Philosophy

Martin Heidegger in *Explaining Postmodernism*

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Martin Heidegger claimed that reason is the “most stiff-necked adversary of thought” and an obstacle to be discarded. For more on the context for Heidegger’s claim and his contributions to postmodernism, see p. 69 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault. See also: Heidegger and postmodernism: Includes “Heidegger’s synthesis of the Continental tradition,” “Setting […]

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William Wordsworth in Explaining Postmodernism

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The poet William Wordsworth said: “Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things; –We murder to dissect.” For more on the meaning and implications of Wordsworth’s claim, see p. 68 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault. Information about other editions and translations is available at this dedicated page.

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Gdańsk talk: “The Philosophers and the Rise of National Socialism”

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I’ll be giving a talk in Gdańsk, Poland, on Thursday May 24 at 5.30 p.m. My title is “The Philosophers and the Rise of National Socialism.” Thanks to Dr. Marek Szymaniak of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk for the invitation to speak. My thoughts on one philosopher’s relationship to the Nazis

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Pillars of Modernist and Post-Modernist Philosophy — lecture excerpt

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The following 15-minute video excerpts my five-point philosophical contrast between modernism and postmodernism, with illustrating quotations from leading pomo intellectuals Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and others. For more, here is the full 2018 lecture at the University of British Columbia.

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Texts in Philosophy — mid-2018 additions

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For use in my courses, additions to my Texts in Philosophy page. Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850). Charles Darwin, “On Evolution” (1859). Darwin summarizes the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Carl Hempel, “Semmelweis and Childbed Fever” (1966). How Dr. Semmelweis discovered the cause of childbed fever. Murdoch Pencil, “Salt Passage Research: The State of

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The puzzling prominence of postmodernism [Explaining Postmodernism]

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“Why is it that skeptical and relativistic arguments have the cultural power that they now do? Why do they have that power in the humanities but not in the sciences? Why have themes of exhaustion, nihilism, and cynicism come to have the cultural dominance they do? And how can those intellectual themes coexist with a

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