Philosophy

Urdu translation book cover of *Explaining Postmodernism*

I’ve learned that in Urdu my name is: اسٹیون آر سی ہِ کس. 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 […]

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Is Foucault a “Neo-Marxist”? Methodology datum

In an interview, Foucault responds to a question about Marxist methodology in his writing: “[Interviewer] G.R.  But does this reference in The Archaeology of Knowledge mean that, in a certain way, Marx is at work in your own methodology? “FOUCAULT  Yes, absolutely.” (Source: Foucault, Michel. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984, New York:

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Persian translation of *Explaining Postmodernism* and the censors

When my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault was to be published in Iran, the publisher notified me that a final step was necessary: getting a publishing license from the state’s censors. So the manuscript was submitted for approval to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. At the time, I had

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Guest on the Secular Foxhole with Blair Schofield and Martin Lindeskog

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

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“How can the bird that is born for joy sit in a cage and sing?”

“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

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Urdu translation of *Explaining Postmodernism*—update

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:

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Mao: “Death has benefits; fertilizer is created.”

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

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No academic freedom for teachers and professors in Florida state schools

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

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