Michel Foucault said: “All my analyses are against the idea of universal necessities in human existence.” And philosopher Todd May summarizes Foucault’s conclusion this way: “It is meaningless to speak in the name of—or against—Reason, Truth, or Knowledge.” For more on Foucault’s contributions to postmodernism, see p. 11 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau […]
Michel Foucault in *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »
Counter-Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed that in moral society, one “coalesces with all, in this each of us puts in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of society’s leaders.” And: A “citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.” Further:
A Russian translation of my “The Battle for the Soul of the University is Raging” has been published by a source unknown to me. “The protesters and disrupters may be angry, but they are adults who know what they are doing. ‘Cry-bullies’ is half-right, as the tears are a tactic.” Read more here in English, Hebrew,
Russian translation of *Battle for the Soul of the University* Read More »
My Savvy Street article, “The Battle for the Soul of the University is Raging,” was translated into Hebrew by Shahar Shlush and published here. “The protesters and disrupters may be angry, but they are adults who know what they are doing. ‘Cry-bullies’ is half-right, as the tears are a tactic.”
Hebrew translation of *The Battle for the Soul of the University is Raging* Read More »
My “How to Tame Religious Terrorists” is now republished at Britain’s Church and State site: “Any fight is triggered by short-term, local disagreements. But long-term, generalized conflicts are always about abstract principles in collision. As with neo-Nazis, Communist revolutionaries, violent environmentalists, bomb-the-government anarchists and others – our conflicts with them are intellectual in origin. “Terrorism
“How to Tame Religious Terrorists” [CHURCH and STATE] Read More »
Some feminists (and pretty much everyone else, by the way) are sensitive to old-fashioned sexism. We believe that women are and can be as competent as men. But as a corrective to the historical record and the remaining elements of sexism, we celebrate stories of accomplished women and highlight that yes, indeed, a woman did
Having your feminist cake and eating it too Read More »
[Revised from this earlier post.] When the great Polish intellectual Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009) published “My Correct Views on Everything,” he was responding to Edward Thompson’s attack in “Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski.” Kolakowski is best known for Main Currents of Marxism, his huge survey of Marxism from its neo-Platonic and Hegelian roots, on through Marx
True Believers against Leftist Responsibility — Kolakowski versus Thompson Read More »
In 2016, Mark Michael Lewis interviewed me on a variety of topics, including the pronoun wars. At that point, Professor Jordan Peterson had recently taken a strong public stand against being required to use some newly proposed pronouns, and that refusal had generated controversy. Here is the transcript of my four-minute opinion on Peterson and
Hicks on Pronouns and Peterson — transcript Read More »