The case of Stephen Greenblatt by Bruce Bawer in the New Criterion. H/T Stephen Hicks. Cultural Studies is an intellectual and scholarly disaster. And its spiritual father is Stephen Greenblatt. Bruce Bawercultural marxismLiteratureLucretiusMarxismphilosophical literaturepost modernismregressive leftshakespearestephen greenblattstephen hicks
Gary Gutting weighs in on this discussion that I previously mentioned here. gary guttingHumanitiesPhilosophypost modernismscienceScientism
Here’s a review of K. Brad Wray’s Kuhn’s Evolutionary Social Epistemology. (Wray, by the way, has been a strong contributor to EPISTEME). It’s also worth checking out Alexander Bird’s entry on Kuhn for Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Kuhn is one of those thinkers whose work has been tarnished by academics who need an off-the-peg philosophical outlook…
Some of the most talented professional bloggers in the U.S. have backgrounds in philosophy. Is this just a coincidence or is there a causal relationship between philosophical training and the demands of professional blogging? In addition to learning about the philosophical backgrounds and abiding interests of three of the most prominent bloggers in the U.S.,…
This week’s guest on the NYT Opinionator humeSIMON BLACKBURN
We love stories as much as we need them, but a funny thing has happened to departments of literature. The study of literature as an art form, of its techniques for delighting and instructing, has been replaced by an amalgam of bad epistemology and worse prose that goes by many names but can be summed…
Here’s a TPM interview with Alan Sokal. As Sokal says, perhaps it is inevitable that whatever his technical achievements are, he will be remembered for the so-called “Sokal hoax.” The vitriol that this debate generated I think did philosophy a service to a degree – “Continental” and analytical philosophy – but the slanging match did…
Here is a MS of my paper that was published here.
Attributions of relativism to Oakeshott are twofold: The first, and the more common attribution, is from the general perspective of viewing Oakeshott as a postmodern relativist. The second, more technical aspect and less familiar attribution, involves the assumption that Oakeshott was a coherentist. I examine the second view first. On this assumption it is standard to…
manwithoutqualities 