In Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard defends faith by going on the offensive against reason: “Faith requires the crucifixion of reason.” For more on the context of Kierkegaard’s irrationalism and its implications for postmodernism, see p. 98 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault. Information about other editions and translations is available at this […]
Søren Kierkegaard in *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »
Here is Jason D. Hill’s radical call to defund and disempower the anti-education ideologues. Hill is the author of Becoming a Cosmopolitan, which I used in my Ethics course last semester. His new-this-month book is We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People. Thanks to Robert Marks for the link to Hill’s The
Professor Jason Hill: “Shut down the universities” Read More »
Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed: “Reason is what engenders egocentrism and reflection strengthens it. Reason is what turns man in upon himself. Reason is what separates him from all that troubles him and afflicts him. Philosophy is what isolates him and what moves him to say in secret, at the sight of a suffering man, ‘Perish if
Rousseau contra reason in *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »
Sparked by some recent conversation, here again is a striking quotation from Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: “Every civilization of which we have records has possessed a technology, an art, a religion, a political system, laws, and so on. In many cases those facets of civilization have been as developed as our own.
Kuhn on the Greeks’ unique creation of scientific culture Read More »
Early in the development of analytic philosophy, Moritz Schlick claimed: “Does the external world exist?” is an unintelligible question, for “both its denial and affirmation are meaningless.” For more on the meaning of Schlick’s and its implications for postmodernism, see p. 80 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault. Information about other editions
Moritz Schlick in *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »
From 2006, an eight-minute documentary clip with my answer. Topics covered: (1) National Socialist philosophy, (2) the Nazi Party’s original 25-point platform — collectivism, economic socialism, nationalism, authoritarianism — (3) negotiations to merge with the German Socialist Party, (4) Hitler and Goebbels speeches on socialism, and (5) the symbolism of the swastika. The book based
How Socialist Were the Nazis? Read More »
Among German intellectuals of the generation before and after 1900, there was widespread interest in Eastern religions. Jacob Burckhardt expresses one point of attraction: “Not without cause do the Indians worship Shiva, the God of destruction. Filled with the joy of destruction, wars clear the air like thunderstorms, they steel the nerves and restore the
Burckhardt on Shiva, the god of destruction Read More »
Postmodernism is the first ruthlessly consistent statement of the consequences of rejecting reason, those consequences being necessary given the history of epistemology since Kant. For more on the context for this claim, see p. 81 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault. Information about other editions and translations is available at this dedicated page.
The first hypothesis of *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »
The first issue of The Truth Seeker was published in 1873 and “counted among its illustrious subscribers and progressive writers Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Clarence Darrow, and Robert Ingersoll.” The latest issue includes my article “No Reformation for Islam, Please.” To download the issue, go to this page at The TruthSeeker and
The Truth Seeker — free thought magazine Read More »
My “Are Reason and Faith Compatible?” is now republished at Britain’s Church and State site: “Suppose we grant, for the sake of argument, that evidence and logic make it 80 percent likely that a monotheistic god exists. … but there is nonetheless a gap between what the arguments show and the full belief-commitment that most
“Are Reason and Faith Compatible?” republished at Church and State Read More »