@MadisonProgram
Account based inUnited States
About this account
- Account based in
- United States
- Connected via
- United States Android App
Account-level information from X, not a live location or the device used for a specific post.
@Princeton University's program in American Ideals and Institutions, directed by @McCormickProf.
Princeton, NJ
Joined January 2018
- Tweets2.9K
- Following325
- Followers3.3K
- Likes1.1K
As the first in our Spotlight Series highlighting our current Visiting and Postdoc Fellows, this week we introduce you to Reece Edmends, a 2026-27 Postdoctoral Research Associate.
Reece explored Roman forts in England with his family as a kid, and his passion for ancient history led him to his current research in the politics and philosophy of ancient Rome.
He is currently working on a monograph, "Augustan Liberty," exploring the meaning of 'liberation' during the reign of the emperor Augustus. Alongside that, he is studying how Cicero's natural-law republicanism was informed by the late Republic, and how the idea of sovereignty sprang up within medieval jurisprudence.
After receiving his PhD in Classics at Princeton in 2026, Reece then served as a postdoc and lecturer in the Princeton Classics Department. On the personal side, he is soon to get married to his fiancée Claire, and aspires to take up golf.
James Madison Program retweeted
Billions must stream
Check out the latest Madison's Notes conversation with host @RyanShinkel interviewing the author, philosopher, and magazine editor @jamespoulos on "How to Stay Human Forever."
Check out the latest Madison's Notes conversation with host @RyanShinkel interviewing the author, philosopher, and magazine editor @jamespoulos on "How to Stay Human Forever."
Madison's Notes has a new episode on "How To Stay Human Forever."
With every new digital technology rolled out, many Americans face a greater sense of impending doom. But what if it has already happened?
To talk about that digital catastrophe and America's religious and political future, in S6E7 host @RyanShinkel interviews the philosopher, author, and @frontier_mag_ editorial director @JamesPoulos.
They discuss McLuhan & Baudrillard, Lincoln, civilizational states, crypto, AI, & digital sovereignty, effective altruists vs. vitalists vs. gnostics vs. post-humanists, the Pink Police State, Mars colonies, and David Lynch.
Link is below. Please share and enjoy.
A driver's license often requires an eye exam. But should citizenship in a republic also require an "eyeball test"?
@Princeton political philosopher Philip Pettit thinks so, but it's not what you might think.
Freedom, he says, means non-domination, that anyone can look anyone else in the eye without fear or deference. But what happens when we don't look other in the eye because our eyes are glued to our phones?
Could we still be called free? Listen to Pettit's full interview on Madison's Notes to find out: apple.co/4ye1QBt
ALT Poster graphic for a philosophy podcast.
Get ready for a new episode of Madison's Notes!
This week, host @RyanShinkel and author @jamespoulos will discuss the crisis of modern digital technology.
It will drop on Wednesday. Stay tuned!
Did the philosophers Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin mislead generations of scholars?
In 1819, Constant argued that ancient peoples thought liberty meant an active participation in the common good with the individual's rights as an afterthought.
Then in 1958, Berlin said that two fundamental versions of liberty, one positive and another negative, were distinct and irreconcilable.
Since then, intellectual history divides freedom into these two parallel camps: ancient and positive vs. modern and negative. But @Princeton philosopher Philip Pettit says they have it all wrong.
To find out why, listen to his interview on Madison's Notes with host @RyanShinkel: apple.co/4ye1QBt
Definitions of political freedom often have big consequences.
In the American Revolution, the British side defined freedom as non-interference. If the colonists were left alone, they were free, though under imperial control.
But the revolutionaries said freedom was non-domination, that as they were under the whims of Parliament and Crown, in principle they could not be free.
On Madison's Notes this week, @Princeton political philosopher Philip Pettit defended the American definition, but what were his reasons? Listen below to find out.
The transcript for "The Nature of Freedom," a conversation with @Princeton Professor Philip Pettit and host @RyanShinkel, is now available on Madison's Footnotes.
Madison's Notes has a new episode on "The Nature of Freedom."
While philosophers often define freedom into rival conceptions—ancient vs. modern, positive vs. negative, freedom from something vs. for something—what if these dichotomies were false?
To settle this issue, in S6, Ep. 6, host @RyanShinkel interviews Philip Pettit, a @Princeton professor, political philosopher, and author of books like Republicanism (1997) and The State (2023), to discuss his theory of freedom as non-domination within the republican tradition.
Along the way, they talk about Henrik Ibsen's Doll House, Suetonius, Machiavelli, Bentham, what Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin got wrong, Quentin Skinner's intellectual history, plus the relationships between freedom and technology, the love of honor and citizenship, and political liberty with its other forms.
Please share and enjoy.
ALT Poster for political philosophy podcast.
“Our relationship to the tool," says Matthew Gasda, "depends on whether our vision of the task at hand is extractive or sacred.
"When a task is sacred, the tool is a bridge, a means of extending ourselves into that sacred object or event. It allows us to get out of ourselves, away from ourselves, and away from the narcissistic impulse."
For his full Madison's Notes interview, see here: apple.co/4yJk9OI
The creative arts are being overrun by digital slop. But if you want to save art, what should you do?
Fund it, says playwright Matthew Gasda (@FOMO_sacer).
Right now, unlike older industrial barons from ages past who supported cultural and civic institutions, elite patronage of art is at a historic low.
What should they be funding to spark real cultural renewal? Listen to Gasda's Madison's Notes interview with host @RyanShinkel to find out: apple.co/4yJk9OI
The theologian and anarchist Ivan Illich had a simple test for new technology: does make us weaker, or does it increase conviviality?
Does a new tool make us more dependent on them, or is community stronger and collective joyfulness more greatly felt in our being together?
For how this test applies to social media and AI, listen to Madison's Notes with guest Matthew Gasda (@FOMO_sacer) and host @RyanShinkel: apple.co/4yJk9OI