American author & educator (1943- )
It's Christmas again, time to celebrate the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge. You know the ritual: boo the curmudgeon initially encountered in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, then cheer the sweetie pie he becomes in the end. It's too bad no one notices that the curmudgeon had a point -- quite a few points, in fact.
MICHAEL LEVIN
"In Defense of Scrooge"
Like many philosophers, I reject the idea that free acts must be uncaused; freedom is not only consistent with but demands determinism. Were actions not caused by antecedent factors, including preferences, an agent himself would not know what he was about to do and could be surprised by his freedom. Free choice might go against the agent's own stable values, a nightmare caricature of autonomy.
MICHAEL LEVIN
Sexual Orientation and Human Rights
There can be no arguing with Dickens's wish to show the spiritual advantages of love. But there was no need to make the object of his lesson an entrepreneur whose ideas and practices benefit his employees, society at large, and himself. Must such a man expect no fairer a fate than to die scorned and alone? Bah, I say. Humbug.
MICHAEL LEVIN
"In Defense of Scrooge"
Although feminism speaks the language of liberation, self-fulfillment, options, and the removal of barriers, these phrases invariably mean their opposites and disguise an agenda at variance with the ideals of a free society.
MICHAEL LEVIN
Feminism and Freedom
Feminism is a program for making different beings -- men and women -- turn out alike, and ... it must do a good deal of chopping to fit the real world into its ideal.
MICHAEL LEVIN
Feminism and Freedom
The more deeply language is probed, the more traces it reveals of the beings that produce it.
MICHAEL LEVIN
Feminism and Freedom