Author: Holden Rasmussen

In “Must We Burn Sade?” Simone de Beauvoir grapples with the legacy of the Marquis de Sade, an erotic writer who stands out to this day as one of the most grotesque pornographers of the West.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Beauvoir’s essay explains that “‘Must we Burn Sade?” identifies the Marquis’s decision to write as an existential project, an authentic ethics and a politics of...

In the previous article, I outlined a problem. In this companion piece, I hope to further clarify that problem and illustrate my solution to it. I will provide a brief overview of my analysis here, but return to Part I to properly orient yourself.This problem can be boiled down to a few components. Complex social justice issues are oversimplified through a process of dialectical thinking, which is...

As a Scorpio and someone named after J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, it seems I was fated to study a philosophical tradition known for its suspicion of all things conventional, seemingly instinctive and “good.” My suspicion has also helped me determine my stances on social justice issues; activism is in need of philosophy and its ability to capture the nuance and complexity social justice deserv...