[This excerpt is from Chapter 3 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Heidegger’s synthesis of the Continental tradition Martin Heidegger took Hegelian philosophy and gave it a personal, phenomenological twist. Heidegger is notorious for the obscurity of his prose and for his actions and inactions on behalf of the National Socialists […]
Heidegger and postmodernism [EP] Read More »
The education of children is a highly philosophical enterprise — the project is long-term, of great importance, requires a strategic understanding of human life, and puts our actual values to the test. In my Philosophy of Education course, we spend much of our time finding where the rubber meets the road — that is, connecting
Education: Locke versus Kant Read More »
[This is the Bibliography for Nietzsche and the Nazis.] Nietzsche and the Nazis—Bibliography Ahern, Daniel R. 1995. Nietzsche as Cultural Physician. Pennsylvania State University Press. Allison, David B. 2001. Reading the New Nietzsche. Rowman and Littlefield. Anchor, Robert. 1972. Germany Confronts Modernization, German Culture and Society, 1790-1890. D. C. Heath. Barkai, Avraham. 1990. Nazi Economics:
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In raising the question of why philosophy begins with Thales, we first looked at Homer, the great shaper of the Greek mind before the philosophical and scientific revolution: Before philosophy: Homer’s world. In that post, I abstracted five statements from The Iliad: H1. Supernatural causation is part of the explanation for natural events. H2. Supernatural
Philosophy begins: Thales’ revolution Read More »
“In Athens haircuts and hairstyles had social and political implications. Aristocratic horsemen still wore long braids and gold hairpins. The common man (and the politicians who spoke for him) preferred a short cut, though not quite a crew cut. The customer sat on a low stool, his body draped in a sheet to catch the shorn locks. The barber then cropped and curled the hair, anointed the head with scented oil, and trimmed the beard to a neat point. (At Athens any man with a long unkempt bead ran the risk of being mistaken for a philosopher).”
Facial hair and philosophers Read More »
Chapter Two of my book is now available online. This chapter traces the decline of epistemology from Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” to the dominance in the nineteenth-century of speculation and irrationalism, setting the stage for the collapse of reason in the twentieth century, which is the subject of Chapter Three.
The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason Read More »
I am organizing a session for the Association for Private Enterprise Education conference to be held April 11-13, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The theme is “Reason in Hayek and Rand.” Here we have two giants of twentieth-century thought, but few comparative studies have been done. So as a start I have chosen Reason as
Hayek and Rand on reason Read More »