder by Brenton Tarrant of fifty-one people in two Christchurch mosques in 2019, and other vicious acts of torture and sadistic cruelty, it is not at all uncommon for public commentators to invoke the language of evil – that there is evil in our midst. Perhaps the most well-known contemporary example of this was George W. Bush ... (read more)

Adrian Walsh reviews 'How Fear Works: Culture of fear in the twenty-first century' by Frank Furedi

April 2020, no. 420 • 24 June 2019

Fear has always been a dominant element of human existence, across all human societies, but has our attitude to it changed? It might be argued that our concern with threats has become more pronounced. Is the twenty-first century an especially fearful period in human history? At the heart of Frank Furedi’s book is the striking assertion that the concept of ‘fear’ is key to understanding our ... (read more)

Adrian Walsh reviews 'The Inheritance of Wealth: Justice, equality, and the right to bequeath' by Daniel Halliday

September 2018, no. 404 • 23 August 2018

To what extent does the social practice of inheritance undermine social justice? Indeed, if inheritance does further inequality, should we, in order to ensure a fairer society, restrict the right to bequeath? A mainstay of political philosophy since the late seventeenth century, questions such as these were still vigorously debated in the public sphere in the early twentieth century. However, one ... (read more)

Adrian Walsh reviews 'The Production of Money: How to break the power of bankers' by Ann Pettifor

June-July 2017, no. 392 • 31 May 2017

What is money, how do we create it, and how politically significant is its production? In The Production of Money, political economist Ann Pettifor makes the striking claim that the way we currently produce money gives rise to one of the most substantial challenges facing Western democracy. But how could this be so? Money is produced by printing presses and there we have the end of it. What threat ... (read more)

Adrian Walsh reviews 'Trillion Dollar Baby: How Norway Beat the Oil Giants and Won a Lasting Fortune' by Paul Cleary

January–February 2017, no. 388 • 21 December 2016

The casual visitor to Oslo, with little or no knowledge of Norway’s recent history, could be forgiven for being unaware that per capita this is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. With its predominantly nineteenth-century streetscapes and the absence of large or monumental buildings, there is in fact little evidence, except for the recently built opera house on the harbour, that Oslo is ... (read more)

Adrian Walsh reviews 'How Propaganda Works' by Jason Stanley

April 2016, no. 380 • 29 March 2016

Jason Stanley argues in his new book that propaganda is more prevalent within liberal democracies – and is of far greater concern – than is typically assumed. Indeed, Stanley suggests that the very idea that propaganda only proliferates within authoritarian regimes, which have ministries set aside for its production, is a central tenet of the propaganda of the West. Stanley's aim in this book ... (read more)

Adrian Walsh reviews 'Consciousness and Moral Responsibility' by Neil Levy

December 2015, no. 377 • 27 November 2015

Consider the following dilemma. If it is possible to identify the cause of a person's action and beliefs – causes that are outside the agent's own conscious reasoning – in what sense can we say that the person chooses what she does or she thinks? If the person did not consciously choose, then it is reasonable to ask whether she should be held morally responsible for any of the subsequent conse ... (read more)

Adrian Walsh reviews 'Hard Times: The divisive toll of the economic slump' by Tom Clark and Adrian Heath

March 2015, no. 369 • 01 March 2015

It is now more than six years since the Global Financial Crisis threatened to topple the banking systems of the Western world. Although a complete breakdown in the financial system was ultimately avoided, one consequence of the events of 2008 has been the biggest slump in economic activity since the Great Depression. Australia was, in the main, spared the economic damage that ravaged large parts o ... (read more)

Adrian Walsh reviews 'The Worldly Philosopher: The odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman' by Jeremy Adelman and 'The Essential Hirschman' edited by Jeremy Adelman

September 2014, no. 364 • 01 September 2014

Albert O. Hirschman (1915–2012) was a development economist and political theorist whose work is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how economic life figures in the political worlds we inhabit and the ways in which we give meaning to our lives in market-based societies. Perhaps best known for the distinction between ‘exit’ and ‘voice’, Hirschman was a prolific theor ... (read more)

Adrian Walsh reviews 'Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea' by Mark Blyth

April 2014, no. 360 • 25 March 2014

Mark Blyth’s Austerity:The History of a Dangerous Idea is at heart a morality tale, or, more accurately, an account of two competing and diametrically opposed morality tales jostling to explain both the recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) that engulfed much of Europe in 2008 and the austerity policies that were implemented by most governments in that region in its aftermath. According to propon ... (read more)