The Tufts Daily

To the Class of 2021:  As we face the arrival of a unique Commencement season at the end of a painfully unique year, it might be difficult to know how to feel about this quiet ending to what has surely been a monumental part of your life.  This past year has affected all of us […]

It is important that we unite against the conspiracy theories permeating American society. Even if government institutions are unable to build a consensus to condemn elected officials’ roles in spreading blatant, violence-provoking misinformation, we must set standards of accountability within our own communities.

In “A Theory of Justice,” John Rawls discusses societal progress through collective creativity and labor. Rawls is correct that we gain strength and innovation by participating in the collective, but I would rather think of this idea as relevant to our lives and relationships on a smaller scale — reflected in 2020 Spotify Wrapped.

Friedrich Hayek wrote in The Road to Serfdom (1944) that “We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part." Perhaps he’s right.

Trump's base’s unwavering devotion more closely resembles the admiration of the British monarchy than any kind of thoughtful support for a democratic leader. 

In “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Adam Smith posits that there is a significant difference “between those qualities and actions which deserve to be admired and celebrated, and those which simply deserve to be approved of.”

I’m tired of being mad at the state of the world. But I am absolutely furious that I’m still being told that the only way to make progress is to replace anger with politeness and respect.

It is extremely easy to want to return to the worldview a lot of us had prior to Trump’s presidency, a time that we now call "normal." I want to caution against this wishful thinking. It does us no good to long for the way things felt before Trump moved our Earth.

Say you’re faced with making a choice between two alternatives, but both are immoral in their own right. Is it possible to make an objective calculation of which one causes the least total damage? Is it moral to do so? 

18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant didn’t give us much warning about what an internalized duty to know everything about every tragedy would mean for our mental states, but what he did offer was a distinct source of all good in the world: good intentions.