Does politics drive philosophy, or does philosophy drive politics?
In the previous episode of Sovereign Nations’s Changing Tides, “The Seeds of Collectivism,” James Lindsay, Stephen Hicks and Michael O’Fallon began with the metaphysical collectivist thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They then examined Hegel and Kant, and concluded with Dr. Hicks’s assertion that if it weren’t for the success of the Russian Revolution, Marx would be considered a second- or third-tier thinker.
As the team begins Encroaching Darkness, Dr. Hicks brings the conversation from Marx to the Existentialists and their emphasis on the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.
Dr. Lindsay analyzes Gramsci and cultural Marxism. Dr. Hicks then highlights the early 20th-century concept of false consciousness. Both men discuss the Frankfurt School and the influence of the critical theorists. The discussion progresses to Maoism with Dr. Lindsay making the statement “Mao did what Gramsci thought.”
We end in Postmodernism and the ideological collectivist stew of Neo-Marxism.