My “On Natural Morality and Religious Amoralism” is now republished at Britain’s Church and State site: “… religious belief is often autobiographical. That is, all religions have many messages and practices — some peaceful, some violent, and so on — and individuals choose among them to put together a personal religion that reflects the morality […]
“On Natural Morality and Religious Amoralism” [CHURCH and STATE] Read More »
The postmodern task, states Richard Rorty, is to figure out what to do “now that both the Age of Faith and the Enlightenment seem beyond recovery.” For more on the context of Rorty’s claim and his contributions to postmodernism, see p. 23 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault. Information about other editions
Richard Rorty in *Explaining Postmodernism Read More »
My discussion with the well-prepared Ricardo Lopes. Our topics: * What made the moderns revolutionary epistemologically * The broader transformations of the world by exploration, science, religion, trade, and the arts * The postmodernism reaction to/against modernism * Why Kant is important as inheritor of failing empiricist and rationalist traditions * Rousseau’s collectivism and egalitarianism
Portugal’s Ricardo Lopes interview with me Read More »
I gave a talk in Gdańsk, Poland, on “The Philosophers and the Birth of National Socialism.” Along the way we discuss Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others. The video of the lecture and question period is here (or at YouTube): Thanks to Dr. Marek Szymaniak of the Museum of the Second
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Economist Richard Ebeling at FEE: “The Damage Still Done by a Defunct Economist”: “Keynes helped undermine what had been three of the essential institutional ingredients of a free-market economy: the gold standard, balanced government budgets, and open competitive markets. In their place Keynes’s legacy has given us paper-money inflation, government deficit spending, and more political
Keynes’s continuing destructiveness — Ebeling’s and my evaluations Read More »
The poet William Wordsworth said: “Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things; –We murder to dissect.” For more on the meaning and implications of Wordsworth’s claim, see p. 68 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault. Information about other editions and translations is available at this dedicated page.
William Wordsworth in Explaining Postmodernism Read More »
Ludwig Wittgenstein said: “All propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.” For more on the implications of Wittgenstein’s claim, see p. 83 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault. Information about other editions and translations is available at this dedicated page.
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For use in my courses, additions to my Texts in Philosophy page. Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850). Charles Darwin, “On Evolution” (1859). Darwin summarizes the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Carl Hempel, “Semmelweis and Childbed Fever” (1966). How Dr. Semmelweis discovered the cause of childbed fever. Murdoch Pencil, “Salt Passage Research: The State of
Texts in Philosophy — mid-2018 additions Read More »
“Why is it that skeptical and relativistic arguments have the cultural power that they now do? Why do they have that power in the humanities but not in the sciences? Why have themes of exhaustion, nihilism, and cynicism come to have the cultural dominance they do? And how can those intellectual themes coexist with a
The puzzling prominence of postmodernism [Explaining Postmodernism] Read More »
Michel Foucault said: “All my analyses are against the idea of universal necessities in human existence.” And philosopher Todd May summarizes Foucault’s conclusion this way: “It is meaningless to speak in the name of—or against—Reason, Truth, or Knowledge.” For more on Foucault’s contributions to postmodernism, see p. 11 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau
Michel Foucault in *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »