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

In Chapter 5 of Postmodern Fables (University of Minnesota Press, 1997), Jean-François Lyotard writes this about the Iraqi dictatorship: “Saddam Hussein is a product of Western departments of state and big companies, just as Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were born of the ‘peace’ imposed on their countries by the victors of the Great War. Saddam

Tomorrow I’m leading a live, open seminar on Kant’s views on education. In Britain and America in the 1700s, the most influential philosopher of education was John Locke, with his Some Thoughts Concerning Education. In France, it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau with his Emile. But in the German states, it was Johann Georg Sulzer, with his