The audiobook edition of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault at YouTube, now with timestamps for easy navigation. This audiobook edition of Explaining Postmodernism is read by the author. To listen to a specific chapter of the audiobook, visit its YouTube site. To download MP3s of the audiobook or for more information, […]
Audiobook timestamps for *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »
At CEE, Stephen Hicks interviewed Jeffrey van Davis about his documentary on Martin Heidegger’s life and thought. Here is the documentary (with timestamps), with interviews of leading scholars of Heidegger: See also the episode on Martin Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?”, in the *Philosophers, Explained* series:
Interview with *Only a God Can Save Us* director van Davis Read More »
Where on the spectrum are you? Heidegger joined the National Socialist Party and was an active and gung-ho supporter. But why this “basically” claim about Nietzsche? Because he said this, along with dozens of other forerunner-to-Nazi things: “mankind in the mass sacrificed to the prosperity of a single stronger species of man — that would
The *politics* of philosophers — graphic Read More »
Noticing some social-media discussion by opponents of compulsory vaccinations, noting that even Adolph Hitler opposed them. A pair of quick nuance-y corrections, one on extent and one on motivation. Extent: AH favored compulsory vaccinations—but only for Germans. Motivation: He opposed them for non-Germans because he didn’t want to extend their benefits to people he didn’t
Compulsory vaccination and the National Socialists Read More »
Reprising this series of quotations, collected over the years, on the theme of pessimism about the present in relation to the past: Plato, 360 BCE: “In that country [Egypt] arithmetical games have been invented for the use of mere children, which they learn as pleasure and amusement. I have late in life heard with amazement
The constant decline of civilization? Read More »
Reprising this post about the early death of Franz Schubert, the great lyrical composer of the early nineteenth century. He died at age 31. While his music is usually too melancholy for my taste, what a sadness. Franz was lucky to get that many years. Biographer Christoper Gibbs reports that Schubert’s parents had fourteen children
Franz Schubert’s early death Read More »
My review essay on Donald Frey’s America’s Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics (State University of New York Press) was published in Business Ethics Quarterly. Subscribers to BEQ can access the issue here. Or my author-read audio version is at YouTube. My conclusion: “America’s Economic Moralists is a good historical survey of
My review of Frey’s *America’s Economic Moralists* Read More »
Kleist was widely traveled, energetic, a brilliant writer — and a suicide at age 34. Why? In reviewing Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, Ian Brunskill writes: “Kleist in his youth had espoused with enthusiasm all the optimism of the Enlightenment. Reason would conquer all; happiness would come with experience and understanding. In March 1801,
Kleist: How Kant ruined my life Read More »
Reprising this worth-reading piece on the Maoism of Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault and other fellow-travelers: Alan Schrift’s critical discussion, in Philosophy in Review, of Richard Wolin’s The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s, which is now out in a second edition. Excerpt: “For young leftists—and this
Seven categories. Five only in each. Works that I love or learned from or influenced me or that I return to regularly. Biography and AutobiographyAnthony Holden, TchaikovskyRobert Massie, Peter the GreatAdrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented EvolutionistJames Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small [a veterinarian in Yorkshire]Walt Whitman, Song of
Great Books — My Recommended Reading List Read More »