History of Philosophy

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, *The Communist Manifesto* [Atlas University course]

Leave a Comment / Economics, Education, History, History of Philosophy, Philosophy, Politics, Socialism /

This week in the A.U. course on Socialism we cover Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Manifesto of the Communist Party. Marx, who devised the ideology of communism, proclaims the inevitable self-destruction of capitalism due to its internal contradictions and urges communists to lead the world to a classless society. The full course: https://www.atlassociety.org/course/socialism. Other Waterfall […]

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Lacan’s anti-humanism and Derrida’s intellectual terrorism

1 Comment / History of Philosophy /

Professor Fletcher on Lacan’s anti-humanism: “What you’re doing is like a spider: you’re making a very delicate web without any human reality in it … All this metaphysics is not necessary. The diagram was very interesting, but it doesn’t seem to have any connection with the reality of our actions, with eating, sexual intercourse, and

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Professor Long’s course on Nietzsche and Modern Literature

Leave a Comment / History of Philosophy, Literature /

For those interested in Friedrich Nietzsche and his connections to Thomas Mann, André Gide, D. H. Lawrence, Ayn Rand: Auburn University professor Roderick Long’s course on Nietzsche and Modern Literature is online with a treasure trove of readings, pictures, and musical clips. Related: My table with sources on Nietzsche and Rand: 124 Similarities and Differences.

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Derrida, according to Searle and Foucault

1 Comment / History of Philosophy, Philosophy /

John Searle reports this conversation with Michel Foucault about deconstructionist Jacques Derrida:  ‘You can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, “He says so and so,” he always says, “You misunderstood me.” But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this

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St. Augustine against anatomy and science

3 Comments / History of Philosophy, Religion, Science /

Following up on two posts on the achievements of modern anatomy (“The Knife Man” and “Anatomy and Philosophy”), here is St. Augustine (354-430) disapproving of the practice: “With a cruel zeal for science, some medical men, who are called anatomists, have dissected the bodies of the dead, and sometimes even of sick persons who have

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Hesse on Germans versus reason

1 Comment / History of Philosophy /

A bold statement from Nobel-Prize-winning novelist Hermann Hesse: “The German intellectual has constantly rebelled against the word and against reason and courted music.” (From Steppenwolf, p. 152, Modern Library ed.) I like the spirit of it, as it fits with my assessment of mainline German philosophy in Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to

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Do Rand and Nietzsche both despise “Common Good”?

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[Grégoire Canlorbe is a French intellectual entrepreneur. He currently resides in Paris. He interviewed me for The Foundation for Economic Education. Excerpt below:] Grégoire Canlorbe: Both Rand and Nietzsche vehemently despise the ancestral notion of “Common Good”, dating back at least to Aristotle. Nietzsche eloquently and provocatively sums up his grievances against it in paragraph 43

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