About
“Nachspiel at Polemarchus'” is a blog on political science, politics and related topics. I intend to write based on my academic work as well as personal thoughts and opinions. Some of the stuff will certainly be academically oriented, but I intend to try and present things in form that will be readable even to people without a master’s degree in political science. If I need to go into more academic detail I prefer to do that in attached files.
So who am I?
My name is Sverre Midthjell, im 28 years old and a master (graduate) student of political science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). I’m an active human being with diverse interests, usually juggling more balls than I can keep track of all the time. This is the latest ball – I hope it won’t go crashing to the ground too fast.
I’m a social democrat by political conviction, occasionally active in the Norwegian Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet).
So why am I doing this?
I have two main reasons. Firstly, as a graduate student I continually produce a lot of written material. Each semester I put hundreds and hundreds of hours of work into something that usually only gets red by a couple of graders. And that’s on top of all the other thoughts I have throughout the year that never get put down on paper. What a waste! Well, that ends now.
Secondly, I believe in open discussion as the way to become better. I want to become a better political scientist than I am today, and the more feedback I can get and discussion I can enter into, the better.
I’m gonna share some of my thoughts with the world in the hope that the world can benefit from it. Hopefully the world will return the favour by giving me some useful feedback that I’ll benefit from in turn.
So what’s with the weird title?
The (very) well-read (or ‘nerdy’ if you prefer) reader might have caught the reference right away. It refers to Plato’s work The Republic, one of the most fundamental works of western political philosophy. If you haven’t read it, you can read it online for free here. The Republic is written like a story of fiction, a discussion between Socrates and a number of other characters. And this all plays out at something akin to a nachspiel at the house of a man called Polemarchus. In my dreams, the discussion created here will be as fruitful….
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