Bert Olivier

The work of social theorist Ulrich Beck (famous for his book Risk Society) on cosmopolitanism is a valuable source of reflection on the question, whether there can ever be an answer to the ‘threat’ of terror and ‘terrorism’. In A new cosmopolitanism is in the air (2007), Beck sets out to answer the question: ‘How […]

I am constantly surprised by the disingenuous defences offered for the often unforgivable practices of capitalism, where some (including some on Thought Leader) even claim that a company’s concern for ‘its market’, instead of its blind pursuit of profit, is simultaneously a concern ‘for others’. Capitalism is driven by the profit motive, and by nothing […]

Listening to a student telling me about being confronted in his home by a man wielding a butcher’s knife, then locking himself in his room and, with the man stomping about outside his bedroom door, kicking out the burglar proofing to escape (from his own home!), a thought that had occurred to me several times […]

It is imperative to problematise the idea of a university relentlessly and insistently at the beginning of the 21st century, and for a number of reasons. The first is that, regardless of a widespread belief in the ‘neutrality’ of universities, they have not been unaffected by political partisanship. Perhaps this is unavoidable, given the fact […]

To anyone not familiar with ecological art of the kind that one encounters in nature, the very notion may seem incongruous. Isn’t art what one finds at art galleries and museums? And even if one grants that art found in galleries may also be in the broadest sense of the concept ‘ecological art’ in so […]

While reading Henry Giroux’s book, Against the New Authoritarianism (2005), I recalled Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), a riveting narrative of a post-nuclear war regression to a supposedly biblically founded Republic of Gilead in what is now the United States of America. This futuristic dystopia is hierarchically structured and ruthlessly authoritarian, with women and […]

Just as road rage is not primarily about the person at whom the rage is directed, so the current, or recent, spate of attacks against foreigners is not, I believe, primarily about hatred for these unfortunate migrants. Road rage is a classic example of what is known in psychoanalysis as ‘projection’ — in this case […]

Art as practice, phenomenon, activity, always exceeds any specific artist’s production. It therefore embodies a certain self-transcendence, which is why every era witnesses anew the problematisation of art. Art has to become a problem as soon as it seems self-evident to the people of an era, because its domestication would rob it of its function […]

Since the late 1960s Western culture –- and the rest of the world’s cultures were not far behind –- has increasingly moved into a phase commonly referred to as ‘postmodernity’. To be able to operate in this cultural environment in an informed, knowledgeable way, regardless of the field within which one works, it is imperative […]

In my last posting I ended by talking of the beneficial ‘enlightenment’ effects of a certain approach to scientific disciplines. There I used the term ‘enlightenment’ advisedly, and what I had in mind is its historico–philosophical meaning, especially in light of the so–called postmodern temperament of the present era. As everyone should know, the historical […]

It seems to me that it is important to reflect regularly on the function of universities in today’s rapidly changing, postmodern society, in the face of circumstances and forces that endanger the continued existence of this centuries-old institution. What I am talking about is what seems to me to be the drift towards a narrowing […]

In his book, The ethical function of architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), the American philosopher, Karsten Harries,* presents a persuasive, if novel, contemporary philosophy of architecture. In a series of short, accessible chapters he discusses a number of related themes in a clear and well-formulated manner. The themes that he addresses pertain to what […]