Philosophy

The questions: Modernism and the Enlightenment—what are they? Is philosophy a science? Is epistemology or ethics most important? Can you explain briefly Foucault, Rorty, Lyotard, Derrida? Why do the post-moderns reject the modern? Sense-perception—are the arguments against its validity perverse? What’s the Representational theory of perception? What did Kant think of Rousseau? What makes Rousseau […]

“How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing?” From William Blake’s poem, “The Schoolboy,” collected in Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789). The full poem: I love to rise in a summer morn,    When the birds sing on every tree;The distant huntsman winds his horn,    And the skylark sings

Professor Nazir Azad’s translation into Urdu of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault will be published this month, October 2022. Urdu is the first or second language of 230 million people in Pakistan and India. Information about other editions and translations of the book is here, including the audiobook edition below:

In 1958, speaking of Chinese socialism’s decade of failed production quotas and the nastiness of its power-struggle schisms, Mao Zedong said this: “Death has benefits; fertilizer is created.” Switching to the second-person voice, Mao then said that you should embrace this: “You must be mentally prepared.” And then combining an inevitability claim with an end-justifies-the-means

So argues the state in this anti-Woke/CRT legal challenge. See pages 2 and 3, to begin: Two days ago, Professor Jason Hill and I discussed this very issue, starting at the 31-minute mark: How do advocates of the free society handle the in-principle conflict in state-funded education between (a) the government is paying, He-who-pays-the-piper-calls-the-tune, and

Almost 100 years ago, the philosopher was worried: “We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.” Source: Bertrand Russell, “Free Thought and Official Propaganda,” Chapter 12 of Sceptical Essays (1928), p. 136. Russell used examples from America (bad), Japan (bad), and

Additions to the page include recent publications, a debates section, and a new-to-me criticism of my Explaining Postmodernism by sociology lecturer Matt McManus, who takes issue with my use of a quotation from Lyotard’s Postmodern Fables. (The quotation in question and my take on it can be read here.) Related: Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism