Lecture Eight: What are the lessons of 20th-century philosophy? Has the Enlightenment been a success or a failure? Do we need to build on the Modern world’s successes — or return to a better, Pre-modern intellectual and cultural world — or, rejecting both, accept a disquieting Postmodern future? Themes: History as “philosophy teaching by example.” […]

Answering the question in their own words: Two photos of flyers posted on university bulletin boards as I’ve traveled around giving campus talks. Related: My talk this year in Washington, DC, on the “social justice”, postmodern, and critical-theory roots of this generation’s Wokism:

Alert philosophical reader Matthias Brinkman found this latest winner in the revived contest: What is the longest sentence ever written by a philosopher? It’s a 438-word behemoth from Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason—that’s in the original German, but it becomes 489 words in this rough English translation: “How mystical enthusiasms in the

Kant died in 1804 — yet contemporary cultural warriors continue to cite him explicitly as grounding their ideologies — for example Dinesh D’Souza on behalf of the conservative right and Jean-François Lyotard on behalf of the postmodern left. Why is Kant’s influence so long-lasting? “Does Immanuel Kant Matter?” Episode Number: 57 Date: October 2024 About

Who are the great philosophers, and what makes them great? Kant is famous for his ethic of strict duty—Categorical Imperatives—for his claim to be basing ethics upon Reason—and for also saying that “All human reason is wholly incompetent to explain this”. So: What is Kantian ethics? And why does Kant argue that it faces severe