In this lecture series, David Dusenbury explores Jan Patočka’s Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Published in 1975, these were the final works by the mid-twentieth century Czech philosopher and dissident.
The Parasitic Mind is nothing short of a manual for this twisted age that seems to lack common sense. Its message, if put simply, has an almost biblical overtone: be not afraid!
Boomers are commonly seen by more recent generations in a colder world as having lived lives of
perpetual indulgence—pampered as children by fond parents home from the war, indulged as rebellious students by liberal professors who praised them as ‘the most idealistic generation in history’, enabled to live a hippie lifestyle as employees, thanks to a tight US labour market in a world hungry for US goods.
Unlike the loud and bloody scandal of twentieth-century totalitarian ideologies, today the respect for tradition, continuity, and constancy is vanishing silently, while often attacked and put into the same box with dangerous, truly radical ideas.
In Afghanistan, people do not think in a frame of a state or a state army but family, tribe, ethnic group—genus—and then in the geographical area where they live.
Who was Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and what makes him so significant? Let us answer that question by noting three of Böckenförde’s own texts included in this volume.
Illiberal democracy
is a set-up, such as Hungary, in which democracy prevails, but without the stultifying carapace of liberal (or “liberal”) pieties and prejudices.
One of Scruton’s latest works entitled Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition was published in 2017 by All Points Book Publishers. Scruton embarks on a historical introduction of conservatism in six chapters, from its prehistory to the present day.
