A new printing of the expanded edition was published this month. With postmodern theory now exerting itself in authoritarian practice, especially on many campuses, the book’s theme is sadly increasingly relevant: “The failure of epistemology made postmodernism possible. The failure of socialism made postmodernism necessary.” This is the sixteenth printing since its first publication in
On the intellectual origins of the modern world and the postmodern break: My live interview with Vin Armani is now also at YouTube. Why, Vin Armani asks, if modernism has been so successful, do postmoderns reject it?
The Vin Armani Show — interviewed Read More »
Eleven minutes on the political birth of pomo, embedded below or at YouTube: Excerpted from an extended interview by Tyler Scott Ashby. Details in Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.
*Political* Postmodernism’s origins: video clip Read More »
My keynote speech at the joint The Representational Art Conference (TRAC) and Figurative Art Conference and Expo (FACE) will be given in Miami on November 10. My title is The Flight from the Figure — and Back: Human Significance in Art. The abstract is: Across centuries, the art world has exhibited cyclical trends of engagement
Keynote speech at TRAC — title and abstract Read More »
[In preparation for a conference, I’m reading a lot about population, ethics, and economics. Extrapolating from my readings, I offer the following arguments.] 1. Capitalism is about greed. It encourages women to be greedy too. So women will pursue careers and forego family. Hence capitalism causes population decreases. 2. Capitalism is about consumerism, so people
The population evils of capitalism Read More »
David Weinberger beats up on Keynes’s economics here: “despite numerous experiments since the 1930s, never has Keynesian policy precipitated a peacetime economic recovery.” And I beat up on Keynes’s politics here: “Keynes was not merely recommending a few surgical interventions to smooth out cycles or to jump-start moribund economies. Keynes’s economics are part of a
Keynes: bad economics and bad politics Read More »
Our discussion is embedded below or at YouTube. Topics discussed: 1:00: The various uses of “postmodern” 3:30: The epistemology of reason in early modern philosophy 4:30: Pomo as a skepticism about reason by mid-1900s 5:00: Individualism in early modern philosophy 7:00: Pomo as a reaction to individualism 7:30: Social-psychological-linguistic determinisms of mid-1900s 10:10: Perception and
Tyler Ashby discussion: Pomo, Perception, and Reason Read More »
My review of Nicholas Capaldi & Gordon Lloyd’s Liberty and Equality in Political Economy: From Locke versus Rousseau to the Present is now published at the Library of Law and Liberty site.
Review of Capaldi and Lloyd on Locke versus Rousseau Read More »