Clashing protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia — far right, far left, and others. Street violence and declarations of emergency by the governing officials. How did we get to this? First, how postmodernism evolved through three phases from high theory to coercive activism: Second, other anti-liberal and anti-rational movements learn and adopt the same strategies to their […]
Charlottesville, Third- and Fourth-wave Postmodernism Read More »
[Republished from The Foundation for Economic Education.] Nancy MacLean has written a postmodernist book, while her libertarian critics are writing modernist responses. The critics point out the free-wheeling, fact-free, and conspiracy-tinged narrative MacLean has constructed, and they argue that logically her account does not fit the reality of James Buchanan’s life and writings. All good
Nancy MacLean’s postmodern rhetorical strategy Read More »
Where does art go after postmodernism? My lecture in Hong Kong — in which I discuss the historical examples of Classical Athens, Renaissance Florence, the Dutch Golden Age, and nineteenth-century Paris — is at YouTube. Here also are the text in English (with images) and the condensed translation into Cantonese. Part 1: Part 2: Thanks
Hong Kong lecture: “NEO-ENLIGHTENMENT ART AFTER POSTMODERNISM” Read More »
Eleven minutes excerpted from a 1998 lecture — below or at YouTube.
Nietzsche Perfectly Forecasts the Postmodernist Left Read More »
Stuart Mark Feldman’s The Future in Our Hands By Michael Newberry Stuart Mark Feldman’s sculpture group, The Future in Our Hands (1992, Reservoir Park, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) is four life-size bronze statues placed around a large outdoor fountain. There are two males and two females, life-sized, each playing with a child. (To my knowledge, this is the
Newberry reviews Feldman sculpture *The Future in Our Hands* Read More »
I’ve always smiled at the thoughtfulness of St. Benedict’s very detailed rules for monastic living. Chapter 22 of The Rule takes up “The Sleeping Arrangements of the Monks.” In keeping with the spirit of communalism, Benedict stipulates: “If possible, all are to sleep in one place, but should the size of the community preclude this,
St. Benedict on monks sleeping together communally Read More »
Mark the date: Beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern on the 17th, Professor Peterson and I will discuss university politicization, the pronoun wars, political correctness, and other manifestations of postmodernism. The discussion will be recorded and released on social media. Our initial point of contact was my book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to
My discussion with Jordan Peterson, August 17 Read More »
Half a century ago, a despairing left intellectual wrote: “The Millenium Has Been Cancelled.” Edward Hyams was reacting to the many total failures of socialism in theory and practice, as well as to the apparent endurance of some sort of liberal capitalism.[1] In a recent review of a far-leftist book — Enzo Traverso’s Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History,
Defeatist psychology on the Left Read More »