Dodging Dictators and Other Demons: A Family Memoir

Dodging Dictators is a family memoir set against the background of 20th century violence and displacement. It tells the story of assimilated German-Jewish grandparents who got kicked out of Hamburg and Berlin by the Nazis and eventually settled in Brazil. A Brazilian grandfather who was born into São Paulo’s coffee bourgeoisie, broke with his social class, became a leader of the communist party and, in the 1960s, the commander of an urban guerrilla group in the footsteps of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara that fought Brazil’s military dictatorship. In 1969 he helped to kidnap the American ambassador and was killed by the regime in 1970. My parents got involved in the resistance against the dictatorship as students, fled to Cuba, contemplated guerrilla training, but then decided to go to Europe as political refugees. Of all places they chose Germany where I and my three siblings were born–just a few decades after the Nazis had driven our grandparents out of the country. We grew up between Germany and Brazil, feeling at home in neither, in a family that gradually fell apart. Today one brother is battling a crack addiction in São Paulo, the other is an actor-slash-taxi driver in Berlin, our sister runs a Yoga studio in a slum in Salvador da Bahia, I teach philosophy in Montreal, our father is developing an ecological farm in Minas Gerais (where he hopes to weather the impending breakdown of capitalism), and our mother is busy staying alive in Berlin after five more or less serious suicide attempts.

The memoir traces the lost world of European Jews from a third-generation perspective and the fate of a Brazilian family through the country’s post-colonial political and social upheavals. At the same time it is also a reflection on Jewish life and memory in post-war Germany and on the ongoing repercussions of violence and persecution in the lives of the victims’ descendants.

 

What the Night Sky Teaches: How We Lost the Heavens—and What We Can Still Find

 

Can Moral Clarity Kill? On the Perils of Certainty in an Age of Binaries

Moral clarity is often held up as a virtue. But the belief that one possesses it can be dangerous—even deadly. History is full of atrocities committed in the name of conviction: inquisitions, colonial conquests, holy wars, totalitarian regimes. Socrates wasn’t joking when he claimed his one advantage over his fellow citizens was knowing that he didn’t know. This book is a plea to recover that spirit of Socratic humility in the face of today’s moral complexity.

We live in an age of fierce binaries—oppressor and oppressed, victim and perpetrator—where public discourse often flattens nuance into moral caricature. But what if the world is messier than that? Drawing on personal encounters—with Indigenous activists in Canada, Quebec nationalists, anti-imperialist discourse in Brazil, and campus debates over Zionism—I recount moments when familiar maps unraveled. What happens when immigrants—from descendants of Holocaust survivors to Syrian refugees—are cast as colonial oppressors? When Quebecers invoke Fanon to frame themselves as colonized, while Mohawks denounce them as colonizers? When a critique of Brazilian politics is dismissed as imperialism because the author happens to live in North America? When colleagues sign a petition to ban you from campus for defending Israel’s right to exist, no matter how critical you are of its government?

This book is not a call to abandon moral clarity, but to seek it differently. It argues that acknowledging complexity is not moral weakness—it’s a prerequisite for moral seriousness. Yet it also confronts the paradox: how do we resist simplification without falling into paralysis? How do we make moral choices under uncertainty? Blending memoir, political reflection, and philosophy, Can Moral Clarity Kill? makes a case for a Socratic ethos in an age of moral shouting.

 

Public Philosophy: Gadfly, Guardian, or Just Good Talk?

We’re told we’re living through a “golden age” of public philosophy—podcasts, newsletters, op-eds galore. But are these really helping us lead better lives, or simply offering smart-sounding entertainment? This book grapples with a striking paradox: as public philosophy proliferates, public enlightenment seems to recede. I’ll revisit two ancient templates that continue to shape our thinking. Socrates believed reasoned dialogue could awaken citizens to lead more examined lives—one conversation at a time. After Athenians executed him for trying, Plato concluded that only top-down reform by philosopher-legislators could rescue people from bad upbringing and distorted desires. We find modern echoes of the Socratic approach in Agnes Callard’s work, and of the Platonic in Martha Nussbaum’s. But while Socratic outreach is inspiring, it often proves ineffective; Platonic paternalism may work, but at the cost of individual freedom. Is there a way to avoid the pitfalls of both? My own proposal combines bottom-up and top-down elements: mandate philosophy classes in high school and college to equip citizens with tools for critical reflection, and encourage them to use their freedom of association to build institutions that embody their considered ideals. Could this hybrid approach help liberal democracies cultivate genuinely self-governing citizens—and prevent the ship of state from becoming a ship of fools?

 

Socrates on the Rocking Horse: Parenting, Philosophy, and the Art of Asking Why

What if philosophy didn’t begin in a seminar room—but in the sandbox, at bedtime, or over pancakes? For fifteen years, I’ve been documenting conversations with my daughter Lara, starting when she was two. What began as amusing toddler banter—about turtles, clouds, or God’s ears—turned out to be something more: an astonishingly rich series of philosophical inquiries. Together we explored the big questions—Where did the world come from? What is fairness? Do animals think? Why do we have to die?—through the eyes of a child just learning to speak, reason, and imagine.

But this book isn’t just a quirky father-daughter story. Its aim is serious. The historical Socrates confronted fully formed adults who were so irritated by his questioning that they put him to death. How can we avoid raising closed, righteous minds in our own polarized time, where we hurl answers at each other instead of having conversations? Drawing on my dialogues with Lara, I show how the Socratic ethos—curiosity, argument, reflection—can be cultivated from the earliest years. Socrates on the Rocking Horse offers a hopeful vision: not only can a philosophical life begin in childhood, but investing in our children’s open minds is one of the best ways to keep our own thinking alive.