Episode 4 in my Open College with Dr. Stephen Hicks podcast series.
Audio links:
Topics: Our contemporary pessimists and cynics // Gray, Rorty, and Foucault // The Enlightenment and its promises // How to assess the Enlightenment era // Data // Postmodernism // Real concerns and trade-offs versus pessimism
Transcription: Forthcoming
Sources:
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (1966).
Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (1982).
John Gray, Enlightenment’s Wake (1995).
C. P. Snow, “The Two Cultures” (1959).
James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (1994).
Indur Goklany The Improving State of the World (2007).
Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010).
Johan Norberg, Progress (2017).
Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now (2018).
Max Roser, “Our World in Data.”
Hans Rosling, Gapminder site.
Vox, “23 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better.”
Related:
- How the Enlightenment solved all of our problems
- The Enlightenment Vision — Flowchart
- Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment
- Jordan Peterson and Stephen Hicks diagnose pomo
The complete series of Open College with Stephen Hicks podcasts.