Totalitarians of Western Philosophy

Little Crispy
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Running through some of the most beloved texts in Western political philosophy. They are loved for their ingenuity and beauty. But they are respected and believed for their screeching authoritarianism. You might see episodes on...Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau. Hegel, Nietzsche, Zizek, Pettit, etc.

  1. MAR 25

    The End!

    Trying to summarize the vast terrain we traversed on this podcast. Final episode.

    21 min
  2. Our Boy Slavoj: Totalitarian Fun With Žižek!

    MAR 19

    Our Boy Slavoj: Totalitarian Fun With Žižek!

    A vast and wild oeuvre it is, but the non-stop flirtation with extreme authoritarianism, even "terrorism" and "war communism," is hard to miss. Plato, Hegel, Marx: so much of what we've talked about runs together here, in revival. SZ seeks to inspire whole newish or newesque totalitarian movements. "One of the mantras of the postmodern left is that one should finally leave behind the 'Jacobin-Leninist' paradigm of centralized and dictatorial power. Perhaps, the time has come to turn this mantra around and admit that a dose of this 'Jacobin-Leninist' paradigm is precisely what the left needs today." (Idea of Communism 1 p. 217)

    28 min
  3. Western Political Philosophy is a Tissue of Fictions

    MAR 16

    Western Political Philosophy is a Tissue of Fictions

    Summing up many of the developments seen in this podcast, we can say that Western political philosophy consists primarily of mere fictions. It's romantasy. from Plato to Rawls. It's cute! It's sweet! If you deleted the fiction, you'd have deleted political philosophy.

    16 min
  4. Philip Pettit: Strictly Fictional Totalitarianism

    MAR 12

    Philip Pettit: Strictly Fictional Totalitarianism

    Pettit's astonishingly evil and entirely fictional political philosophy, which might be termed "classical liberal totalitarianism". Previous attacks on Pettit: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUz6jqVz4W1LUHFMNemTIGVcPECivNvYC

    25 min
  5. Left and Right Totalitarianisms and the Real Political Spectrum

    MAR 10

    Left and Right Totalitarianisms and the Real Political Spectrum

    The spectrum of positions from left to right is not much of anything. The spectrum of positions from authoritarianism to anti-authoritarianism is real, man.  +! the case of Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

    18 min
  6. Pierre Bourdieu: Descriptive and Normative Totalitarianism

    MAR 7

    Pierre Bourdieu: Descriptive and Normative Totalitarianism

    I have some misgivings about including Bourdieu's On the State, but it shows the extension of the Hegelian total state toward the 21st century.

    32 min
  7. Frederic Jameson and Authoritarian Postmodernism

    MAR 4

    Frederic Jameson and Authoritarian Postmodernism

    Jameson's An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army, edited and endorsed by Žižek constitutes a casual, whimsical, half-assed and utterly disgusting totalitarianism, greeted as a beautiful expression of hope. This should make you wonder about all of Jameson's work. Which is later: capitalism or Jameson? And which is less plausible, Frederic Jameson or Frederic Jameson as such? https://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/nostalgic-futurism

    29 min
  8. Jean-Paul Sartre Rejects Human Freedom

    FEB 26

    Jean-Paul Sartre Rejects Human Freedom

    in all its pernicious forms, and (according to Merleau), advocates "ultra-Bolshevism." The grotesque contradiction between Sartre's existentialist and his Stalinist conceptions of freedom makes me want to sob.

    23 min
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Running through some of the most beloved texts in Western political philosophy. They are loved for their ingenuity and beauty. But they are respected and believed for their screeching authoritarianism. You might see episodes on...Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau. Hegel, Nietzsche, Zizek, Pettit, etc.

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