Filosofie & Praktijk - Volume 44, Issue 1, 2023

Contrary to the received view that the success of neoliberalism was mainly the result of a radical change in the economic policy of Western welfare states in the seventies and eighties of the 20^th century, this success can be understood as the product of a long-term, slow, and largely unwitnessed cultural transformation. In this process the homo ludens of the counterculture of the sixties gradually changed into the homo oeconomicus of neoliberalism, political democracy was replaced by market democracy, and our notion of freedom as guaranteed by the state and realized in the public sphere substituted by individual freedom from the state. This new freedom redefines the individual as human capital in a constant condition of competitiveness and precarity.

In 1937 the Dutch publicist Menno ter Braak wrote a landmark article about national socialism (recently translated in English: “National Socialism as a Doctrine of Rancour¹”). The recent republication of his article in the Netherlands stimulated a debate about the democratic credentials of Ter Braak. Contrary to what most commentators claim, Sjaak Koenis argues that even though Ter Braak was under the influence of conservative thinkers and skeptical about what he called ‘parliamentarism’, he did believe in the value of democracy. Moreover, his ideas about how democracy and resentment are intertwined, are today even more relevant to our debate about democracy than they were in the 1930s.

In 2021 the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen, KNAW) published the report “Academic Freedom in the Netherlands”. That report explicitly creates room for ideological limitations on academic freedom. I argue that this is at odds with the critical nature of science. Ideological limitations at the academy can foster a culture of (self)censorship. Not just among individual researchers, but also at a more systemic level. The core of my argument is that ideology and science can coexist (and/and), but that ideological limitation ought not to exist (and/or).

The verdict in the court case against the Dutch state in order to decriminalise assisted suicide for people who wish to end their lives, is no surprise. The practical realization of the right to self-determination over one’s end of life, including the right to be able to receive or provide any necessary assistance, is only possible when accompanied by an awareness of a duty to use that right responsibly. Removing the penalization of providing assistance with this self-determination can therefore only be effected if it is accompanied by a careful practice of such assistance.