Dec 22, 2020
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3Czyd0XSEso
The alarmists had been proper: concepts that had been only some years in the past
complacently dismissed because the perennial agitation of some campus
loonies are actually pervasive within the company world, mass media and
popular culture.
Vital race concept, transgender ideology, the obsessive search
for oppressive energy relations in each side of life and each
characteristic of language, the demand for all to be activists, shutting
down of dissenting speech as violence: frequent sense or the reward of
a stable Catholic formation will suffice for many who reject these
ideologies.
However some will desire a extra rigorous critique or a deeper
understanding of the philosophical roots of radical leftist
activism. To that finish, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay have
written Cynical Theories, a really useful primer on the
growth of recent activism from Nineteen Sixties postmodernist
philosophy.
On this episode, Thomas and political thinker Darel Paul
focus on the e-book, which tracks how postcolonial concept, queer
concept, ladies’s/gender research, important race concept, and different
activist fields have instantiated or tailored the next central
ideas and themes of postmodernism:
Postmodern ideas:
- Radical skepticism concerning the skill to know something, cultural
constructivism - Society is shaped of programs of energy and hierarchies which
resolve what and the way issues could be recognized
Postmodern themes: The blurring of boundaries, the ability of
language, cultural relativism, lack of the person and the
common
The episode concludes with a critique of Pluckrose and Lindsay’s
prescription of a return to Enlightenment liberalism as a
corrective to postmodernism.
Contents
[1:41] Causes for discussing Cynical Theories
[4:36] Proof of postmodernist activist actions reaching the
mainstream
[10:58] What the e-book contributes to the discourse on woke
ideology
[15:00] Similarities and variations between postmodernism and
Marxism
[26:25] The core postmodern ideas and themes
[38:53] Policing speech as a software of energy quite than a
rational technique of speaking fact
[47:58] The proliferation of postmodern ideas right into a quantity
of activist fields
[49:47] Defining one’s identification by way of struggling and
oppression
[55:07] Stress between postmodern rejection of classes and
the necessity to have classes to critique energy relations; the
emergence of queer concept; deliberate incoherence as liberation
[1:01:06] Conundrum for LGBTQ activists: acquire “regular” standing or
destroy thought of normality?
[1:06:40] Gender concept vs. important race concept on
classes
[1:18:50] Postmodernism as a category ideology?
[1:24:17] The postcolonial critique of science; epistemic
relativism
[1:27:30] Critique of Pluckrose and Lindsay’s advocacy of a
return to Enlightenment liberalism
[1:32:51] Liberalism as an inherently detrimental and
deconstructive philosophy
[1:40:04] Postmodernism as an extension and/or consequence of
liberalism
[2:04:33] The way to talk fact to somebody who believes
language is merely energy?
Hyperlinks
Pluckrose and Lindsay, Cynical Theories
https://www.amazon.com/Cynical-Theories-Scholarship-The whole lot-Identity_and/dp/1634312023
Darel Paul, “Towards Racialism” https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/10/against-racialism
Darel Paul, “Listening on the Nice Awokening”
https://areomagazine.com/2019/04/17/listening-at-the-great-awokening/
Darel Paul, “The International Group Is a Fantasy”
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-global-community-is-a-fantasy/
Darel Paul, From Tolerance to Equality
https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481306959/from-tolerance-to-equality/
Ep. 61 on liberalism as an anti-culture with James Matthew
Wilson
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-61-liberal-anti-culture-vs-western-vision-soul-pt-i-james-matthew-wilson/
Ep. 18 on the vice of acedia manifested in our refusal to simply accept
our given nature
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-18-acedia-forgotten-capital-sin-rj-snell/
Christmas episodes:
It’s a Fantastic Life (1946) movie dialogue w/ Patrick
Coffin
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/its-wonderful-life-1946-w-patrick-coffin/
CCP 59 – The Superb English Carol
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-59-glorious-english-carol/
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