Free Will and Moral Responsibility

According to Rousseau, we are born free but we live out our life in chains. Although some people subvert background context and foreground personhood such that the chains are believed to be societally imposed as if people are not sufficiently free to transcend or counter the “binding” external strictures of some institution or society, Nietzsche argues that the sovereign individual is lies at the end of an arduous long process by which our species has become bred to be “to a certain degree necessary, uniform, like among like, regular, and consequently calculable” and thus certain people can be trusted to be reliable in promise-keeping.[1] Such people are free individuals. They are autonomous even against the “Though Shalt Nots” of moral mores, which had their place as virtual societal straitjackets in the development of the species but are legitimately cast off by people who can be relied upon to keep promises without violating them in the heat of the moment. Such people are individuals, but not narcissists, for the latter calculate each moment as to what lies in their self-interest—the feelings of others be damned if they are in the way. It is ironic that moral responsibility applies to the latter rather than to the autonomous individuals because only the free ones can call their “dominating instinct” a “conscience.”[2] Modern society, at least in the West, could use an elaboration on Nietzsche’s description of the autonomous individual in so far as such a person is antipodal to the herd animals on whom moral responsibility should be imposed because they cannot be trusted, for they are not promise-keepers. St. Paul’s dictum to keep the fools at a distance is ironically in line with the second essay of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, where the Christian ascetic priest is lampooned for its innate weakness even as it seeks to dominate the strong out of ressentiment.

The full essay is at "Free Will and Moral Responsibility."

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 495.
2. Ibid.

Regulatory Capture and the Public Interest: The FDA

The head of the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary, “resigned” in May, 2026 even though the decision had been made by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy “and then the White House signed off on it.”[1] Although Makary had been annoyance to drug-company executives, and to that extent his removal was due to pressure on President Trump by the CEOs, his “resignation” supports the theory of regulatory capture, wherein the regulated companies control the very regulatory agencies (and regulators therein) that regulate those companies, this case shows that it is possible for an industry’s interests to be aligned with the public (health) interest. Does the alignment regarding getting rid of a particular regulator lessen the unethical quality of the broader conflict of interest between business and government?

The full essay is at "Regulatory Capture and the Public Interest."

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1.  Matthew Perrone and Seung Min Kim, “Trump FDA Chief Is Leaving After Angering Pharma CEOs, Vaping Lobbyists and Anti-Abortion Groups,” APnews.com, May 12, 2026.

Intimidation in Retail: The Case of San Francisco

Visuals are an important ingredient in consumer marketing, so it is surprising to come across retail managers who are so purblind as concerns the latent yet obvious passive aggression in some of the visuals that those managers themselves approve in the name of security. The espoused, yet utterly fake claim that customer experience is improved by the added sense of safety—the actual underlying motive lies in loss prevention—is typically outweighed by the very human negative experience from being intentionally intimidated by passive-aggressive visuals. It may be that such managers, frustrated by high rates of in-store petty theft (i.e., “shoplifting”), are unconsciously taking their latent aggression out of the customers as a group. Even if not, the lack of judgment is palpable from the visuals themselves. It is no wonder that an increasing number of customers prefer shopping online. 

The full essay is at "Retail Intimidation ."

On Russia Erasing Ukrainian Children

Human rights are typically thought of as applying to individuals, even to groups, but do national-ethnic human rights exist? Do nations having a distinct ethnic culture have the right to their respective citizenries from being indoctrinated by other governments set on erasing even traces of the culture from the minds of citizens?  If so, then by 2026, Ukraine had a legitimate claim against Russia for having violated the rights of the Ukrainian state as protector of the Ukrainian ethnicity in the populous. In particular, as part of its multi-year invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government violated the human rights of Ukraine itself and Ukrainian children not only by kidnapping the kids to Russia, but also in indoctrinating them with the intent of ridding them of their distinctly Ukrainian cultural identity.

The full essay is at "On Russia Erasing Ukrainian Children."

Vendetta Violence: Israeli Settlers Sanctioned by the E.U.

What a difference even just a month can make. On 11 May, 2026, the E.U. enacted sanctions against “Israeli settlers over their violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, a move enabled by backing from Hungary’s incoming government.”[1] A month earlier, Viktor Orbán was the sitting prime minister of the E.U. state of Hungary. As a supporter of U.S. President Trump, who in turn supported Israel even in its decimation of Gaza razing entire cities into leveled ground for real estate “properties,” Orbán would have wielded Hungary’s veto in the European Council.

The full essay is at "Vendetta Violence."

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1. Maia de la Baume, “E.U. Approves Sanctions on Israeli Settlers after Hungarian Backing,” Euronews.com, 11 May, 2026.

Organizational Man: Refined or Repressed?

Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideal is the courageous, ancient Greco-Roman nobility, including the unashamed conquerors replete with self-confident will to power rather than shame at having vanquished formidable resistance. Rather than actually advocating that we return to the raping and pillaging that took place back then, Nietzsche wanted to depict modern, emaciated man as a contrast in order to turn the weakening of man around in Europe. Similar to Sinclair Lewis, who wrote his satirical novel, Babbit (1922) to showcase the utter vacuity of the middle-class businessman in America, Nietzsche laments “the reduction of the beast of prey ‘man’ to a tame and civilized animal, a domestic animal . . .”[1] By that he meant us: modern, enervated, and cultured incarnations of human nature relative to the full, untamed, and resilient lives of the ancient Greco-Roman conquerors. Having no knowledge of the lives that they lived in terms of full, unashamed and unconstrained will to power as will to living life with gusto, we scarcely realize the extent to which our societal institutions and vocational organizations box up our nature to that which is inoffensive and even polite even to competitors.

The full essay is at "Organizational Man."

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library1968), p. 478.

Managerial Capitalism: Being and Becoming

At first glance, Friedrich Nietzsche’s pro-capitalist stance on private property and the process of accumulating profit (or wealth) may seem to extend a vote of confidence to the business manager as a type. After all, managers manage the private property of stockholders (which can include themselves) with a fiduciary duty to do so to increase shareholder value by maximizing profit. The notion of profit-seeking by maximizing revenue and minimizing cost is arguably too simplistic. Squeezing a workforce too much, for example, can backfire in the long term. Nietzsche was concerned about such a thing happening even though he claims that the vast majority of laborers must be kept to subsistence wages for culture to be possible. He castigates petty, short-sighted managers who do not look out for the spiritual and economic welfare of workers, and yet holds that those workers must be slavish in the sense of being exploited by employers so culture can emerge and be sustained by the rich. To be for such exploitation and yet against petty cost-cutting managers renders Nietzsche’s socioeconomic philosophy interesting as well as useful in terms of keeping a capitalist economy from being reduced to the mentality of its bottom-feeder producers. I first discuss the matter of exploitation and then turn to how Nietzsche addresses his wider socio-economic philosophy more specifically to human-resource management. Within the wider subject-heading of exploitation, very different approaches, or mentalities, to human resource management can be discerned. In dichotomous terms, there can be said to be a pathos of distance between enlightened self-interest and selfish, short-sighted greed.

The full essay is at "Managerial Capitalism."

No Time to Die

Bond, James Bond. 007. A very successful and long-lasting movie franchise, in spite of or because of there being so many long action-scenes in the films. Bond’s relationships with M, Moneypenny, and Q-branch can be meaningful for viewers, even though the spy’s relationships with women are superficial and of short duration. So, the scenes of No Time to Die (2021) prior to the opening credits stand out because they provide more than a glimpse of Bond in an emotionally intimate, substantive romantic relationship that is to be longstanding, at least until Bond discovers that the woman has betrayed him. That even such a film that is so action-oriented would start out so very deep from the standpoint of human relationships is important because technological special-effects can be so seductive to filmmakers of action films that deep narrative can easily be left out.

The full essay is at "No Time to Die."

UCLA’s School of Medicine: Practicing Racism?

The matter of having race as a component part of the admissions process of a school in California university in the U.S. came to the fore once again on May 6, 2026 when the U.S. Department of Justice publicly announced its finding that the UCLA School of Medicine “illegally used race as a selection criteria (sic) for candidates and admitted Black and Latino students who had lower academic qualifications than their (W)hite and Asian counterparts.”[1] The racial discrimination was against White students and students from Asia who had higher academic qualification. Accordingly, assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote, “Racism in admissions is both illegal and anti-American, and this Department will not allow it to continue.”[2] In fact, it could be argued that the sheer existence of race in the criteria for the admission of medical students is racist, taking that term to mean “pertaining to race” without the pejorative connotations that racism has. To be sure, the unique historical disadvantage of Black Americans, including when the institution of slavery existed in the antebellum period of the South, arguably justified making up for the legacy of continuing prejudice by preferential treatment in college admissions. It is important to acknowledge that affirmative action programs contained racial prejudice against another race, and in the twenty-first century the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the racial harm over institutional efforts to redress racial prejudice, perhaps because the latter had diminished considerably especially since the 1960s. UCLA may not have caught up with this recognition because ideology tends to lag changes in the world due to emotional investment and the long-standing nature of values. So the justice department’s accusation that the medical school (and thus the university) intentionally violating the relevant court rulings can be viewed as a sort of recalibration as well as an assertion that laws should not be violated.

The full essay is at "UCLA's School of Medicine."

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1. Lauren Trautenberg, “DOJ Alleges School of Medicine Racial Discrimination,” Daily Bruin, May 8, 2026.
2 Ibid.

Nietzsche on Promise-Keeping: Sex and Relationships

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote on promise-keeping in Genealogy of Morals as being a result of a refined, and thus cultivated “breeding” of our species, rather than as an innate part of human nature that can be taken out for a spin on day one. In contrast, lying is more expedient and thus primitive in our nature, as if an instinctual urge that is more reflex than refined. In terms of romantic relationships, whether marital or not, “cheating” sexually is definitely a sign of weakness because it places momentary pleasure above being held as reliable (i.e., trustworthy) in terms of promise-keeping. A boyfriend who admits that he might hurt his girlfriend emotionally by engaging in infidelity is really telling her that he is weak-willed and thus not good boyfriend (or husband) material. To be sure, a couple could agree that both can have sex separately with other people, so not being monogamous need not involve violating a promise. I don’t think Nietzsche’s philosophy goes so far as to embrace such an arrangement (especially if romantic feeling or connection is allowed in the separate sex), but neither is monogamy advocated, given the nature of Nietzschean strength that should be allowed out of the cage of societal convention periodically (but not on a regular basis). The concept of strength plays such a powerful role in Nietzsche’s philosophy that even the occasional raw expressiveness of strength beyond a societal straitjacket of moral convention would not be viewed as violating promised monogamy. 

The full essay is at "Nietzsche on Promise-Keeping." 

The E.U.: A Political Union

Strong’s The Antifederalist is a series of essays critical of the American federal system in which governmental sovereignty is “dual,” meaning that both the Union and the member-states have at least some such sovereignty that the other cannot abolish or override. Had more credence been paid to the arguments in that text, perhaps the state governments would have more power at the federal level to protect their retained sovereignty from federal encroachment. The drafting of the E.U. paid more heed to those arguments in terms of safeguarding state sovereignty by considerable direct involvement of state officials at the federal level. Even so, Euroskeptics have warned of a centralized state in the process, and the U.S. has furnished them with an actual instance of a nearly consolidated empire-scale federal system. The warnings may thus be valid even with the additional safeguards that the E.U. has but the U.S. lacks, at least as of 2026, but claims that the E.U. does not have a federal system and is not a political union of states ring hollow as they are utterly false. So too, but the way, is the mislabeling of the E.U. as a bloc. The E.U.’s parliament alone knocks out all three of these ideological claims.

The full essay is at "The E.U.: A Political Union."

The String

The original title of the 2009 film, The String, is Le Fil, which actually translates as thread rather than string. These two English words have different connotations and this bears on the film’s leitmotif. Whereas a person can string another person along, a thread has a connotation of linking people emotionally. The thread that ultimately succeeds in the film is that of caring, which is antipodal to hurting, emotionally speaking. In this sense, the film is like The Holiday (2006), another romantic drama in which the good guys (and gals) wind up on top. In terms of the theme of caring and not hurting other people, that The String centers on two gay men who fall in love whereas The Holiday is about two heterosexual couples matters little, though the resistance to homosexuality in The String is an additional hurdle. I contend that like The Holiday, The String can provide audiences with how falling in love can proceed naturally without exploding because one person hurts the other. In other words, the ethical wins out in both films in regard to emotionally intimate romantic relationships, and in this respect the medium of film has value in terms of ethics.

The full essay is at "The String."

The Imitation Game

Films in which philosophy of mind is salient may, like films in which metaphysics is reconfigured, run the risk of not being understood. The Matrix (1999), however, depicts solipsism (or, “mind in a vat”) in a way that viewers could grasp the philosophy without much difficulty. Dialogue, image, and narrative all contribute to give audiences a coherent sense with which they can go on to look at their daily lives as if they were illusory rather than real. Sixteen years later, The Imitation Game (2015) brought to audiences a salient question that would become more pressing during the AI revolution: How does the human brain’s thinking differ from a computer’s thinking?

The full essay is at "The Imitation Game."

The E.U. and U.S.: Equal Partners

In 2026, even though the U.S. had 50 member-states and the E.U. had only 27 states, both unions were large enough to constitute what in historical terms, with the European early-modern rather than (the smaller) medieval kingdoms in mind, empire-scale republics. As long as elected representatives hold office at the federal level in both political unions, both unions can be said to be republics (as well as containing republics—or, as Ken Wheare wrote in Federal Government, “wheels within a larger wheel”). Were either union to have only five or so states, the empire definition would not be satisfied. Also, that definition includes the requirement of cultural heterogeneity between (as distinct from within) the states. Being on the same (empire) scale is just one of several ways in which the two unions belong to the same political type. It was in this respect rather than based on the sheer number of states that Sophie Wilmes, vice-president of the European Parliament, said that the U.S. should not regard the E.U. as a little sister (i.e., a junior partner). I contend that she was correct.

The full essay is at "The E.U. and U.S."

On Retaining the States’ Veto-Power in the European Council: Sovereignty vs. Democracy

Both the filibuster in the U.S. Senate and the veto in the European Council reflect the act that the respective states were sovereign and retain a portion of that governmental sovereignty that has not been delegated to the respective Unions. But whereas the American filibuster is compatible with a federal system based on dual-sovereignty (states and union), the European veto is not; rather, each state having a veto is at home in a confederation, which is characterized by the states retaining their sovereignty rather than having given up some in becoming a state. In April 2026 shortly after Viktor Orbán had lost his bid for re-election in the E.U. state of Hungary, the E.U.’s foreign minister argued publicly that the states’ veto in the European Council (and the Council of Ministers) runs contrary to the democratic principle of majority rule. The prerogative of retained and residual governmental sovereignty was essentially being pitted against a fundamental principle of democracy.

The full essay is at "On Retaining the States’ Veto-Power in the European Council."