Ivory tower intellectuals show privilege is gained via ideological parroting. Revolutionary intellectuals show privilege should be earned by way of philosophical inquiry.
Nice essay! For about the last 40 years the people who then called themselves multiculturalists excoriated "dead white European males." This is part of a larger trend now called postmodernism. It divides the world into oppressors and oppressed based on tribal identities such as ethnicity, gender, and so forth. Interestingly, many thinkers on both the soft left and the soft right, who are united mainly by their opposition to censorship and cancel culture, agree about the evils of postmodernism. Stephen Hicks wrote a book on the history of postmodernism, although I have never read it. The basic idea is that when Marxism failed, the extreme left retooled class conflict into generic oppressor/oppressed conflict. I don't know how familiar you are with this pernicious ideology but given your interests it might be worthwhile to investigate it.
Thank you for your response Kurt! I'm fairly familiar with post-modernism (and experienced much of it first hand while attending an arts school), but I haven't ever read an official treatment of it from a philosophical standpoint so I will definitely check out Hicks' work! Any other recommendations on the topic are welcome as well!
I thought you might be familiar with PM, but one never knows. There is all sorts of stuff out there about the oppressor/oppressed narrative. I have nothing in particular to suggest. You could try Jordan Peterson, keeping in mind that he is crazy in his own way too. Anything negative about DEI probably discusses the PM narrative as well. Sorry I can't be of more help!
You're familiar with Kuhn's thesis about the structure of scientific revolutions? Basically, nobody gets convinced, the people with the old view just die off. And, of course, the sciences are empirical and have the real world to check them--if I want to know if Einstein was right about mass and velocity near the speed of light, I can do an experiment. It's a little harder in the humanities where the end effects of various philosophies can take a few decades to show up. But I think the fix is in for the next few decades and even if you won the intellectual battle you'd have to wait for the current elites to age out.
Nonetheless, I think you are correct. I always thought the whole 'critical theory' project of dismantling all possible power structures was questionable--wait, don't we need some? What are you going to replace them with?
Similarly, if you keep deconstructing and attacking beauty, well, eventually you're not going to be able to say anything about anything, which makes any kind of artistic statement difficult.
I actually hold the cynical view that a lot of success in the arts, at least historically, revolved around pleasing the right set of art dealers and critics. (Look at the hideousness of contemporary art versus, say, Raphael or Waterhouse). However, I hold the less-cynical view that beauty exists in that human aesthetic preferences are at least somewhat correlated and it's now much easier to reach the public directly, so if you make music or books people like you can at least get them to pay something for it. Of course, that requires marketing...
Fantastic essay! I had never heard of the Stolen Village, and I will be reading that soon. Here are some recommendations I have of great history writers if you have not yet had the pleasure of reading them: Candice Millard (River of Doubt and Destiny of the Republic); Nathaniel Philbrick (Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War); Joseph Ellis (American Sphinx and His Excellency: George Washington). With all of them, I could feel myself no longer reading, but standing in the scenes as they happened.
Thank you so much for reading Steve, and thank you for your recommendations! History is my favorite subject to read so I’ll be adding these books to my “shopping cart” today. Can’t wait to dive into these!
Nice essay! For about the last 40 years the people who then called themselves multiculturalists excoriated "dead white European males." This is part of a larger trend now called postmodernism. It divides the world into oppressors and oppressed based on tribal identities such as ethnicity, gender, and so forth. Interestingly, many thinkers on both the soft left and the soft right, who are united mainly by their opposition to censorship and cancel culture, agree about the evils of postmodernism. Stephen Hicks wrote a book on the history of postmodernism, although I have never read it. The basic idea is that when Marxism failed, the extreme left retooled class conflict into generic oppressor/oppressed conflict. I don't know how familiar you are with this pernicious ideology but given your interests it might be worthwhile to investigate it.
Thank you for your response Kurt! I'm fairly familiar with post-modernism (and experienced much of it first hand while attending an arts school), but I haven't ever read an official treatment of it from a philosophical standpoint so I will definitely check out Hicks' work! Any other recommendations on the topic are welcome as well!
I thought you might be familiar with PM, but one never knows. There is all sorts of stuff out there about the oppressor/oppressed narrative. I have nothing in particular to suggest. You could try Jordan Peterson, keeping in mind that he is crazy in his own way too. Anything negative about DEI probably discusses the PM narrative as well. Sorry I can't be of more help!
You've been super helpful, Kurt! I appreciate your recommendations!
You're familiar with Kuhn's thesis about the structure of scientific revolutions? Basically, nobody gets convinced, the people with the old view just die off. And, of course, the sciences are empirical and have the real world to check them--if I want to know if Einstein was right about mass and velocity near the speed of light, I can do an experiment. It's a little harder in the humanities where the end effects of various philosophies can take a few decades to show up. But I think the fix is in for the next few decades and even if you won the intellectual battle you'd have to wait for the current elites to age out.
Nonetheless, I think you are correct. I always thought the whole 'critical theory' project of dismantling all possible power structures was questionable--wait, don't we need some? What are you going to replace them with?
Similarly, if you keep deconstructing and attacking beauty, well, eventually you're not going to be able to say anything about anything, which makes any kind of artistic statement difficult.
I actually hold the cynical view that a lot of success in the arts, at least historically, revolved around pleasing the right set of art dealers and critics. (Look at the hideousness of contemporary art versus, say, Raphael or Waterhouse). However, I hold the less-cynical view that beauty exists in that human aesthetic preferences are at least somewhat correlated and it's now much easier to reach the public directly, so if you make music or books people like you can at least get them to pay something for it. Of course, that requires marketing...
Fantastic essay! I had never heard of the Stolen Village, and I will be reading that soon. Here are some recommendations I have of great history writers if you have not yet had the pleasure of reading them: Candice Millard (River of Doubt and Destiny of the Republic); Nathaniel Philbrick (Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War); Joseph Ellis (American Sphinx and His Excellency: George Washington). With all of them, I could feel myself no longer reading, but standing in the scenes as they happened.
Thank you so much for reading Steve, and thank you for your recommendations! History is my favorite subject to read so I’ll be adding these books to my “shopping cart” today. Can’t wait to dive into these!
I also appreciate you referencing Redneck Intellectual! I am happily going through some of his articles now. : )
He’s a gem! And his books are so, so good :)