Politics, Consumption, or Nihilism

The New Politics of Consumption

Yet for all its popularity, the shopping mania provokes considerable dis-ease: many Americans worry about our preoccupation with getting and spending. They fear we are losing touch with more worthwhile values and ways of living. But the discomfort rarely goes much further than that; it never coheres into a persuasive, well-articulated critique of consumerism. By contrast, in the 1960s and early...

The Politics of Consumption Taxes: Globalization and the Median Voter

The regressive nature of consumption taxes poses a challenge to partisan theory. Using data for up to 20 OECD countries in the period 1970-2003 this article aims to explore the question of whether the idea that social democratic governments typically have to compromise on policy goals and core constituency interests to make themselves more appealing to the median voter necessitates the use of r...

Logical Nihilism

Madhyamaka is Not Nihilism

Introduction Nāgārjuna (c. 200 CE) is the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, and easily, after the Buddha himself, the most influential philosopher in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. Despite the great consensus on his philosophical and doctrinal importance, there is little consensus, either in the canonical Buddhist and non-Buddhist literature of India, Tibet and East Asi...

Nihilism, Relativism, and Literary Theory

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