Philosophy

 An economic historian on socialist Russia after WW II:  “The only sector of the economy which showed vigor was private farming: the 33 million private plots belonging to collective farm households, averaging 0.6 acre and constituting 1.5% of the country’s cultivated area, furnished the postwar Soviet Union with nearly one-third of its foodstuffs. In 1979,

Professor James Orr: “The atomisation of modern society, the tectonic contradictions of identitarianism, the shattering of civic and economic harmony, are not puzzling aberrations of liberalism but the outworking of its inner logic.” That is from Dr. Orr’s second essay, “A Conservative Critique of Liberalism,” in this Reason Papers three-round debate with Dr. Stephen Hicks.

Juneteenth celebrates a great achievement. Slavery had existed for thousands of year in pretty much every culture in the world. But a few brave and lonely voices began to challenge it in the 1700s and within a century—almost a blink of an eye in historical time—it had been eliminated in the civilized parts of the

I’m delighted to announce my return to Peterson Academy. I will be teaching two separate courses, Philosophy of Education, on how major thinkers—from Socrates and Plato to Montessori and Foucault—shaped teaching and schooling, and Logic, on how to analyze arguments, spot fallacies, avoid bias, and understand reasoning. Filming in person in Phoenix, AZ. Spaces are limited. Apply

Professor James Orr: “a society that prizes freedom above all else is a society that will, in time, descend into tyranny.” That is from Dr. Orr’s second essay, “A Conservative Critique of Liberalism,” in this Reason Papers three-round debate with Dr. Stephen Hicks. Orr advocates and defends Conservatism; Hicks does the same for Liberalism. Links

Next month, I’ll be recording two new courses for Peterson Academy in their Arizona studio. Details forthcoming. Meanwhile, I was pleased to receive from the team this screen capture from the Academy’s discussion forum on my Modern Philosophy course. Thank you for the praise, Salvatore and Allan! More information about my other courses at PA—Modern

From a 2020 interview: Jennifer Grossman [11:59]: What is your perspective from now, particularly looking at it through historical time when we could point to … slavery, things like that, it would seem to me that it’s improved. The other question is: Is capitalism an institution and as an institution (if it is an institution) is