Making Sense of Our Lives

Williams, B. (2005) In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument , ed. G. Hawthorn. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Williams, B. (2006) The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy , ed. M. Burnyeat. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Williams, B. (2006) Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline , ed. A. W. Moore. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.     

Making Sense of Greek Austerity

The process of approving a Greek drawing on funds provided by the international community is now familiar. There is concern about the prospect of securing an agreement between the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB), and Greece, which satisfies all parties. This paper suggests that all parties to the agreement have interests in an orderly resolution of the Greek crisis that keeps Greece in the Eurozone. Furthermore, it argues that disagreements and delay before eleventh‐hour agreements can best be explained politically. The paper first demonstrates how Greece, the IMF, and the EU each have a clear interest in finding an orderly solution to the Greek crisis that allows it to remain in the Eurozone. It then outlines the incremental nature of the package and its strategic benefit both for the European banking sector, and governments in Greece and the Eurozone more broadly.     

Making Sense of Hell: Three Meditations on the Holocaust

This essay is an inquiry into the epistemology of the holocaust. It contests organic explanations of the event in favour of an interpretative pluralism . Different questions are seen as demanding different forms of inquiry: what made the holocaust possible requires a political analysis, the issue of its uniqueness calls for a sociological perspective, while an anthropological approach is necessary in order to illuminate its enduring symbolic significance. The essay will deal with these matters in an innovative manner. Thus, in concert with one another these three meditations will provide a new constellation for viewing the holocaust even as they confront certain prevailing prejudices and assumptions.     

Interrogating 24: Making Sense of US Counter-terrorism in the Global War on Terrorism

As an increasing number of scholars have argued, the fiction of popular culture and the reality of politics are inseparable. Fact and fiction, rather than remaining distinct, are mutually constitutive and interact to produce new meaning. A critical reading of Fox Television's intensely popular series 24 suggests that the series (re)produces key elements of the global war on terrorism discourse and is therefore a particularly useful case for under standing the importance of intertextuality for the production of meaning. Though the packaging of 24 may be new and exciting, the underlying messages remain the same, in the process rendering commonsensical the US global war on terrorism and the way that it has been waged.