Refreshing this story from Francis Kane, professor of philosophy and former colleague of Professor George Walsh at Salisbury State University, in a eulogy delivered November 21, 2001. The phone rang one Friday afternoon (I’ll never forget): “Fran, I’m going to be fired!” “George, you’re not going to be fired.” “Yes, I am! Something horrible has […]
Professor Walsh gives an “A” to a Jain monk Read More »
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
Mao: “Death has benefits; fertilizer is created.” Read More »
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
No academic freedom for teachers and professors in Florida state schools Read More »
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
Bertrand Russell: Education versus Free Thought Read More »
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
My Wikipedia page updated: debates and a criticism Read More »
Friedrich Nietzsche has a reputation for being an individualist. But note this from his Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “The overman is the sense of the earth … . I love those who sacrifice themselves for the earth, that the earth may some day become the overman’s.” (Z I.P.3). So: Contrary to individualism, your life is not
Was Nietzsche individualist? Zarathustra-overman version Read More »
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
Lyotard channeling Lenin Read More »
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
Kant and Sulzer on Obedience in Education Read More »