Literature

The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason [EP audiobook]

This is the third chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Chapter Three: The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [50 minutes] Heidegger’s synthesis of the Continental tradition [mp3] [YouTube] Setting aside reason and logic [mp3] [YouTube] Emotions as revelatory [mp3] [YouTube] Heidegger and postmodernism [mp3] [YouTube] […]

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The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason [EP audiobook]

This is the second chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Chapter Two: The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [72 minutes] Enlightenment reason, liberalism, and science [mp3] [YouTube] The beginnings of the Counter-Enlightenment [mp3] [YouTube] Kant’s skeptical conclusion [mp3] [YouTube] Kant’s problematic from empiricism and rationalism

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Audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism

I’m happy to announce the audiobook version of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. We’re releasing one chapter a week here and at YouTube. Thanks to Christopher Vaughan for his editing and production work. To begin, here is the first chapter. Chapter One: What Postmodernism Is [mp3] [YouTube] [38 minutes] The

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Illinois’s business climate and migration

Let us dwell upon this year’s ranking of Illinois as among the worst states for business: 48th out of 50.[1] That is unchanged from last year. So people are leaving: “Illinois had the second-highest net domestic migration loss, sending 79,000 of its residents to other states. Illinois had ranked 49th in net domestic migration in

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Three new novelists

Over the spring and summer I read three enjoyable books, all by first-time authors of fiction. Looking forward to more from them. Pietros Maneos, The Italian Pleasures of Gabriele Paterkallos. A lushly Romantic series of letters by young American poet on an odyssey to Rome — both contemporary Rome and the idealized and historical city

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Carlin Romano’s America the Philosophical

Over the years I’ve enjoyed and learned from many of Carlin Romano’s articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education. He can do good philosophical reporting. So I picked up America the Philosophical, and I was disappointed. Romano’s thesis is that the United States is a nation of vigorous philosophical activity and — contrary to the

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