Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropology, and postmodernism

When the expanded edition of Explaining Postmodernism: From Rousseau to Foucault was being published, I re-read several transition figures, i.e., those twentieth-century intellectuals who were important in preparing the groundwork for postmodernism. One is anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), whom I first read as an undergraduate. Lévi-Strauss formally studied philosophy and law, but because the bulk

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Emile, or Education | Book 1 | Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Philosophers, Explained by Stephen Hicks

Episodes: The full playlist. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College in England, and Jagiellonian University in Poland.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau on censorship [from Explaining Postmodernism]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau said: “Considering the awful disorders printing has already caused in Europe, and judging the future by the progress that this evil makes day by day, one can easily predict that sovereigns will not delay in taking as many pains to banish this terrible art from their States as they once took to establish

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Is Envy Worse in a Free Society? [Open College transcript]

We’re posting serially at thinkspot the transcripts of my Open College podcasts. Here’s the eleventh: OC11: Is Envy Worse in a Free Society? “Is a free and open society more susceptible to the dangers of envy? It’s an interesting question because most often the envy charge is used against socialism, or any kind of outcome-egalitarian

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Is Envy Worse in a Free Society? [Open College series]

A new episode of my podcast series, produced by Possibly Correct out of Toronto. Audio: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Topics: Envy-charge against socialism // Envy-charge against liberal capitalism // Rousseau and Rawls on how to combat envy // So: Is envy worse or better in a free society? // Envy as a worse anti-social problem in earlier societies //

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