A brief analysis of “The Return of the Evil Ethnic Thing,” a chapter in The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. We follow Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek as he analyzes the surge in right wing populism and tries to distinguish the source from the smoke-screens of ethnic and gender animosities. Along the way, we get a glimpse … More Zizek on Right Wing Populism: The Year of Dreaming Dangerously 3
Zizek gets into his economic and political theory and shows in which ways he agrees with and diverges from Marx. He discusses how capitalism has changed since Marx’s time and in doing so develops his own take on where it is headed. I attempt to translate his language into something I, and hopefully others, can … More Slavoj Zizek on the Culture War: The Year of Dreaming Dangerously 2
Marxist theorist Slavoj Zizek and Canadian Psychologist Jordan Peterson will soon debate (April 19) in Toronto. Most everyone knows who Peterson is, but do you know much about Zizek? Maybe not, unless you’re into Marxist theory. This video introduces him and gets into his 2012 book, The Year of Living Dangerously, as a way of … More Slavoj Zizek: The Year of Dreaming Dangerously 1
Some remarks summing up studies in environmental and agricultural political thought. Among the topics covered is a discussion of the irony that people living in the “breadbasket” of America often deal with “food deserts” and suffer from growing precarity. … More Problems in America’s Breadbasket
Neoliberal Christianity may be persuasive as a political and economic ideology, but is it religious (as in something other than worldly) when it diverges from a straight-forward reading of the Christian account of Jesus’ life and teachings. … More Neoliberalism and Religion
In this video, part of an environmental political thought series, some of the main themes of Wendell Berry’s book “The Unsettling of America” are compared to ideas from thinkers I’ve covered in other videos, like Jacques Ellul, Thomas Jefferson, Russell Kirk, Jerry Mander, John Zerzan and Arlie Hochschild.
Using agriculture as an example it’s possible to see the impact of neoliberal economics and politics on family, neighborhood, community, religion, local independence and small business. … More Neoliberalism and Agriculture
In this video, I discuss Berlin’s reaction to some key ideas of Giambattista Vico, who anticipated much of the criticism of later counter-Enlightenment and Romantic thinkers and was deeply influential on Berlin’s own thought … More Isaiah Berlin on Vico
In this video, I introduce key ideas from the “Against the Current” movements and discuss Berlin’s strategy for coming to term with and positively engaging those ideas. … More Can We Learn from the Counter-Enlightenment? Isaiah Berlin Did.
“In the end, men choose between ultimate values; they choose as they do, because their life and thought are determined by fundamental moral categories and concepts that are, at any rate over large stretches of time and, space, a part of their being and thought and sense of their own identity; part of what makes them human.”
-Two Concepts of Liberty
… More Isaiah Berlin: An Introduction
Political Philosophy 