Sidney Hook on public education

An evocative quotation from philosopher Sidney Hook (1902-1989), from his autobiographical Out of Step. In an earlier post I quoted Hook’s account of his family’s living conditions. Here Hook recalls his authoritarian-style education in American schools circa one century ago: “Although the public schools were religiously attended (children feared the wrath of their parents much […]

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*Explaining Postmodernism* wins baking contest

Unexpected news: Explaining Postmodernism wins first place in a university’s edible cake contest. The cake’s maker, who wishes to remain anonymous online, explains: “Mickey, the dialectical apprentice to such gnostic sorcerers as Rousseau, Hegel, and Derrida, is busy deconstructing our cake, leaving destruction and ruin in his wake.” I like that the book side of

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Chapter: “Mind-shift for 21st-Century Education: Entrepreneurism,” by Stephen Hicks

Today at Jagielloninan University in Krakow, Poland, is a book-launch event for this new volume: Defending the Value of Education as a Public GoodPhilosophical Dialogues on Education and the State, edited by Katarzyna Wrońska (Jagiellonian University, Poland), Julian Stern (Bishop Grosseteste University, England). I contributed an essay. My title and abstract: “Mind-shift for 21st-Century Education:

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Studio audience invitation for new Peterson Academy course: *Modern Ethics*

I will be at the Academy’s impressive studio in Miami to record a new eight-lecture course on the philosophy of ethics. Here is the invitation to join the live studio audience. We will cover thinkers who made ethics modern (and highly diverse) — and those who resisted the modernizing trends — including John Locke, Jean-Jacques

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Kuhn on the Greeks and scientific culture

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. But only the civilizations that descend from Hellenic

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Dugin and Foucault are both disciples of the same philosopher

Alexander Dugin is right-wing and religious—and a disciple of Heidegger‘s.Michael Foucault is left-wing and atheist—and a disciple of Heidegger‘s. Here is Dugin on the philosopher who accomplished “the most all-encompassing, paradoxical, profound, and penetrating study of Being. I am talking about Martin Heidegger.” (Source: The Fourth Political Theory, 2009)) And here is Foucault: “Heidegger has

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Three Goddesses, c. 438-32 BCE [Newberry on Great Art series]

An Artist’s View: Michael Newberry on Key Works of Art in History Michael Newberry is a California-based artist who has exhibited across Europe and North America. He is the author of books on color theory, philosophy of art, modernism and postmodernism in art, and art history. We invited him into our studio for this series

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