@@salvit6024 I don't even remember what this was about. Why revive a 6-month-old conversation? Do you have nothing better to do? So f'n cringe rofl 🤣 🤣
@@metalsoup6950 someone who has never read and therefore cannot identify and critique fascist philosophy who defaults to-"Anything I don't like is fascist, and the less I like it, the more fascist it becomes."
Thank you very much Dr. Sugrue... I dread the day that there are no new uploads. Your lectures are absolutely priceless and a glowing legacy of your academic work that, God willing, will serve as a guiding light for countless generations of humanity.
@@pbohearn to find the truth in a world full of false information, there must be winner and loser. i’m sure you’re familiar with socrates walking around the streets of athens testing strangers ideas of politics and life in order to find truth. if we become complacent with our ideas as “good enough” without stopping to think “what if i’m wrong?” there is no growth
@@pbohearn if game could loosely refer to engaging in a stimulating activity for the sake of passing time, yes this is a game. The search for "truth" should not be your main priority. I mean it's cool feeling like you have the right answers but I think prioritizing mental stability is more fulfilling
@@pbohearno. Think about the position of chess pieces at a given time. Then let truth and chaos represent the white and black pieces. The point of philosophy is to better position the white pieces such that humans have prosperity in the face of chaos
@@michaelthomas6280 not really. There are many postmodernisms, left and right-wing, even centrist posmodernism. Republicans are so postmodern in their radical cynicism and nihilism. Democrats are postmodernists in their addiction to "constructionist approach" to everything.
@@sabinoluevano7447 But i'd recommend u to explore why people voted for trump first, so u can get a kickstart understanding of classical liberalism and their emphasis on freedom of speech.
This man has been pwning the intellectual elite for 30 years. Damn, Michael, you truly are a gem. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to be able to access this.
I never thought I would encounter an intellectual equal to Jordan Peterson. This man transcends even his scope of philosophy. We are so lucky to have this for free.
@@Craiglicious000 Sugrue and many other living philosophers far exceed Peterson. Peterson doesn't read the books and ideas he critiques, for if he had read any post-modernism, like Sugrue clearly has, he would not use the term post-modern marxism. It is a contradiction in terms, and as Sugrue points out, Lyotard attacks critical Marxism. The fact that Peterson does not know this, is embarrassing.
@@OdoItal When I used to listen to Peterson, I was like 18 and hadn't a clue about philosophy so I took me a while to outgrow him. And while he actually is pretty well read, you're right about his ridiculous post modern prejudice.
I very much appreciate these lectures. Even when all of my professors say to pursue another subject worthy of my time, or could achieve income necessary to retirement. Philosophy isn't meant to be profited off of and compartmentalized into a monetization scheme. And it isn't just a language game to confirm my rhetorics. It is a place to learn, live and grow. We are all human and although we may reject each other we should not reject life itself.
I mean this respectfully but if you have professors saying that you've got some lousy professors on your hands! Dream big kiddo. You could be the next Kant if you set your mind to it!
It's unlikely you'll be the next Kant as per Kishore Das, but at least you will have given thought to your actions. And you know what the ancients said about the unreflected life........
When is philosophy NOT life...you are right it is about self growth...why are the two not one. The beauty of your professors is that they see a shining star in you...it all ego...theirs. Do what works with your soul. Also appreciate it that your professors care. Bottom line, it's your life.
@@robbeck4358 Sad, an attempt to elevate your vocabulary and use the word you found in a thesaurus in the wrong context; all in a futile attempt to add character to a baseless claim. A better word for your sentence would be purports. Expound is used for a positive context, purport for the derogatory. 👍
@@Reignor99 thanks, I don't want to make personal criticism of Sugrue. The postmodernists saw today's problems 50 years ago. These identify how democracy is overwhelmed by technology, now digitally integrated by the security state. Hiding behind the framework of democracy now lies a financial-military elite determined to take-over the world on a false prospectus. US capitalism is destroying the environment and the social contract for 90% of humanity. This is the line of conflict reflected today in relations between US/Russia and China. The Non-Aligned Movement is also on board here, so 140-150 countries of the world have watched and been victims of US capitalism, not democracy, for seventy years since the 2ndWW. The end of the Unipolar/Imperial moment is here, or the end of the world. WW3 is here already: simply search online for references.
@@robbeck4358 I mean, he was explaining Lyotard quite well I think. Just very opinionated, but that doesn't matter if you know which parts are opinions and which parts are theory, I didn't mind it as someone who generally tends to lean to the postmodern way of viewing things. I have to add that mostly all of his critique of Lyotard is completly valid and well thought out.
The best channel on UA-cam. An extremely enlightening introduction to philosophy and the history of Western thought. Thanks, Messrs. Sugre and Staloff!
He is adorable-just wish he wasnt talking so fast so it would be easier to think along. Replaying his lectures is fortunately a great pleasure. What a very very cool individual❤
This guy is fab. Great lectures. I got hooked a few days ago. I've always been negative about Pomos since Alan Sokal, Gross + Levitt, etc, but I'm not brainy enough to take it apart like Dr Sugrue.
"it is intellectual sterility" I think I agree. It seems to me that this idea of paralogy as it is explained in this lecture requires grand meta narratives just to exist. If the rate of rebellion against these meta narratives grows faster than the rate at which meta narratives grow then what do we do when there are no more meta narratives to rebel against? What do we do when mt. Everest is gone?
Dad said, Pomo was not cultural life as we know it, it was a 20th century intellectual fungus that lived off of the fallen redwoods of the Enlightenment. Now its last exponents are starving and raging that there is nothing left to consume, it has morphed into totalitarian cancel culture and no platforming by the neo-Maoist/neoliberal Trustafarians' and their online noise machine. Dad quoted Cormac McCarthy, "Too dead to know enough to lie down", nowadays, pomo is a period piece from another century, awkward and boring, intellectual carrion inedible except by a desperate clan of defanged intellectual predators who have spent their careers like Japanese soldiers hidden in tropical jungles in 1965, still vigorously fighting a war that had been lost many years ago.
@@dr.michaelsugrue It's funny that your dad calls out pomos for using the word "interrogate" as being an emotive word which betrays their naive romanticism and yet you and he are just as biased in your editorializing about pomo
It seems to me that Sugrue does not give a fair account of Lyotard's work. Like many American commentators, Sugrue seems to fall in to the trap of suggesting that Lyotard is advocating a Postmodern way of thinking, or a way of doing philosophy, but Lyotard's book is arguably much more of an account of how we 'do think' rather than how we 'should think'. Lyotard linked the rise of Postmodernism to the development of "late capitalism." He argued that consumer culture and mass media, key features of late capitalism, create a fragmented and superficial experience of knowledge. Although Lyotard highlighted the inadequacies of grand narratives, he also questioned the absolute dismissal of all grand narratives, arguing that some narratives can offer valuable guidance, even if they are not universally applicable.
I dont know enough ( yet ) to form an opinion either way, but I thank you for your nuanced contribution to this episode. I will reflect on your inputs.
If Ezra Pound's "Make It New!" is the mantra of modernism, then surely Sugrue's clever turn of phrase here, "Systematic Suspicion", must be a strong candidate as postmodernism's mantra.
I should add that I do disagree with Prof Sugrue's conclusion. I don't think Lyotard is posturing. A simple implication of paralogy (infinite discourses) is that an individual who is cognizant of some of those discourses has more choice, and therefore more freedom, to pursue what they like/don't like or trust/don't trust. I don't see how this is conveying a false impression (if that is what is meant by posturing in the lecture).
35:00 really funny that this was mentioned. this was exactly what i was saying to my mother the other day in light of the supreme court’s recent decision. had no idea mr lyotard came up with this idea already but it’s something i definitely believe about modern politics. these people dont even agree on the axioms, so how could they possibly agree on conclusions.
Discourse is dead Gesture is the new god, Knowledge replaced by opinion, persuasion has won over the need to convince Gesturing into the void Gesturing into the direction of talking to ourselves It seems the Frankfurt school and the postmodernists have kind of perfectly predicted the modern man, I understand there is a certain amount of jest in the last quarter of the lecture, towards this way of thinking but it has no doubt come to fruition. So what now!
Build structures which mould and support strong individuals and design an empire around a set of guiding principles and values extracted from the best of empires? Or wait for it all to collapse into nuclear Armageddon. Can't be worse than the shitshow we live in, can it?
Surely this means that to maintain that 2 + 2 = 4 is unjust and totalitarian and is unfair to those who believe otherwise, e.g. 2 + 2 = 3. But this would make so everyday a task as shopping impossible. We aren't even allowed to tell the time. Or weigh out food. He is deeply involved in a performative contradiction.
I learned from Professor Sugrue about Singapore and why I don't agree with a friend of mine who loves Singapore and lived there. I realized that one point the prof mad about it was mistaken . The "terror" is not directed toward the rewarded who somehow are living there but toward the punished who don't espouse capiatlism probably as enthusiastically as those who are rewarded by it. It's like so many who think of the U.S. as a wonderful place. These are those perhaps addicted to it's rewards and able to attain them, not those suffering poverty and homeless, who may be terrorized by their "negative" opinions.
Excellent Contribution. Lee Kawn Yu gladly accepted the moniker of ‘ benevolent dictator’. In many ways Singapore is a similar mirror image of China. It rewards those that ‘behave’, and ruthlessly punishes those who ‘misbehave’.
I think maybe these points of view are not more widely disseminated because they would lead to the loss of a considerable amount of intellectual camoflage essential to the currency of a number of academic positions.
The Postmodern condition can be defined as the rejection of Industrialism as the defining methodology of society. Or by disenfranchisement from Industry, both of which lead individuals to focus on the Self. For some, this can lead to a more authentic life. For others, it leads to the lifestyle of January 6. Now, with common folk having access to computers, trucks, and guns, someone will have to define the Self in a postmodern milieu.
@@dr.michaelsugrue Well, everything is relative. I guess. Leni Riefenstahl considered her subjects to be authentic. But I meant authentic as genuine, coming naturally from impulses of the archetypal self, without being vitiated by the framework of industrialism. Yeats called inauthentic living “automatonism.” Like Ashli, who ignored Democratic reforms of usury and charged with the mob Part of the self is animal aggression. There is also rationalism, aesthetics and the transcendent. Robert M. Pirsig used the term "quality" to mean an authentic, harmonious preconscious relationship between these impulse systems. Pirsig used the word “quality,” much the same as Heidegger used “authenticity.”
Dad said that Riefenstahl, Heidegger, Goebbels and the rest WERE authentic, which makes manifest the vacuity of such moral judgement. What is authenticity good for? Why should we want it? It is a verbal disguise for nihilism, insignificant and empty.
What would be more authentic than living out the logical conclusion of your moral believes. If you believe the election was stolen it would an obligation to storm the capitol, if no other option is available.
I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated
Self promotion: I made a summary of Lyotard's book and spent over teo weeks making his ideas intelligible. Many people say it's great so you might like it 🙈 ua-cam.com/video/LIZwhWwSaJY/v-deo.html
Isn't P.M a necessary 'check and balance' mechanism by which power of once group is kept in check by the ever emerging marginal elements and participants that were previously unrepresented in the Democratic process. It is those many factions being able to hold the symbolic dagger to plunge in to the symbolic 'Caesar' that tries to take total control? Not saying anything is good or bad about it though through this lens it does have some function.
I think the question of Silencing the Different is not whether the majority feels the terror, or whether a minority feels terror in a given moment, but that when some established line is crossed, overt physical terror is very likely to emerge. If something is prohibited, then eventually coercive force and carceral behavior will be expressed. This implication and potentiality is apparently what is being opposed. We seem to be left with coordinating feelings and arriving by experiment at what arrangements of subjectivities will achieve equilibrium and lasting adherence. It wouldn't be "right" or "wrong" but that set of assumptions that relatively few dislike. Until, of course, people are "convinced" to expand the line of taboo by a new mass feeling that catches on. So a Constitutional order would not say what is right but make appeals to what most people find acceptable in terms of how change is managed.
@@dr.michaelsugrue Thanks for responding! Your lectures are amazing. I do think that criticizing Alex Jones, resisting his program, and taking legal action against him is valid. It's inevitable that people harmed will react. And I suppose our governments are ways to socialize and moderate our reactions. We are fated to be with others. We will always struggle to find some way to make life workable with others. The social element, suggested way back with Socrates and his ethics, cannot be totally shaken. In this I take a little from Edouard Glissant in that dialogue, no matter how fraught or seemingly incommensurate, is still just about all we really have. Whether by prose or poetry, the continued effort appears unavoidable.
Nice thread...good read although I maybe a tad pro 11clappt, Sugrue is teaching and he does it well and as unbiased as well, however LKoffie's remark, " positioning yourself as the arbiter of what constitutes culture must be very flexible". Okay...we all need to think what makes "you the arbiter". Food for thought. TY
Visited this like an old family photo album. Was once interested in postmodernism. Now it seems mostly irrelevant -- or even clueless considering the online threat and recent turn or return to authoritarianism in American and World politics... A thing at best to be nostalgic about. Edit _:_ should add, though _:_ Great lecture _!_
Hmmm, Postmodernists as Romantics? According to Jakobsen's schema of arranging cultural historical periods along syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes, Romanticism and Modernism are both paradigmatic (metaphor, e.g.) and Realism and Postmodernism are both syntagmatic (metonymy, tangents, etc.).
You really opened my eyes on this point, Ryan: I just checked and found that Lyotard died in 1998, so this lecture must have been made before then. I (perhaps rather foolishly) always assumed these were new lectures (I greatly admire Dr. Michael's skill as a teacher) and was impressed by the fact that he had not gone the hi-tech route of computer aids, Powerpoint, etc. Whenever this series of excellent lectures was filmed, it proves once and for all that one can be a splendid communicator of philosophical ideas without putting one's head into the technotronic noose which constricts so much of our lives today!
You should check out mark Fisher’s hauntology. It’s all about the slowing down of our cultural development. There are some great videos on UA-cam about it.
@@gravenewworld6521 Have watched some of Mark Fisher's long (5 hours) audio talk on UA-cam about 'Hauntology' from 2011. He has many very stimulating and valid ideas, it seems to me. So much of what he says could be applied to the appalling and cowardly Covid world that people have blindly and ignorantly rushed headlong into (masking our own humanity and distancing ourselves from others as though they are all our killers - all for an alleged virus that worldwide and in general has, for the 'infected', a 99% survivability rate!). Mark Fisher talks about the constant 'unease' that is being generated in our society - and my God, don't we see that today. And it is being deliberately cultivated by the mega-mighty at the top of the pyramid of control - because nations of people who are in fear can much more easily be manipulated into surrendering their personal sovereignty, dignity and human freedoms than those who are fearless, brave and able to CRITICALLY QUESTION and THINK FOR THEMSELVES!
It never ceases to make me laugh how anyone can state "There are no meta narratives" without admitting the categorical, definitive, absolutist nature of their statement. Gee, and I thought the heart of philosophy was self-awareness and developing objectivity towards oneself??
The thing I don't get is that how can one even claim that all ideas and discourse should maintain equal weight (even if that weight is weightless) when our time is finite and certain thoughts behaviours and ideas are demonstrably more beneficial than others. It's not even that there is no space for bad ideas or even gobbledegook. But that in order to live our lives in the finite time we have we seek ideas that provide that more for less value
I think that there's two ways he'd respond to that. (1) Recognizing some action or ritual as "demonstrating" a truth is itself driven by ideology. You can run some experiment or count bushels of grain, and draw a graph aligning that number with some policy about crop rotation or weather patterns, and that's one ritual. But you could also be a medicine man and gesture towards the sky in supplication for rain, and understand that if the entity provides rain and a boon in grain it's pleased with your supplication, but if that entity withholds the rain and there is no grain, you did something wrong & must show contrition. And that's another ritual. Or a short step away, you could be an indigenous person that respects traditional practices of crop rotation and organic fertilization as better than nitrogen & phosphorus based fertilizers, because that's "the way of our people", versus a 1960s Green Revolution scientists hyper-focused on "ending world hunger" and pushing certain chemical use & land ownership structures on to a population, but not fully recognizing or appreciating yet the environmental harm all that nitrogen & phosphorus was going to do to the environment over the next 50 years, or the fact his policies are empowering a few rich landowners and actually making life worse for poor small-plot landholders. All of these could be said to be rituals of "demonstration". But which one you think is the "true demonstration" depends on your individual values and ideology. (2) This may be the same point in different words, but you may want to say, aside from how you demonstrate it, "more bushels of grain are just better than fewer". But the bushels of grain don't carry any intrinsic value in and of themselves. Saying that "more is better" is also a value based on ideology. And it may be that that ideology revolves around reinforcing the power of landowners (which can create the most bushes of grain), which in turn reinforcing some coercive social structure of the powerful over an exploited population. E.g., some of the cost of extra grain may be worse working conditions. And so the naked proposition that "more is always better" isn't so clear from the mass of unemployed farmers' perspective. The focus on one feature of a commitment makes people in the thrall of the ideology blind to the hidden cost to hidden people of that same commitment. I learned the ropes in a US philosophy department, so the way post modernists seem to nonchalantly throw out any value to empirical science drives me up the wall too. But I do think it's important to represent their position fairly, and to consider my own blinds pots and instances where they may have a point, in the right context.
@@cademosley4886 great explanations btw. I guess my answer is yes these motives and metrics may be ideologically driven not make these ideologies of equal merit (if that is indeed the postmodernist claim). Each of those afformentioned groups has an ideology that suits their own aims with their own resources and are in fact in some degree of competition and cooperation about how their ideologies will be fulfilled and to what measure. And such a hierarchy of ideologies will emerge both on the personal and interpersonal level. Even from the starting point of these ideologies is not on level footing. As the small land owners ideology did not emerge before the hunter gatherer ideology. And the cure world hunger ideology could not emerge before the industrial farmer ideology. I guess what im saying is time and space has set the arena for subjective truths to duel, however (i believe) there are objective truth which act as a lynch pin to this time and space arena.
While I think this is an incredible lecture, his ending sentiments on how people don't realize they're terrified because there aren't enough dissenting opinions offered aged very poorly. The whole point in these scenarios is to lull a population and protect them from what they shouldn't be aware of, for years or decades, until their ability to choose, know why they believe what they believe, or hold their own opinions and make their own decisions is severely constrained, and those who rule over them are selected from a miniscule group of elites who all offer the same lack of inherent value or benefit to anyone underneath, and they have no power to stop the tide any longer. Their terror is now realized.
I think I understand your argument but the problem with telling people they should be terrorized by the conditions they are is that you are exerting your will to power on them. Why should they believe your meta narrative? Every civilization is corrupt in some way. People will always be enslaved in some way or another
@@crisgon9552 I don't necessarily believe that people should accept my narrative. It's just my observation of the society around me. I believe there is a terror gripping our collective consciousness deep down that seems to be chipping away at our souls, and pushing people on the edge over the brink. The difference with our time now is the sheer amount of information and ease of access. While that does create obvious complication, with enough time and research from diverse sources you can form a unique and fairly comprehensive opinion on the challenges with our environment today. What I found is that those in power insert terror as a driving force into our lives if we are unaware. But being aware does not necessarily help, as we may gain the terror of seeing the machinations of the world forces and their growing success. So I think in either case, terror is a much more prominent part of our reality. That said, I have my own biases. I'm curious to know what everyone else finds.
Question Doctor. The video quality, the decor and even your own head look like they were recorded in the 80s or 90s. But the critique of the post modernists seems post 2010 (or as I say post occupy wall st) could you please clarify? (For the benefit of my subjective objectivity) thanks.
RIP Dr Sugrue. Thank you for all the knowledge you gave us!
Hi died ?
no
@@Tyrannosaurus_5000
Unfortunately @@Tyrannosaurus_5000
Still alive
@@Tyrannosaurus_5000 january of 2024
"There was a time long ago, when indignation was an emotion, now it's a job." Truer words have never been spoken.
whenever he's transitioning and hits us with the "nowww..." it is always deeply gratifying
Cool. Did you copy/paste this one directly from the other videos or did you at least try to put your own spin on it?
@@promark5317 Ironically, you comment is less original. So is this one. Chill. Nowww… Why criticise, man?
@@salvit6024 I don't even remember what this was about. Why revive a 6-month-old conversation? Do you have nothing better to do? So f'n cringe rofl 🤣 🤣
So cool this guy, “there was a time when indignation was an emotion, now it’s a job”
What is cool about that? Don't you see the fascism in that quote?
@@lekkerkoffie8605 "REEEE FASCISM" go back to reddit while the adults talk, mkay?
18:40 "To silence someone who is generating an alternative discourse is to terrorize that person. It is an unjust and oppressive activity"
@@lekkerkoffie8605 I don't, could you please genuinely explain it to me🙏🏽
@@metalsoup6950 someone who has never read and therefore cannot identify and critique fascist philosophy who defaults to-"Anything I don't like is fascist, and the less I like it, the more fascist it becomes."
very few professors can speak about such topic like this man. This is master class lecturing
I especially like the way he employs straw man arguments and innuendo to articulate his criticisms.
Thank you very much Dr. Sugrue... I dread the day that there are no new uploads. Your lectures are absolutely priceless and a glowing legacy of your academic work that, God willing, will serve as a guiding light for countless generations of humanity.
Hear! hear! my lad! hear! hear
He’s great, but this is a little hyperbolic
Nice profile picture dude.
@@markswamy6830 Amen
Perhaps dramatic but indeed possible
4:29 “There was a time when indignation was an emotional, now it’s a job.” My favorite line of his ever.
I love the way you're able to make a lecture on philosophy sound like the narration of a chess match with one set of ideas battling another.
So it’s a game then? Winning rather than finding the truth, or attempting to grapple with it.
He said like a narration of a chess game. We play Language Games so his comment isn't that far off. He mentioned nothing about winning or losing.
@@pbohearn to find the truth in a world full of false information, there must be winner and loser. i’m sure you’re familiar with socrates walking around the streets of athens testing strangers ideas of politics and life in order to find truth. if we become complacent with our ideas as “good enough” without stopping to think “what if i’m wrong?” there is no growth
@@pbohearn if game could loosely refer to engaging in a stimulating activity for the sake of passing time, yes this is a game. The search for "truth" should not be your main priority. I mean it's cool feeling like you have the right answers but I think prioritizing mental stability is more fulfilling
@@pbohearno. Think about the position of chess pieces at a given time. Then let truth and chaos represent the white and black pieces. The point of philosophy is to better position the white pieces such that humans have prosperity in the face of chaos
Rejecting everything except the self… great summary of postmodernism. Beautiful lectures; clear, fluid, and to the point
Sabino Luévano Since then, postmodernism has evolved to reject the self in favor of the state and the collective
@@michaelthomas6280 not really. There are many postmodernisms, left and right-wing, even centrist posmodernism. Republicans are so postmodern in their radical cynicism and nihilism. Democrats are postmodernists in their addiction to "constructionist approach" to everything.
@@sabinoluevano7447 Republicans are Nihilists? what are you talking about? The left, in America are much closer to Nihilism than anything.
@@sabinoluevano7447 Yeah. The left is much more nihilistic, unless you're talking about the extreme right.
@@sabinoluevano7447 But i'd recommend u to explore why people voted for trump first, so u can get a kickstart understanding of classical liberalism and their emphasis on freedom of speech.
"The result of this scrupolosity is not intellectual cleanliness, it is intellectual sterility". That's my sense too. Thank you!
That was one of the most brilliant explanations of the issue of abortion I've ever heard.
RIP. Your lectures are diamond in a flow of information
This man has been pwning the intellectual elite for 30 years. Damn, Michael, you truly are a gem. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to be able to access this.
@Thomas Flynn That is fucked up dude
I never thought I would encounter an intellectual equal to Jordan Peterson. This man transcends even his scope of philosophy. We are so lucky to have this for free.
@@Craiglicious000 Sugrue and many other living philosophers far exceed Peterson. Peterson doesn't read the books and ideas he critiques, for if he had read any post-modernism, like Sugrue clearly has, he would not use the term post-modern marxism. It is a contradiction in terms, and as Sugrue points out, Lyotard attacks critical Marxism. The fact that Peterson does not know this, is embarrassing.
@@OdoItal When I used to listen to Peterson, I was like 18 and hadn't a clue about philosophy so I took me a while to outgrow him. And while he actually is pretty well read, you're right about his ridiculous post modern prejudice.
@@Craiglicious000 fair enough
I very much appreciate these lectures. Even when all of my professors say to pursue another subject worthy of my time, or could achieve income necessary to retirement. Philosophy isn't meant to be profited off of and compartmentalized into a monetization scheme. And it isn't just a language game to confirm my rhetorics. It is a place to learn, live and grow. We are all human and although we may reject each other we should not reject life itself.
I mean this respectfully but if you have professors saying that you've got some lousy professors on your hands! Dream big kiddo. You could be the next Kant if you set your mind to it!
It's unlikely you'll be the next Kant as per Kishore Das, but at least you will have given thought to your actions. And you know what the ancients said about the unreflected life........
When is philosophy NOT life...you are right it is about self growth...why are the two not one. The beauty of your professors is that they see a shining star in you...it all ego...theirs. Do what works with your soul. Also appreciate it that your professors care. Bottom line, it's your life.
Sugrue is legendary.
"There was a time, long ago, that indignation was an emotion, now it's a job". Brilliant!
No, now its a response to misinformation of the type Sugrue expounds.
@@robbeck4358 Sad, an attempt to elevate your vocabulary and use the word you found in a thesaurus in the wrong context; all in a futile attempt to add character to a baseless claim. A better word for your sentence would be purports. Expound is used for a positive context, purport for the derogatory. 👍
@@Reignor99 thanks, I don't want to make personal criticism of Sugrue. The postmodernists saw today's problems 50 years ago. These identify how democracy is overwhelmed by technology, now digitally integrated by the security state. Hiding behind the framework of democracy now lies a financial-military elite determined to take-over the world on a false prospectus. US capitalism is destroying the environment and the social contract for 90% of humanity. This is the line of conflict reflected today in relations between US/Russia and China. The Non-Aligned Movement is also on board here, so 140-150 countries of the world have watched and been victims of US capitalism, not democracy, for seventy years since the 2ndWW. The end of the Unipolar/Imperial moment is here, or the end of the world. WW3 is here already: simply search online for references.
@@robbeck4358 I mean, he was explaining Lyotard quite well I think. Just very opinionated, but that doesn't matter if you know which parts are opinions and which parts are theory, I didn't mind it as someone who generally tends to lean to the postmodern way of viewing things.
I have to add that mostly all of his critique of Lyotard is completly valid and well thought out.
Sugrue is a fascist because of that quote. So brilliant!
Such a fitting subject for the times we're in
Thank you for posting your old lectures! I wished more professors would have done so for posterity
The best channel on UA-cam. An extremely enlightening introduction to philosophy and the history of Western thought. Thanks, Messrs. Sugre and Staloff!
This is my favorite lecture so far.
He is adorable-just wish he wasnt talking so fast so it would be easier to think along. Replaying his lectures is fortunately a great pleasure. What a very very cool individual❤
Scrupuloscity! Fantastic word. What an amazing lecturer, cant get enough!
45:23 "And the result of this scrupulosity is not intellectual cleanliness; it's intellectual sterility." Hard hitting!
Wow. What a blisteringly riveting account of today.
Bloody brilliant lecture!! Wowwwww!!! Amazing stuff
Vert grateful for helping me understand Lyotard’s fascinating ideas.
What a guy! Thanks for the knowledge Dr Sugrue, RIP
“There’s a tendency in post-modernism to reject the external world because it gets in the way of our egocentrism.” (32:12)
TO THE POINT, CLEAR. LOVE DR. SUGRUE❤️
HIs final lines relieved my strained attitude toward post-modernism,
Thank you for the great lecture. It feels like attending a live class.
Brilliant and so prescient that it hurts.
you helped me go through my master's program smoothly.
“I can be confused on my own.”
Story of my life.
This man, this will of truth has burned in to my being, I hope all the best for this man offspring and to his soul.
I wish you success with this channel, professor. Excellent content.
Straight 45 mins. Thanks for the Journey professor ♥️
This guy was so far ahead of the curve.
This guy is fab. Great lectures. I got hooked a few days ago. I've always been negative about Pomos since Alan Sokal, Gross + Levitt, etc, but I'm not brainy enough to take it apart like Dr Sugrue.
“Indignation used to be an emotion, now it’s a job.”
Now it's a moral virtue.
jordan peterson
This is great. It is so great that the lecturer seems scared of the idea! Great stuff!
This. Was. Awesome.
"it is intellectual sterility"
I think I agree. It seems to me that this idea of paralogy as it is explained in this lecture requires grand meta narratives just to exist. If the rate of rebellion against these meta narratives grows faster than the rate at which meta narratives grow then what do we do when there are no more meta narratives to rebel against? What do we do when mt. Everest is gone?
Dad said, Pomo was not cultural life as we know it, it was a 20th century intellectual fungus that lived off of the fallen redwoods of the Enlightenment. Now its last exponents are starving and raging that there is nothing left to consume, it has morphed into totalitarian cancel culture and no platforming by the neo-Maoist/neoliberal Trustafarians' and their online noise machine. Dad quoted Cormac McCarthy, "Too dead to know enough to lie down", nowadays, pomo is a period piece from another century, awkward and boring, intellectual carrion inedible except by a desperate clan of defanged intellectual predators who have spent their careers like Japanese soldiers hidden in tropical jungles in 1965, still vigorously fighting a war that had been lost many years ago.
@@dr.michaelsugrue What does your Dad think comes next?
I love the fact that Dr, Sugrue is alive and throwing shade. That statement is the biggest white pill, what a savage!
@@dr.michaelsugrue “the fallen redwoods of the enlightenment” is such a beautiful, beautiful sentence. Thank you.
@@dr.michaelsugrue It's funny that your dad calls out pomos for using the word "interrogate" as being an emotive word which betrays their naive romanticism and yet you and he are just as biased in your editorializing about pomo
Dang Michael, tell us how you really feel
It seems to me that Sugrue does not give a fair account of Lyotard's work. Like many American commentators, Sugrue seems to fall in to the trap of suggesting that Lyotard is advocating a Postmodern way of thinking, or a way of doing philosophy, but Lyotard's book is arguably much more of an account of how we 'do think' rather than how we 'should think'. Lyotard linked the rise of Postmodernism to the development of "late capitalism." He argued that consumer culture and mass media, key features of late capitalism, create a fragmented and superficial experience of knowledge. Although Lyotard highlighted the inadequacies of grand narratives, he also questioned the absolute dismissal of all grand narratives, arguing that some narratives can offer valuable guidance, even if they are not universally applicable.
I dont know enough ( yet ) to form an opinion either way, but I thank you for your nuanced contribution to this episode. I will reflect on your inputs.
Exactly. I read the work as more a description of our postmodern condition more than anything else.
and yet this is precisely what Humanities became.
Excellent talk. Ten points for gryffindor!
“Why are you criticizing this?” Why, because it’s there 😂😂 lmao
God bless you sugrue ❤️
Release all of the Sugrue archives…
I need this dumbed down one more level.
I wish I could find high level discourse among my peers
"The was a time when indignation was an emotion. Now it's a job." Brilliant description of academic professionalization corrupting the humanities.
Imagine saying this to a room full of people who (claim to) have read Foucault 🤣
Well done!
And thus why we are living in a world of “ intellectual sterility”, he was like an Oracle talking about our modern reality.
Dunno when this was recorded or when Lyotard wrote his works but given the content I'd easily be fooled into thinking it was all post 2018.
If Ezra Pound's "Make It New!" is the mantra of modernism, then surely Sugrue's clever turn of phrase here, "Systematic Suspicion", must be a strong candidate as postmodernism's mantra.
I should add that I do disagree with Prof Sugrue's conclusion. I don't think Lyotard is posturing. A simple implication of paralogy (infinite discourses) is that an individual who is cognizant of some of those discourses has more choice, and therefore more freedom, to pursue what they like/don't like or trust/don't trust. I don't see how this is conveying a false impression (if that is what is meant by posturing in the lecture).
@@JeanPaulRGagnonHumans advanced thus far with having some kind of bullshit detector. Post Modernists don't like bullshit detectors
35:00 really funny that this was mentioned. this was exactly what i was saying to my mother the other day in light of the supreme court’s recent decision. had no idea mr lyotard came up with this idea already but it’s something i definitely believe about modern politics. these people dont even agree on the axioms, so how could they possibly agree on conclusions.
Discourse is dead
Gesture is the new god,
Knowledge replaced by opinion, persuasion has won over the need to convince
Gesturing into the void
Gesturing into the direction of talking to ourselves
It seems the Frankfurt school and the postmodernists have kind of perfectly predicted the modern man, I understand there is a certain amount of jest in the last quarter of the lecture, towards this way of thinking but it has no doubt come to fruition.
So what now!
Spot on
Build structures which mould and support strong individuals and design an empire around a set of guiding principles and values extracted from the best of empires?
Or wait for it all to collapse into nuclear Armageddon. Can't be worse than the shitshow we live in, can it?
We are the hollow men
thank you professor
Love this one, even better than the Heideggger one, have to rewatch it again
Surely this means that to maintain that 2 + 2 = 4 is unjust and totalitarian and is unfair to those who believe otherwise, e.g. 2 + 2 = 3. But this would make so everyday a task as shopping impossible. We aren't even allowed to tell the time. Or weigh out food. He is deeply involved in a performative contradiction.
Yep.
I learned from Professor Sugrue about Singapore and why I don't agree with a friend of mine who loves Singapore and lived there. I realized that one point the prof mad about it was mistaken . The "terror" is not directed toward the rewarded who somehow are living there but toward the punished who don't espouse capiatlism probably as enthusiastically as those who are rewarded by it. It's like so many who think of the U.S. as a wonderful place. These are those perhaps addicted to it's rewards and able to attain them, not those suffering poverty and homeless, who may be terrorized by their "negative" opinions.
Excellent Contribution. Lee Kawn Yu gladly accepted the moniker of ‘ benevolent dictator’. In many ways Singapore is a similar mirror image of China. It rewards those that ‘behave’, and ruthlessly punishes those who ‘misbehave’.
I think maybe these points of view are not more widely disseminated because they would lead to the loss of a considerable amount of intellectual camoflage essential to the currency of a number of academic positions.
The Postmodern condition can be defined as the rejection of Industrialism as the defining methodology of society. Or by disenfranchisement from Industry, both of which lead individuals to focus on the Self. For some, this can lead to a more authentic life. For others, it leads to the lifestyle of January 6. Now, with common folk having access to computers, trucks, and guns, someone will have to define the Self in a postmodern milieu.
Dad said Authenticity is a vacuous intellectual dead end and the January 6 crackpots are as authentic as their opponents.
@@dr.michaelsugrue Well, everything is relative. I guess. Leni Riefenstahl considered her subjects to be authentic. But I meant authentic as genuine, coming naturally from impulses of the archetypal self, without being vitiated by the framework of industrialism. Yeats called inauthentic living “automatonism.” Like Ashli, who ignored Democratic reforms of usury and charged with the mob Part of the self is animal aggression. There is also rationalism, aesthetics and the transcendent. Robert M. Pirsig used the term "quality" to mean an authentic, harmonious preconscious relationship between these impulse systems. Pirsig used the word “quality,” much the same as Heidegger used “authenticity.”
Dad said that Riefenstahl, Heidegger, Goebbels and the rest WERE authentic, which makes manifest the vacuity of such moral judgement. What is authenticity good for? Why should we want it? It is a verbal disguise for nihilism, insignificant and empty.
"Left wing gud, right wing bad" that's how you sound like.
What would be more authentic than living out the logical conclusion of your moral believes. If you believe the election was stolen it would an obligation to storm the capitol, if no other option is available.
Excellent lecture
At 3:40 does anyone feel that there is a nod to Rand?
Prof. Sugru has quite a kind of machine gun delivery. Still quite interesting, learning a lot from this lecture. Thank you.
What good is the YT algorithm if I'm just now finding these videos?
I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated
Self promotion: I made a summary of Lyotard's book and spent over teo weeks making his ideas intelligible. Many people say it's great so you might like it 🙈
ua-cam.com/video/LIZwhWwSaJY/v-deo.html
Have you read Robert Greene?
You could check out contrapoints on UA-cam!
Continously Brilliant 🌹
Victor J. Vitanza
Jean-François Lyotard Chair and Professor of Rhetoric and Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS.
Isn't P.M a necessary 'check and balance' mechanism by which power of once group is kept in check by the ever emerging marginal elements and participants that were previously unrepresented in the Democratic process. It is those many factions being able to hold the symbolic dagger to plunge in to the symbolic 'Caesar' that tries to take total control? Not saying anything is good or bad about it though through this lens it does have some function.
What a genius interpretation. Maybe though he’d add something given the global situation. The final word “sterility” seems particularly ironic.
Man, he is on fire here
Does he talk about the tuberculosis/Egypt thing in this lecture? I'm trying to discover what Lyotard really meant when he talks about that.
I think the question of Silencing the Different is not whether the majority feels the terror, or whether a minority feels terror in a given moment, but that when some established line is crossed, overt physical terror is very likely to emerge. If something is prohibited, then eventually coercive force and carceral behavior will be expressed. This implication and potentiality is apparently what is being opposed.
We seem to be left with coordinating feelings and arriving by experiment at what arrangements of subjectivities will achieve equilibrium and lasting adherence. It wouldn't be "right" or "wrong" but that set of assumptions that relatively few dislike. Until, of course, people are "convinced" to expand the line of taboo by a new mass feeling that catches on. So a Constitutional order would not say what is right but make appeals to what most people find acceptable in terms of how change is managed.
Is the "silencing" of Alex Jones and his goons "terroristic". I think NOT silencing this avaricious conspiracy inventor is terroristic.
@@dr.michaelsugrue Thanks for responding! Your lectures are amazing.
I do think that criticizing Alex Jones, resisting his program, and taking legal action against him is valid. It's inevitable that people harmed will react. And I suppose our governments are ways to socialize and moderate our reactions.
We are fated to be with others. We will always struggle to find some way to make life workable with others. The social element, suggested way back with Socrates and his ethics, cannot be totally shaken. In this I take a little from Edouard Glissant in that dialogue, no matter how fraught or seemingly incommensurate, is still just about all we really have. Whether by prose or poetry, the continued effort appears unavoidable.
Engagement.
Thank ya kindly.
Yeah I dont care for Lyotard..
Love Dr Sugrue’s sarcasm toward the end 😂
What a joy to hear someone interrogate the pomo interrogators with such ‘Scrupulousity’
Nice thread...good read although I maybe a tad pro 11clappt, Sugrue is teaching and he does it well and as unbiased as well, however LKoffie's remark, " positioning yourself as the arbiter of what constitutes culture must be very flexible". Okay...we all need to think what makes "you the arbiter". Food for thought. TY
"Indignation used to be an emotion, now its a job"
Visited this like an old family photo album. Was once interested in postmodernism. Now it seems mostly irrelevant -- or even clueless considering the online threat and recent turn or return to authoritarianism in American and World politics... A thing at best to be nostalgic about.
Edit _:_ should add, though _:_ Great lecture _!_
I gotta hand it to you... you got a lot of class, stay classy my friends
Thank you Professor!
Nice jacket! Looks like a Brooks Brothers jacket!
Unrestrained narcissism…sums up the age we find ourselves in.
Thank You!
Hmmm, Postmodernists as Romantics? According to Jakobsen's schema of arranging cultural historical periods along syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes, Romanticism and Modernism are both paradigmatic (metaphor, e.g.) and Realism and Postmodernism are both syntagmatic (metonymy, tangents, etc.).
THANK YOU
Wow, when was this recorded late 80s/early 90s? How little things have changed culturally in the past 30 years
You really opened my eyes on this point, Ryan: I just checked and found that Lyotard died in 1998, so this lecture must have been made before then. I (perhaps rather foolishly) always assumed these were new lectures (I greatly admire Dr. Michael's skill as a teacher) and was impressed by the fact that he had not gone the hi-tech route of computer aids, Powerpoint, etc. Whenever this series of excellent lectures was filmed, it proves once and for all that one can be a splendid communicator of philosophical ideas without putting one's head into the technotronic noose which constricts so much of our lives today!
You should check out mark Fisher’s hauntology. It’s all about the slowing down of our cultural development. There are some great videos on UA-cam about it.
@@gravenewworld6521 Thanks, Grave New World. I'll look into that. Sounds worthwhile.
John Richardson anytime, let me know what you think sometime
@@gravenewworld6521 Have watched some of Mark Fisher's long (5 hours) audio talk on UA-cam about 'Hauntology' from 2011. He has many very stimulating and valid ideas, it seems to me. So much of what he says could be applied to the appalling and cowardly Covid world that people have blindly and ignorantly rushed headlong into (masking our own humanity and distancing ourselves from others as though they are all our killers - all for an alleged virus that worldwide and in general has, for the 'infected', a 99% survivability rate!). Mark Fisher talks about the constant 'unease' that is being generated in our society - and my God, don't we see that today. And it is being deliberately cultivated by the mega-mighty at the top of the pyramid of control - because nations of people who are in fear can much more easily be manipulated into surrendering their personal sovereignty, dignity and human freedoms than those who are fearless, brave and able to CRITICALLY QUESTION and THINK FOR THEMSELVES!
Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! 👏👏👏
Lyotard is the measure of all things. The tragic outcome would be the obsolescence of judges and lawyers.
It never ceases to make me laugh how anyone can state "There are no meta narratives" without admitting the categorical, definitive, absolutist nature of their statement. Gee, and I thought the heart of philosophy was self-awareness and developing objectivity towards oneself??
Post modernity is stagnating intellectual cancer
The thing I don't get is that how can one even claim that all ideas and discourse should maintain equal weight (even if that weight is weightless) when our time is finite and certain thoughts behaviours and ideas are demonstrably more beneficial than others. It's not even that there is no space for bad ideas or even gobbledegook. But that in order to live our lives in the finite time we have we seek ideas that provide that more for less value
I think that there's two ways he'd respond to that.
(1) Recognizing some action or ritual as "demonstrating" a truth is itself driven by ideology. You can run some experiment or count bushels of grain, and draw a graph aligning that number with some policy about crop rotation or weather patterns, and that's one ritual. But you could also be a medicine man and gesture towards the sky in supplication for rain, and understand that if the entity provides rain and a boon in grain it's pleased with your supplication, but if that entity withholds the rain and there is no grain, you did something wrong & must show contrition. And that's another ritual. Or a short step away, you could be an indigenous person that respects traditional practices of crop rotation and organic fertilization as better than nitrogen & phosphorus based fertilizers, because that's "the way of our people", versus a 1960s Green Revolution scientists hyper-focused on "ending world hunger" and pushing certain chemical use & land ownership structures on to a population, but not fully recognizing or appreciating yet the environmental harm all that nitrogen & phosphorus was going to do to the environment over the next 50 years, or the fact his policies are empowering a few rich landowners and actually making life worse for poor small-plot landholders. All of these could be said to be rituals of "demonstration". But which one you think is the "true demonstration" depends on your individual values and ideology.
(2) This may be the same point in different words, but you may want to say, aside from how you demonstrate it, "more bushels of grain are just better than fewer". But the bushels of grain don't carry any intrinsic value in and of themselves. Saying that "more is better" is also a value based on ideology. And it may be that that ideology revolves around reinforcing the power of landowners (which can create the most bushes of grain), which in turn reinforcing some coercive social structure of the powerful over an exploited population. E.g., some of the cost of extra grain may be worse working conditions. And so the naked proposition that "more is always better" isn't so clear from the mass of unemployed farmers' perspective. The focus on one feature of a commitment makes people in the thrall of the ideology blind to the hidden cost to hidden people of that same commitment.
I learned the ropes in a US philosophy department, so the way post modernists seem to nonchalantly throw out any value to empirical science drives me up the wall too. But I do think it's important to represent their position fairly, and to consider my own blinds pots and instances where they may have a point, in the right context.
@@cademosley4886 great explanations btw. I guess my answer is yes these motives and metrics may be ideologically driven not make these ideologies of equal merit (if that is indeed the postmodernist claim). Each of those afformentioned groups has an ideology that suits their own aims with their own resources and are in fact in some degree of competition and cooperation about how their ideologies will be fulfilled and to what measure. And such a hierarchy of ideologies will emerge both on the personal and interpersonal level.
Even from the starting point of these ideologies is not on level footing. As the small land owners ideology did not emerge before the hunter gatherer ideology. And the cure world hunger ideology could not emerge before the industrial farmer ideology.
I guess what im saying is time and space has set the arena for subjective truths to duel, however (i believe) there are objective truth which act as a lynch pin to this time and space arena.
Was just about to ask you to post this one :-) Where I first heard about Systems Theory and Performativity.
Even Nietzsche says we should be "Yea" sayers. I think there is truth, and we should find it.
The result of this lecture is a desire to read Plato (again...more carefully)
Bro who the fuck are you? Nietzsche critiqued absolute truth
While I think this is an incredible lecture, his ending sentiments on how people don't realize they're terrified because there aren't enough dissenting opinions offered aged very poorly. The whole point in these scenarios is to lull a population and protect them from what they shouldn't be aware of, for years or decades, until their ability to choose, know why they believe what they believe, or hold their own opinions and make their own decisions is severely constrained, and those who rule over them are selected from a miniscule group of elites who all offer the same lack of inherent value or benefit to anyone underneath, and they have no power to stop the tide any longer. Their terror is now realized.
I think I understand your argument but the problem with telling people they should be terrorized by the conditions they are is that you are exerting your will to power on them. Why should they believe your meta narrative? Every civilization is corrupt in some way. People will always be enslaved in some way or another
@@crisgon9552 I don't necessarily believe that people should accept my narrative. It's just my observation of the society around me. I believe there is a terror gripping our collective consciousness deep down that seems to be chipping away at our souls, and pushing people on the edge over the brink.
The difference with our time now is the sheer amount of information and ease of access. While that does create obvious complication, with enough time and research from diverse sources you can form a unique and fairly comprehensive opinion on the challenges with our environment today.
What I found is that those in power insert terror as a driving force into our lives if we are unaware. But being aware does not necessarily help, as we may gain the terror of seeing the machinations of the world forces and their growing success. So I think in either case, terror is a much more prominent part of our reality.
That said, I have my own biases. I'm curious to know what everyone else finds.
Honestly, Lyotard seems horrifically nihilistic. Socrates would put him in his place. I am addicted to your lectures, and grateful!
My interpretation of Leotard's work is that it's a French cookbook with a delicious recipe for foie gras. Anyone who says I'm wrong is oppressing me.
would love to read this essay ❤️
What’s good for the goose…
Can you cite me a postmodernist that all interpretation are of equal validity? last time I read Derrida he meant the exact opposite.
Sounds deep. Like Jordan Peterson said "what is "is"?"
Question Doctor.
The video quality, the decor and even your own head look like they were recorded in the 80s or 90s. But the critique of the post modernists seems post 2010 (or as I say post occupy wall st) could you please clarify? (For the benefit of my subjective objectivity) thanks.