Un-edited transcription of this previously released podcast. Audio links: iTunes. Stitcher. YouTube. Transcription: The Initial Debate It’s a faux pas in some intellectual circles — mostly conservative ones — to say that there was a Dark Ages in European history. But the mainstream view, by contrast, has been that the Middle Ages were a dark […]
Conservatives: Get Over the Dark Ages [Open College transcript] Read More »
Lecture Four: Have women and minorities made progress — or is that an illusion? Catharine MacKinnon argues that “Protecting pornography means protecting sexual abuse as speech” in order to maintain the subordination of women. Derrick Bell says “Racial equality is, in fact, not a realistic goal” and so blacks need a new strategy. Themes: Feminism’s
Impressive: “After becoming CEE and chairperson of Alcoa in 1987, Paul O’Neill said, ‘I went to Alcoa with a burning fire … to demonstrate that it is possible for a truly great organization to be values based without any reservations.’ One ethical value that O’Neill championed was workplace safety. When it came to human dignity,
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From a 2020 interview: Jennifer Grossman [55:40]: Voicing an opinion that differs even slightly from the consensus can result in termination, cancellation, ostracism. So should one play the game of just kind of going along, or taking a principled stand, damn the consequences, justice? Howard Roark and John Galt did filing and struggling and obscurity.
On facing cancel cultures and injustices in one’s career and life [Interview excerpt] Read More »
An amusing quotation from William J. Bernstein’s Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History. Gutenberg (1395–1468) had invented an efficient way to mass produce moveable type, leading to larger quantities and lower costs for printed materials. Before Gutenberg, the Benedictines made good money from hand-copying materials and were able to exert some control over
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Lecture Six: Do claims to knowledge and morality merely mask power? Foucault argues that sex rhetoric has “a tactical role to play in a transformation into discourse, a technology of power.” And Derrida asserts that “the revolution against reason can be made only within it.” Themes: Power as substrate. Structuralism and Post-structuralism. Dekonstruction. Postmodernism. Alexis
Por que a arte se tornou feia? My essay on “Why Art became Ugly” translated into Brazilian Portuguese by Ronaldo Bassit and Matheus Pacini. Here are the original article in English (PDF) or online with links to the images discussed. Also: translations into German [pdf], Spanish, and Korean [pdf]. Also: My related lecture in Buenos
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An intriguing remark by the musician Shostakovich about life under Stalin, and why so many mediocrities rose to cultural prominence under the Soviets: “Fiction triumphed because a man has no significance in a totalitarian state. The only thing that matters is the inexorable movement of the state mechanism. A mechanism needs only cogs. Stalin used
The ‘genius’ cog in the system — Shostakovich comment Read More »