Hello, Professor Sugrue. I hope you are doing well, inshallah. I wanted to thank you for your incredible lectures. I have been listening to them for a little over a year now and have learned a great deal about history, religion, war, and philosophy. You also helped me understand the parochialism in the Frankfurt School and your criticism for Foucault was a soothing balm on my nerves. I recently listened to your thoughts on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. What a novel. I wish there were more professors like you. I wager if America listened to scholars like you, we wouldn't be where we are today. (If this is self-indulgent pessimism, please forgive me.) Take great care and thank you so much again.
@@andyayala9119🙄 You're playing into the exact same type of political polarization Sugrue said *did* lead to the rise of fascism in Germany and much of Europe.
I found Dr Sugrue when I was deployed in Iraq in 2020. He changed my life, possibly saved it. Thank you, Michael. Sincerely gratitude for the monumental task which you undertook throughout your life, you did so well.
I miss you, Professor Sugre. Sending love to Genevieve and to your family and friends. I have been reading Hannah Arendt' s books, and she was born in Germany, right in the middle of it all. She also finally made it to the United States after her travels of getting out of Nazi Germany and France, and she taught here in the USA, lived in NYC. "The Banaily of Evil" on the life of Adolf Eichman, 1963."The Life of Mind, volumes 1&2 , the last not complete because of her passing, Mary McCarthy, close friend helped her edit her work Dec.4 1975, deathbed book. "The Human Condtion," Vita at Tiva-Labor Work Action, " The Origins of Tolertarism," Hannah Arendt was one of the greatest political philosophers of the 20th century ?
I love how Dr. Sugrue always gives a succinct summary of one stream of thought and then gives the contrasting view - as in Kant vs Hume. This allows what is often a seemingly abstract concept to become quite tangible.
"Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition" and "The Frankfurt School" do not belong in the same sentence. The Frankfurt School was a subversive Marxist think tank bent on destroying Western traditions, including intellectual ones.
@@SonoftheAllfather I don’t think that’s a fair interpretation of their thinking. Frankfurt School thinkers were evil, but they were incredibly smart. Their thinking is quickly becoming the largest politically active philosophy in the modern West. Give credit where credit is due.
It's magnificent and charismatic, I cannot find any video today more decent than this Prof. Sugrue, whose old school style lecture sounds much much more inspiring than the seemingly inspiring videos, which actually tell much less and only try to catch your eyes.
This man has an IQ off the planet. He makes what seemed like masses of abstract history (in the way we a taught it) into meaningful narratives which connect all the dots between the various global movements and ideologies. Because they are the DNA of history, after all. Thankyou Sugrue 🥰 it would be my dream to meet you!!
He's well spoken but conveniently takes everything at face value, never questioning the true intentions and backgrounds of people like Marx (mordecai levy), freud etc. He's either extremely naive or intellectually dishonest
@@willmercury Not an argument. Try to explain why Marx, Freud and the Frankfurt school should be taken at face value. Not questioning the nefarious underlying intentions of these "philosophies" is at best profoundly naive
If you hate Jews that is your problem not mine. Either you save the antisemitic conspiranoia for your froggy friends in some alt-Right 1488 circle jerk in some internet fever swamp, or I'll ban you. This is your only warning, if you are not intellectually housebroken you will be banned. Grow up or grow out.
He’s describing current young adults’ social life pretty accurately Also he’s perfectly calling out the push for multiculturalism and political correctness
@@iknowcpr he discusses multiculturalism in a positive light. He says adherents of the Frankfurt school underestimate *the value* of multiculturalism and its role as a bulwark against fascism.
God bless you, professor Sugrue, where ever you are. You will be missed. And gawddamn, here is the acid intellect we see in his later years, in all its glory. Boy oh boy, I’m glad I’m not Adorno. Yet he is quite kind and respectful to Habermas, whom I’ve still not read. I’ll get to him one of these days, professor.
The clearest explanations of philosophy I've ever heard. Every strain of thought is put into context and his examples are great. Meanwhile id like to strap Adorno to a chair like in A Clockwork Orange and blast like Slayer at a high volume for 19 hours and see what effect it has on him.
So you want to torture people? It’s the clearest explanation because the substack/Jordan Peterson devotees who haven’t read the Frankfurt theorists like people who also don’t understand the Frankfurt theorists- like this Christian professor, academic hack.
@@Anthony-yd2weWhen you can construct a comment free of a string of non sequiturs get back to me. I've read the Frankfurt School. Whats your point? Yeah I want to torture people dude. I'm all about torture. It was a joke dumbass.
I continue to appreciate you dr. Was subscribed at less than 200 subs, glad to see you at over 4K. Your knowledge is slowly but surely finding its way to your audience and I hope it continues well into the future.
@@benbell9170 I've listen to around 70% of the lectures, I find the one about Gadamer and Hermeneutics to be the best. Then again, "Freud and Philosophy" is great as well.
another foreign student that comes the west late, and thinks they discovered knowledge, and the rest of us were ignoring it...and that they are the elite of the elite, because the schools tell you how super smart you are, as they take your money, like every class prior.
@@williamjenkins4913 They were internationalist Jews, they realy didn't feel much German. They were one of the reasons that Hitler saw the Jews as a woke poison for the German nationalists. There are some parallels with Trumpism and academia.
The Frankfurt School was laying the plot groundwork in the 1950s. it's not that difficult to predict it. I'm 72, I watched it all play out. They had a lot of help from any number of Marxist/Communist groups.
Espectacular aunque no siempre estoy de acuerdo con la mirada es increíblemente ilustrativa e inspiradora la forma que el doctor tiene de construir sus clases. Saludos desde Nuñez, Buenos Aires, Argentina
these videos are a treasure of information. thank you thank you thank you such a good class too its very entertaining and communicated in a way that you can really understand it
43:11 Adorno was talking about popular jazz, i.e. white artists and not them. Big band jazz muzak was not respected by those artists either but it was jazz to most people and the buying public. He also had interesting views into improvisation as such, without having to distinguish between good and bad improvisation. His pompousness is often amusing and a challenge to the rest of us, so “but Miles” isn’t a sufficient response, we have to address the underlying arguments about the industry that produced the genre.
Interesting take on Adorno's dislike of jazz. Are you thinking that he never heard actual jazz but "jazzy" pop music? If so, I'm glad to hear it! I'd always just that it merely was a by-product of a mis-guided Eurocentric elitism.
Louis Armstrong was adopted by a Jewish couple. He always said he got much of his musical influence from Jewish culture. Jews in the American South since the beginning of the colonies, and so few seem to know about it.
Am 60. Was a philosophy student, after the BA, into a PhD program with my proposed thesis" The Existential Marxism of Jean Paul Sartre ". Ended up a high school teacher, but always a searcher. Am glad it didn't work out. I see VEDANTA as the highest level. Luck
@@pricesmith1793 There's a critical theory of every academic field just by coincidence then? Most of higher learning following their standards from admissions to grants is just happenstance?
Except for Marcuse and Habermas, I think Christians would benefit from the general thrust of the Frankfurt School (a critique of the Enlightenment, mass culture and consumerism).
@@aesop1451 Really? Thats like saying that Christians would benefit from specific parts of fascism. Christians are traditional, family oriented and conservative, all the things the Frankfurt school was against. There main ethos was one of individualism, narcissism and sexual perversion. It's the same old lie of "Communism really is great, you just havn't applied it right". The Frankfurt school had neither good intentions nor good ideas.
This one is quite straightforward. Technological rationality, linguistic philosophy, liberal politics and pop culture all create ateleological alienation, resulting in a moral vacuum by which authoritarian governments not only may, but will ultimately give rise to tyrannies. The intellectual individual with a conscience must oppose these forms of oppression, or be assimilated into it. “If you're not with us, you're against us”. Love how Professor Sugrue passionately defended jazz from Adorno XD
@@curtisjackson5793 Yes, although more from the political/cultural perspective than from a philosophical theory approach. The Distributist often laments the detriments of the ateleological nature of modern western society in particular. Both channels, along with their wider network, do well in discussing the hollowed-out parts of contemporary society and identifying the causes for such. I'll reply again when I find the most apropos videos.
@@curtisjackson5793 Here are some good ones but I encourage you to explore their channels. They're both fairly consistent in titling their videos accurately. Auron MacIntyre on managerialism in liberal politics ua-cam.com/play/PLdn36Wooon2zeM_Aj2fhMhinXDenW8s82.html Distributist on post-truth: ua-cam.com/video/_77Sq_6dy7A/v-deo.html Also, you might find this playlist interesting -- Academic Agent is a British academia-exile: ua-cam.com/play/PLO0MloTwGgjj3Z84ZVNeLhBiUpCG0m1CM.html Hope something strikes your fancy! Cheers!
LOL... yep, he clearly has zero patience w/ the nihilistic 'Post-Modernists', aka 'Progressives', and their own narcissistic thinly-disguised 'Will to Power' !
@@angeldejesuslopez8600 Funny how whenever you mention 'narcissism', one always seems to pop right up, as if to say, "Hey, are you guys talkin' about little ole *_ME_* again!" ;-p
LowenKM progressives are not the same as postmodernists at all. they are completely opposed: progressive think there’s a telos and things can be better; postmodernists don’t.
The most interesting part to me was that when he gave this lecture (in the 90's) he thought that the notion of an ultra-polarized society - between the extreme right and left - to be uncharacteristic of America. Yet not 30 years later that is exactly the position in which we find ourselves.
I think it is absolutely necessary that the teaching of all philosophy starts with that premise as once you can conceptualize that, embody it, everything changes.
How amazing to still discover hidden gems like this whole series of basically university-level lectures, tucked in amidst all the usual cat videos, gun nuts, paranoid ramblings, how-to's and other assorted UA-cam 'stuff' (lol)... thank you so much, Michael!
The critique to close this lecture is an absolute hammer. It's powerful and irrefutable. It's more timely, somehow, as the ideological descendents of the Frankfurt school plow forward in their long March through the institutions.
He specifically calls out the reason the Frankfurt school's analysis on the rise of fascism in Germany was accurate there, but not in the US, was because they were highly polarized politically and saw an evaporation of their political center, and, because the Frankfurt school "underestimated the value of multiculturalism" which serves as a powerful bulwark against fascism. True when this lecture was given, but the United States today is the most hyper-polarized it has ever been, more extreme than most of the world. We've also seen a rise in the far right who explicitly decry and rally against multiculturalism specifically. His lecture sure is timely for the present, but apparently not for the reasons you seem to think it is...
@@Reliken Fascism comes from the authoritarian personality. Adorno believes that is inherent in the family structure of Europeans. Multiculturalism is death of Europe as we are witnessing now. Fascism was also a reaction to the ***ish communists.. lol
Except for Marcuse and Habermas, I think Christians would benefit from the general thrust of the Frankfurt School (a critique of the Enlightenment, mass culture and consumerism).
I watched many videos from professor sugrue, really enjoying learning with him, I just feel that he shouldn’t restringe his analysis to only “American free society” he may have forgot that América plays very different when it comes to external countries, almost all countries in latin America lived thru dictatorships in the 1900s that are either approved or supported by the American state, so yes, America is one of the most free countries, but it came with the expense of others
You have followed the Critical Theory model of generalizing history for effect quite well, here. If the U.S. ever had so much control over Central and South America, (not to even mention Mexico), there would never have been so many Nazis and Communists running free over it all.
I appreciate your lectures Dr. Sugrue. You have a way of describing different schools of philosophy succinctly and without going into some random tangent. Unlike *another* popular professor who's videos are 2 hours + and hard to follow. This certain professor also talks about the Frankfurt school and Marxist philosophy but I've not been able to follow along on any of his videos to get an understanding of the philosophy of the Frankfurt school.
@@mayaram2411 Ah, the thing is that- this is, of course, my understanding, could very well be off- when he talks about "cultural marxism" what he means is "the method of evaluating cultural relations the way Marx evaluated economic relations" not "the method of evaluating cultural relations the way Marx would evaluate cultural relations." (Basically that it is all of the oppressed and the oppressors.) And this nuance is quite relevant actually, as Marx would not, more than likely, not agree with the "woke" perspective, which itself is gone-out-of-hand version of the Frankfurt school.
@@mayaram2411 Other than briefly mentioning the modern cultural movements we are seeing JP doesn't really talk much on those topics, except when the lectures are specifically addressing those topics. If you watch his biblical series he really only mentions those ideas in passing. Same with his series on personality. Granted I think this professor has a better understanding of the Frankfurt school then JP does, although JP certainly has a better, or at least comparable understanding of the psychoanalysts and the existentialists. JP also has an extensive historical knowledge on totalitarianism in the 20th century and talks about both the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany quite extensively. Point is, I don't think that JPs work is as hard to decipher as you are making out.
@@garethreynolds9061 “Peterson understanding” is an oxymoron. The man doesn’t read and hasn’t even read the authors or works he cites. Anecdotal stories are not an extensive historical knowledge either.
The idea that the Frankfurt School was a response to German National Socialism is somewhat of a misconception. The Frankfurt School, a group of intellectuals associated with the Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany, developed its ideas in the context of broader political, social, and economic changes in the early 20th century, but its origins preceded the rise of National Socialism (Nazism). The intellectual project of the Frankfurt School was largely shaped by Marxist theory, critical philosophy, and a desire to understand the dynamics of capitalism, culture, and authority. The scholars associated with it-such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse-were concerned with understanding why revolutionary movements had failed in Western Europe after World War I and why authoritarianism and fascism seemed to be gaining ground. They were particularly focused on how ideology, culture, and media shaped mass consciousness. National Socialism did become a significant focus for the Frankfurt School, but only after the rise of the Nazi regime in the 1930s. Many members of the School were Jewish and Marxist, which made them targets of Nazi persecution. As a result, they fled Germany and relocated to the United States, where they continued their work. In their analysis of fascism, Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) explored how Enlightenment rationality could devolve into forms of domination and oppression, including the authoritarianism of Nazism. However, it’s important to emphasize that the Frankfurt School’s concerns extended beyond just responding to National Socialism. They were interested in critiquing modern capitalist societies and understanding the broader relationship between economy, ideology, and power. National Socialism became a significant case study for their broader critique of authoritarianism and the manipulation of mass culture. In summary, the Frankfurt School did address National Socialism, but it was not formed specifically as a response to it. Their work was shaped by a wider critique of both capitalism and totalitarianism, of which National Socialism became an important part after their forced exile from Germany.
American liberalism eventually synthesized with the Frankfurt school. Billionaires, Mainstream media, and big corporations all parrot some bastardized version of the Frankfurt school ideology.
Thank you for mentioning Thomas Mann's "Dr Faustus" at the outset of your lecture. Mann's collaboration with, or less kindly, his appropriation of Schoenberg and Adorno's ideas are well documented in "The Doctor Faustus Dossier" Ed.E. Randol Schoenberg. The rather privileged group of German refugees who settled in Southern California formed their own quite influential intellectual circle. So much more to be said about the brilliant "Doctor Faustus" and Mann's treatment of Arnold Schoenberg's 12 tone scale through the character of composer, Adrian Leverkuhn.
I'd be curious to hear, now that we're a little further along into the 21st century, if he's still quite so sure that liberal democracy is unlikely to morph into fascism when faced with crisis
I recently have discovered and have been relishing Dr Sugrue’s lectures. I have heard much criticism and blame laid upon the likes of the Frankfurt school, Marcuse, Adorno, Gramscii, Marx and Hegel as the forbears of the social and political ravages caused by social justice, critical theory and intersectionality. I am curious about whether Dr. Sugrue shares this criticism, given the developments in the past few years. I really appreciate Dr. Sugrue’s approach - he’s reasonable, easier to track, comprehensive in discussing related and contrasting ideas, and he’s simply engaging and enjoyable. Many thanks for helping to educate the public!
My own feeling is that what currently passes under the heading "Cultural Marxism," e.g. "queer theory," "intersectionality," and CRT, where the universe revolves around an individual's gonads or skin color, is essentially a parody of the Frankfurt School, or at least an absurdly dumbed-down distortion of that erudite approach to social analysis. Particularly Jordan Peterson deliberately fails to realize this, and annoyingly presents CM as a fast track to Orwell's "Animal Farm," although "The Emperor's New Clothes" would be a more truthful analogy. I'd love to hear an intelligent lecture comparing the two disciplines.
@@alannothnagle Jordan Peterson doesn't fail to realise this. It is his agenda to misinterpret CRT,queer theory,and critical theory. As for cultural marxism, that's literally an new version of the old nazi propaganda "cultural Bolshevism". And no, none of these theories you just mentioned thinks the universe revolves around somebody's skin colour. Infact CRT's is trying to understand in how many ways the skin colour and class position of an individual has affected his or her life,and trying to dismantle it.
@@shahsadsaadu5817 You sound like a marxist knowingly lying their ass off parroting instructed talking points about the hot topics deconstructing the evil you are gleefully supporting.
@@shahsadsaadu5817 Yes of course, how silly of me, I'm projecting that 33 video playlist of marxist dogma literally titled Marxism that is on your channel, whoopsie my bad.
"You must always think back to the context of German politics: There's no center to move towards. If you don't support the Marxist alternative, then almost by default you find yourself among the fascists." Something especially salient now that our politics are more polarized than they ever have been since the civil war.
Normally, extreme leftists think that way. To them, even moderates are the enemy. Funnily enough, there is a thin line separating fascism and communism at the other end, because the political spectrum is like a ring.
These lectures are amazing! I wonder how he would now view his own stance of the Frankfurt school with the new rise of fascism across the globe that’s seemingly in tandem with the information/social media age-vast amounts of “truncated reasoning.” Any dubious ethos can be attached to this wealth of information and weaponized.
Always interesting to hear others perception. Thanks for sharing freely. Horkheimer and Adorno were in real psycological peril. In my opinion some of their harsh criticism is rooted in that. Just imagine being a jewish Marxist having to flee the culture you love. The comerades in Moscow are not really friendly towards you. So you have to take refuge with the class enemy. They must have felt humiliated.
Touche. This is a very good point that I had never considered before. Thinking about Marxist/Freudian refugees in their own terms is a very insightful train of thought. Let's extend this to include Dante. The deepest pit of Hell is reserved for the grossest evil, returning evil in return for good like Brutus, who was rendered inhuman by political fanaticism, who helped assassinate Caesar after Caesar spared his life and that of his family during the Civil Wars. Unlike Benjamin who committed suicide (despairing of capture by the Nazis) Adorno and Horkheimer and their ilk spent the war working on their pallor in LA and then moved to Columbia University postwar.Their response to surviving the war was to publish books claiming that the was no substantial difference between the Nazi regime, which had recently killed twelve million people in death camps and the US, which had saved their lives and helped destroy the Nazi regime. You have a good mind. Please don't go to grad school in the soft sciences.
@@dr.michaelsugrue Jewish ‘secular identity’ is a fascinating subject. Skepticism. Cynical. Ingratitude. Even vitriolic hatred and spite. Lacking elements of grace and forgiveness. A falsified belief in their own messianic vision. Tikum Olam as they say. The most peculiar aspect is their sense of ethnic superiority, despite their secular religious distortion. I’d be curious to hear more about how Sabbateanism changed European Jewry and how it flowed into sociological movements. It’s a movement that has also been cleverly whitewashed from history. But it’s relevant.
Save the antisemitic conspiranoia for somebody who finds you as interesting as you find yourself. If you are not intellectually housebroken, I will ban you. Only warning.
@@warreng3813 Well spoken. The Culture of Critique would break Dr Michael Sugrue.. Although his only cope is to call you a conspiracy theorist. Pathetic for such an educated individual.
Holy shit! That was the funniest of all the lecture series. I love the Frankfurt School - but they are nuts. This prof is excellent - very technical but accessible.
Okay at this point I have to stop and write a comment because over and over again these things he disagrees with the Frankfurt school for are things I agree with so much and it's jut getting funny at this point, culminating in the point at 31:00 where he's mentioning how they viewed America's authoritarianism as very insidious which is something I've always thought for years already. Sure, the way they "proved" that conclusion wasn't very sound, and I know I can't prove it myself, it's just something you feel, just as he surely feels the opposite.
Thanks for uploading, these fantastic lecturers, I can't get enough. The Frankfurt school ought to be better known; they've had a very quiet but pernicious effect on culture.
Yep, and all the more amazing that the same culture which gave us so many of history's greatest thinkers, also gave rise to two World Wars and some of the greatest human atrocities of modern times.
Dad said, "Gramsci was raised Catholic and he wasn't a member of the Frankfurt School, but since you haven't read his work nor that of these other writers you mentioned, that may have escaped your notice. Hitler rejected what he called "Jewish physics" in the Theory of Relativity because Einstein and many of his fellow physicists were Jews. You know as much about the Frankfurt School as you do about General Relativity - zero - and the fact that you share with a Hitler a hatred of Jews so desperate that you erupt in vacant rage about the activities of Jewish intellectuals on the basis of their religion rather than on the content of their thought, about which, I reiterate, you understand sweet nothing, is unbright. An empty head and an angry heart are a poisonous mixture, young man."
@F.W. Yes if he can't even mention at ALL that they are Jews he just shows that he has a blind spot. And his latest comment shows that he's a clown. We have woken up and realised that Capitalism AND Communism are two sides of the same Shekel. How about he go over Hilaire Belloc or Julius Evola or Ezra Pound? I'm tired of this Neo-Liberal Jewish Materialism, it's soul-sucking.
Brilliant lecture in a series of them. I still wonder though, what Sugrue would have to say about the emerging autocratic minority-rule movement in the US and other nations in the past 10 or so years. An update would be great--does he still feel that the liberal democracies (as exemplified by 20th century USA) are so different from/act as a bulwark against ------ these tendencies?
"Man is always in chains but he is born free." We are in chains because upholding life i a constant struggle, although much less after industrialization. Tell me what animal is free to do what it wants. Most spend nearly all their time searching for food. We search to generate value that we can sell in order to buy what we need for our sustenance. And an iPad now and then...
Beautiful lesson! Unfortunately, nowadays it seems that the heirs of the Frankfurt School have managed to obtain a great deal of political power. But I am optimistic: the tide will hopefully turn again.
I have no idea. I never listen to my own lectures. When I give a lecture, 30 seconds after I've finished I forget everything I've said. They slip away like dreams do just after waking. I refuse to accept the exclusive choice between Heidegger and Marcuse. I think them both bombastic advocates of midcentury German pseudo omniscience. The Nazi right gave us death camps, the Marxist left gave us the Gulag, there is no point in preferring one to the other. I am not inclined to participate in an insane dispute about whose atrocities are the most atrocious. I despise the gnostic resentment central to Critical Theory. I propose something better: instead of make believe gnostic omniscience, a Socratic humility about ourselves is more honest. Instead of resentment I suggest a deep and complete thankfulness for all we have been given. We are not entitled to exist and yet we are gifted an entire universe. Everything (like resentment) that is not gratitude is pathology.
@@dr.michaelsugrue First of all thank you for answering me...secondly I still think that that "pathological" search for errors in what it is and looking for meaning beyond what we see in front of our objective and social world is in a way one of the many "ontological conditions" of being with capital B ...or basically said, we just cant help it...we wanna break the norm, criticize the status quo and so on...
Hello, Professor Sugrue. I hope you are doing well, inshallah. I wanted to thank you for your incredible lectures. I have been listening to them for a little over a year now and have learned a great deal about history, religion, war, and philosophy. You also helped me understand the parochialism in the Frankfurt School and your criticism for Foucault was a soothing balm on my nerves. I recently listened to your thoughts on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. What a novel. I wish there were more professors like you. I wager if America listened to scholars like you, we wouldn't be where we are today. (If this is self-indulgent pessimism, please forgive me.) Take great care and thank you so much again.
No, we wouldn't, we don't listen to people like him in the States here at all.
We listen to AOC and MSNBC
Despite these HQ lectures Americans don’t listen to intellectuals because intellectuals are the bane of society, particularly Marxists.
@@andyayala9119🙄 You're playing into the exact same type of political polarization Sugrue said *did* lead to the rise of fascism in Germany and much of Europe.
@@Relikenspeaking the truth leads to fascism😮
I genuinely thought I was clicking on a video of Norm Macdonald talking about the Frankfurt school. I don’t know why, but that’s the truth
Same. He kinda looks like him. Thought it was gonna be funny...
Congrats to everyone being here before this channel explodes
Oh yes
Came here for the 90’s aesthetic but stayed for the philosophy
Hey any idea where you can find a similar channel like this? Thxs
One can only hope.
@@davidalvarez7262 Try "The Academic Agent" channel! 👍🏻
I found Dr Sugrue when I was deployed in Iraq in 2020. He changed my life, possibly saved it.
Thank you, Michael. Sincerely gratitude for the monumental task which you undertook throughout your life, you did so well.
we’re still in iraq? lol damn
@@JayDee-b5u
Indefinite protection 🤦🏻♂️😏
I discovered Pirsig when I was deployed in Afghanistan in 2011. Same deal. Glad to hear it, man. One day the world will listen to us.
Currently overseas listening to these in Iraq also haha. What a small world.
@@crisgon9552 hope all’s well my brother. I was amongst the last US troops in Mosul, then was in Erbil. Stay safe out there
I miss you, Professor Sugre.
Sending love to Genevieve and to your family and friends.
I have been reading Hannah Arendt' s books, and she was born in Germany, right in the middle of it all. She also finally made it to the United States after her travels of getting out of Nazi Germany and France, and she taught here in the USA, lived in NYC.
"The Banaily of Evil" on the life of Adolf Eichman, 1963."The Life of Mind, volumes 1&2 , the last not complete because of her passing, Mary McCarthy, close friend helped her edit her work Dec.4 1975, deathbed book.
"The Human Condtion," Vita at Tiva-Labor Work Action, " The Origins of Tolertarism,"
Hannah Arendt was one of the greatest political philosophers of the 20th century ?
Was she a member of the Frankfurt School?
I love how Dr. Sugrue always gives a succinct summary of one stream of thought and then gives the contrasting view - as in Kant vs Hume. This allows what is often a seemingly abstract concept to become quite tangible.
@@Impaled_Onion-thatsmine What an eloquently worded thought.
"Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition" and "The Frankfurt School" do not belong in the same sentence. The Frankfurt School was a subversive Marxist think tank bent on destroying Western traditions, including intellectual ones.
@@SonoftheAllfather Tell me you've never honestly engaged their theories without telling me...
@@TheRaveJunkie
I've engaged their theories ad nauseum. Tell me you're a snarky little POS without telling me...
@@SonoftheAllfather
I don’t think that’s a fair interpretation of their thinking. Frankfurt School thinkers were evil, but they were incredibly smart. Their thinking is quickly becoming the largest politically active philosophy in the modern West. Give credit where credit is due.
”A man is never so provincial as when he begins to legislate for the universe”
Beautiful quote
Lies again? Get educated learn english
@@NazriB ?
@@user-hu3iy9gz5j Trolling.
Christ disproves this
@@ExpiditionWild christ is a myth you are delusional
I would just like to thank you again for releasing your amazing lectures into the public arena.
I think his son posted it.
Le public arena
@@lookbovine I mean he posts lectures that he does privately in his home now, so it seems likely that he posted them.
My daughter, Genevieve.
@@dr.michaelsugrue Oh, like my grand-mother -- Genoveva.
I find myself addicted to these lectures, thanks Michael!
It's magnificent and charismatic, I cannot find any video today more decent than this Prof. Sugrue, whose old school style lecture sounds much much more inspiring than the seemingly inspiring videos, which actually tell much less and only try to catch your eyes.
This channel not only scratches my nostalgia itch for 90's media footage and Philosophical lectures in 1.
What a way to begin a new era! Clear knowledge, plain speaking from Dr Sugrue 👏🏻👏🏻
This man has an IQ off the planet.
He makes what seemed like masses of abstract history (in the way we a taught it) into meaningful narratives which connect all the dots between the various global movements and ideologies. Because they are the DNA of history, after all. Thankyou Sugrue 🥰 it would be my dream to meet you!!
He's well spoken but conveniently takes everything at face value, never questioning the true intentions and backgrounds of people like Marx (mordecai levy), freud etc. He's either extremely naive or intellectually dishonest
@@Axel-gn2ii Greetings, Mr. Dunning-Kruger!
@@willmercury Not an argument. Try to explain why Marx, Freud and the Frankfurt school should be taken at face value. Not questioning the nefarious underlying intentions of these "philosophies" is at best profoundly naive
If you hate Jews that is your problem not mine. Either you save the antisemitic conspiranoia for your froggy friends in some alt-Right 1488 circle jerk in some internet fever swamp, or I'll ban you. This is your only warning, if you are not intellectually housebroken you will be banned. Grow up or grow out.
@@dr.michaelsugrue Wow what a dishonest cope.
Wow! Just finished this video. I actually took notes. Good God I will have to watch this again a few more times. So much I learned. Thank you
Education available to everyone-- I am so grateful.
The fact that there is no "center" with these individuals is a great point. I've never considered that. Thank you.
He’s describing current young adults’ social life pretty accurately
Also he’s perfectly calling out the push for multiculturalism and political correctness
Political correctness, yes, but he did not say anything about multiculturalism. That may be projecting a bit.
@@jacobturner7060 ah i see
@@jacobturner7060he mentions multiculturalism in the last few minutes.
@@iknowcpr he discusses multiculturalism in a positive light. He says adherents of the Frankfurt school underestimate *the value* of multiculturalism and its role as a bulwark against fascism.
@@Reliken How did that work out in Yugoslavia?
God bless you, professor Sugrue, where ever you are. You will be missed.
And gawddamn, here is the acid intellect we see in his later years, in all its glory. Boy oh boy, I’m glad I’m not Adorno.
Yet he is quite kind and respectful to Habermas, whom I’ve still not read. I’ll get to him one of these days, professor.
Didn't he die recently?
"We live in the world of Herbert Marcusé."
~~James Lindsey, New Discourses Podcast
Thank you. Your contribution and these lectures are priceless. True treasure.
The clearest explanations of philosophy I've ever heard. Every strain of thought is put into context and his examples are great. Meanwhile id like to strap Adorno to a chair like in A Clockwork Orange and blast like Slayer at a high volume for 19 hours and see what effect it has on him.
So you want to torture people? It’s the clearest explanation because the substack/Jordan Peterson devotees who haven’t read the Frankfurt theorists like people who also don’t understand the Frankfurt theorists- like this Christian professor, academic hack.
@@Anthony-yd2weWhen you can construct a comment free of a string of non sequiturs get back to me. I've read the Frankfurt School. Whats your point? Yeah I want to torture people dude. I'm all about torture. It was a joke dumbass.
@@Andrew_Cotton Slayer rocks. He might enjoy it.
@@Andrew_Cotton We’re all laughing our fat asses off, good one
@@mpgallogly then you haven’t been paying attention; the man was plain sour. P.S.: Slayer rules! :)
Another fabulous lecture. Rarely does Mr. Sugrue disappoint with his insights into Philosophy and, especially, Sociology.
"If it were a meal, I'd send it back." Amazing!
This is so rich with content and knowledge. You are genius, Michael. It can't be understated
'A crypto theological construct of gnostic resentment'. Killed it
The Woke....what a quote
What do you think he means by that, and where is that quote
I know, what a dramatic and fabulous ending! He killed it!
@@germanikolaas It’s the last line of the lecture.
@@MarcosElMalo2 the last line of the lecture is not this though? Where is this line?
Certainly one of the best lectures I’ve heard from Dr. Sugrue, among many others.
My copy of Minima Moralia shows up in the mail and Dr. Sugrue uploads his lecture, a good good day.
A good day, indeed.😎
Binge listening the entire channel.
Same
I continue to appreciate you dr. Was subscribed at less than 200 subs, glad to see you at over 4K. Your knowledge is slowly but surely finding its way to your audience and I hope it continues well into the future.
I first saw his lecture on Marcus Aurelius a couple years ago. I’m so excited he has his own channel now.
@@cheapcraftygirlsweepstakes2338 That was a knockout lecture!
@@cheapcraftygirlsweepstakes2338 that was the first lecture of Prof. Sugrue I watched as well. a true gem on UA-cam.
@@benbell9170 I've listen to around 70% of the lectures, I find the one about Gadamer and Hermeneutics to be the best. Then again, "Freud and Philosophy" is great as well.
another foreign student that comes the west late, and thinks they discovered knowledge, and the rest of us were ignoring it...and that they are the elite of the elite, because the schools tell you how super smart you are, as they take your money, like every class prior.
It was more a Jewish school of philosophy than a German school of philosophy.
It was thoroughly Jewish. Almost exclusively.
Interesting how most people always confuse those two.
They were German Jews. So very much both.
@@williamjenkins4913 Sure pal.
@@williamjenkins4913 They were internationalist Jews, they realy didn't feel much German. They were one of the reasons that Hitler saw the Jews as a woke poison for the German nationalists. There are some parallels with Trumpism and academia.
My God, the man is absolutely brilliant. The foresight is fuckin uncanny.
The nazarene was not God.
When you apply Marxist theory, it all becomes clear.
The Frankfurt School was laying the plot groundwork in the 1950s. it's not that difficult to predict it. I'm 72, I watched it all play out. They had a lot of help from any number of Marxist/Communist groups.
"Quite a bit of ink was spilt." I'm really enjoying these lectures.
Espectacular aunque no siempre estoy de acuerdo con la mirada es increíblemente ilustrativa e inspiradora la forma que el doctor tiene de construir sus clases. Saludos desde Nuñez, Buenos Aires, Argentina
this is brilliant! Thank You from the bottom of my heart and the top of my intellect ...
I second that!
So excited to have found this channel!
I love his passion, it's really inspiring
I am glad that I found this channel. Thanks professor
these videos are a treasure of information. thank you thank you thank you
such a good class too its very entertaining and communicated in a way that you can really understand it
43:11 Adorno was talking about popular jazz, i.e. white artists and not them. Big band jazz muzak was not respected by those artists either but it was jazz to most people and the buying public. He also had interesting views into improvisation as such, without having to distinguish between good and bad improvisation. His pompousness is often amusing and a challenge to the rest of us, so “but Miles” isn’t a sufficient response, we have to address the underlying arguments about the industry that produced the genre.
Thank you for mentioning this! I'm so frustrated by these superficial but highly confident understandings of Adorno!
Interesting take on Adorno's dislike of jazz. Are you thinking that he never heard actual jazz but "jazzy" pop music? If so, I'm glad to hear it! I'd always just that it merely was a by-product of a mis-guided Eurocentric elitism.
Louis Armstrong was adopted by a Jewish couple. He always said he got much of his musical influence from Jewish culture. Jews in the American South since the beginning of the colonies, and so few seem to know about it.
What an amazing lecture. One of the best critiques and evaluations of the Frankfurt School I've ever seen. This should be required viewing in schools.
I love the breakdown he gives in these lectures
Am 60. Was a philosophy student, after the BA, into a PhD program with my proposed thesis" The Existential Marxism of Jean Paul Sartre ". Ended up a high school teacher, but always a searcher. Am glad it didn't work out. I see VEDANTA as the highest level. Luck
Thanks for posting - very effective presenter 🙏
Such a coherent and informative lecture. Thank you for your effort.
Just found this channel. Subbed and liked. Thank you so much!!!!!
In 2021 the comment about Heidegger in 15:50 deserves consideration
The rise of Biopolitics makes people like Heidegger more important than ever before.
@@esgood2020 Transhumanism, metaverse...
Exaclty my thought.
I love his attacks on the dogmatic thinking at the end.. the Frankfurter Schule, unfortunately, disproportionally dominates humanities to this day
Clearly not. It maybe fashionable, but it's certainly nothing more.
@@pricesmith1793 There's a critical theory of every academic field just by coincidence then? Most of higher learning following their standards from admissions to grants is just happenstance?
Except for Marcuse and Habermas, I think Christians would benefit from the general thrust of the Frankfurt School (a critique of the Enlightenment, mass culture and consumerism).
@@aesop1451 Really? Thats like saying that Christians would benefit from specific parts of fascism. Christians are traditional, family oriented and conservative, all the things the Frankfurt school was against. There main ethos was one of individualism, narcissism and sexual perversion. It's the same old lie of "Communism really is great, you just havn't applied it right". The Frankfurt school had neither good intentions nor good ideas.
@@Pyryp2Just cohencidence mate.
This one is quite straightforward.
Technological rationality, linguistic philosophy, liberal politics and pop culture all create ateleological alienation, resulting in a moral vacuum by which authoritarian governments not only may, but will ultimately give rise to tyrannies. The intellectual individual with a conscience must oppose these forms of oppression, or be assimilated into it. “If you're not with us, you're against us”.
Love how Professor Sugrue passionately defended jazz from Adorno XD
Great way to put it. Have you heard of the YTers Auron Macintyre or The Distributist?
@@alternativeavenues7664 never heard of'em. Do they elaborate on these topics?
@@curtisjackson5793 Yes, although more from the political/cultural perspective than from a philosophical theory approach. The Distributist often laments the detriments of the ateleological nature of modern western society in particular.
Both channels, along with their wider network, do well in discussing the hollowed-out parts of contemporary society and identifying the causes for such.
I'll reply again when I find the most apropos videos.
@@curtisjackson5793
Here are some good ones but I encourage you to explore their channels. They're both fairly consistent in titling their videos accurately.
Auron MacIntyre on managerialism in liberal politics ua-cam.com/play/PLdn36Wooon2zeM_Aj2fhMhinXDenW8s82.html
Distributist on post-truth: ua-cam.com/video/_77Sq_6dy7A/v-deo.html
Also, you might find this playlist interesting -- Academic Agent is a British academia-exile: ua-cam.com/play/PLO0MloTwGgjj3Z84ZVNeLhBiUpCG0m1CM.html
Hope something strikes your fancy! Cheers!
The best teacher of philosophy ive ever heard
This last minutes were just pure savagery. Loved it!
LOL... yep, he clearly has zero patience w/ the nihilistic 'Post-Modernists', aka 'Progressives', and their own narcissistic thinly-disguised 'Will to Power' !
The one on Lyotard too 👊
@@LowenKM calm down peterson jr
@@angeldejesuslopez8600 Funny how whenever you mention 'narcissism', one always seems to pop right up, as if to say, "Hey, are you guys talkin' about little ole *_ME_* again!" ;-p
LowenKM progressives are not the same as postmodernists at all. they are completely opposed: progressive think there’s a telos and things can be better; postmodernists don’t.
He's good at explaining things clearly
Excellent and timeless.
The most interesting part to me was that when he gave this lecture (in the 90's) he thought that the notion of an ultra-polarized society - between the extreme right and left - to be uncharacteristic of America. Yet not 30 years later that is exactly the position in which we find ourselves.
Rest in peace, Dr. Sugrue.
I think it is absolutely necessary that the teaching of all philosophy starts with that premise as once you can conceptualize that, embody it, everything changes.
Oh my goodness, from the thumbnail I thought this was going to be a Norm Macdonald SNL skit or something!
I kept scrolling and scrolling until I found your comment lol. I knew I couldn't have been the only person to think it was Norm from SNL 😅
@@seantv1510 😂
This analysis is basically in line with James Lindsay's - very satisfying.
How amazing to still discover hidden gems like this whole series of basically university-level lectures, tucked in amidst all the usual cat videos, gun nuts, paranoid ramblings, how-to's and other assorted UA-cam 'stuff' (lol)... thank you so much, Michael!
Amazingly articulate! Elegant & efficient choice of words and coherent thoughts! 👍👍
The critique to close this lecture is an absolute hammer. It's powerful and irrefutable. It's more timely, somehow, as the ideological descendents of the Frankfurt school plow forward in their long March through the institutions.
He specifically calls out the reason the Frankfurt school's analysis on the rise of fascism in Germany was accurate there, but not in the US, was because they were highly polarized politically and saw an evaporation of their political center, and, because the Frankfurt school "underestimated the value of multiculturalism" which serves as a powerful bulwark against fascism.
True when this lecture was given, but the United States today is the most hyper-polarized it has ever been, more extreme than most of the world. We've also seen a rise in the far right who explicitly decry and rally against multiculturalism specifically.
His lecture sure is timely for the present, but apparently not for the reasons you seem to think it is...
@@Reliken Fascism comes from the authoritarian personality. Adorno believes that is inherent in the family structure of Europeans. Multiculturalism is death of Europe as we are witnessing now. Fascism was also a reaction to the ***ish communists.. lol
Except for Marcuse and Habermas, I think Christians would benefit from the general thrust of the Frankfurt School (a critique of the Enlightenment, mass culture and consumerism).
This is simply incredible.
I watched many videos from professor sugrue, really enjoying learning with him, I just feel that he shouldn’t restringe his analysis to only “American free society” he may have forgot that América plays very different when it comes to external countries, almost all countries in latin America lived thru dictatorships in the 1900s that are either approved or supported by the American state, so yes, America is one of the most free countries, but it came with the expense of others
You have followed the Critical Theory model of generalizing history for effect quite well, here. If the U.S. ever had so much control over Central and South America, (not to even mention Mexico), there would never have been so many Nazis and Communists running free over it all.
When you hear that intro violin playing in the beginning, you know you're gonna enjoy that next 45 minutes
I appreciate your lectures Dr. Sugrue. You have a way of describing different schools of philosophy succinctly and without going into some random tangent. Unlike *another* popular professor who's videos are 2 hours + and hard to follow. This certain professor also talks about the Frankfurt school and Marxist philosophy but I've not been able to follow along on any of his videos to get an understanding of the philosophy of the Frankfurt school.
I assumed you were talking about Jordan Peterson, but I've seldom seen him mention the Frankfurt School.
@@beheadedteddy5327 yes I was. And he talks about cultural Marxism and communism in nearly all of his lectures.
@@mayaram2411 Ah, the thing is that- this is, of course, my understanding, could very well be off- when he talks about "cultural marxism" what he means is "the method of evaluating cultural relations the way Marx evaluated economic relations" not "the method of evaluating cultural relations the way Marx would evaluate cultural relations." (Basically that it is all of the oppressed and the oppressors.) And this nuance is quite relevant actually, as Marx would not, more than likely, not agree with the "woke" perspective, which itself is gone-out-of-hand version of the Frankfurt school.
@@mayaram2411 Other than briefly mentioning the modern cultural movements we are seeing JP doesn't really talk much on those topics, except when the lectures are specifically addressing those topics. If you watch his biblical series he really only mentions those ideas in passing. Same with his series on personality. Granted I think this professor has a better understanding of the Frankfurt school then JP does, although JP certainly has a better, or at least comparable understanding of the psychoanalysts and the existentialists. JP also has an extensive historical knowledge on totalitarianism in the 20th century and talks about both the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany quite extensively.
Point is, I don't think that JPs work is as hard to decipher as you are making out.
@@garethreynolds9061 “Peterson understanding” is an oxymoron. The man doesn’t read and hasn’t even read the authors or works he cites. Anecdotal stories are not an extensive historical knowledge either.
The idea that the Frankfurt School was a response to German National Socialism is somewhat of a misconception. The Frankfurt School, a group of intellectuals associated with the Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany, developed its ideas in the context of broader political, social, and economic changes in the early 20th century, but its origins preceded the rise of National Socialism (Nazism).
The intellectual project of the Frankfurt School was largely shaped by Marxist theory, critical philosophy, and a desire to understand the dynamics of capitalism, culture, and authority. The scholars associated with it-such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse-were concerned with understanding why revolutionary movements had failed in Western Europe after World War I and why authoritarianism and fascism seemed to be gaining ground. They were particularly focused on how ideology, culture, and media shaped mass consciousness.
National Socialism did become a significant focus for the Frankfurt School, but only after the rise of the Nazi regime in the 1930s. Many members of the School were Jewish and Marxist, which made them targets of Nazi persecution. As a result, they fled Germany and relocated to the United States, where they continued their work. In their analysis of fascism, Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) explored how Enlightenment rationality could devolve into forms of domination and oppression, including the authoritarianism of Nazism.
However, it’s important to emphasize that the Frankfurt School’s concerns extended beyond just responding to National Socialism. They were interested in critiquing modern capitalist societies and understanding the broader relationship between economy, ideology, and power. National Socialism became a significant case study for their broader critique of authoritarianism and the manipulation of mass culture.
In summary, the Frankfurt School did address National Socialism, but it was not formed specifically as a response to it. Their work was shaped by a wider critique of both capitalism and totalitarianism, of which National Socialism became an important part after their forced exile from Germany.
It's strange watching this in 2023 where American Liberalism is pretty much what the Frankfurt school thought
American liberalism eventually synthesized with the Frankfurt school. Billionaires, Mainstream media, and big corporations all parrot some bastardized version of the Frankfurt school ideology.
Great lectures! Crystal clear explanation.
Very good lecturer. Makes sense out of philosophical 🧐 nonsense. Marcuse, Adorno, etc.
The worst school of thought that was possible. Completely demoralizing and dehumanizing. Utterly destructive.
I heard you can hire this guy for parties.
Thank you for mentioning Thomas Mann's "Dr Faustus" at the outset of your lecture. Mann's collaboration with, or less kindly, his appropriation of Schoenberg and Adorno's ideas are well documented in "The Doctor Faustus Dossier" Ed.E. Randol Schoenberg. The rather privileged group of German refugees who settled in Southern California formed their own quite influential intellectual circle. So much more to be said about the brilliant "Doctor Faustus" and Mann's treatment of Arnold Schoenberg's 12 tone scale through the character of composer, Adrian Leverkuhn.
Bunch of good guys.
Great classes to watch during pandemics. Thanks!
I'd be curious to hear, now that we're a little further along into the 21st century, if he's still quite so sure that liberal democracy is unlikely to morph into fascism when faced with crisis
I recently have discovered and have been relishing Dr Sugrue’s lectures. I have heard much criticism and blame laid upon the likes of the Frankfurt school, Marcuse, Adorno, Gramscii, Marx and Hegel as the forbears of the social and political ravages caused by social justice, critical theory and intersectionality. I am curious about whether Dr. Sugrue shares this criticism, given the developments in the past few years. I really appreciate Dr. Sugrue’s approach - he’s reasonable, easier to track, comprehensive in discussing related and contrasting ideas, and he’s simply engaging and enjoyable. Many thanks for helping to educate the public!
My own feeling is that what currently passes under the heading "Cultural Marxism," e.g. "queer theory," "intersectionality," and CRT, where the universe revolves around an individual's gonads or skin color, is essentially a parody of the Frankfurt School, or at least an absurdly dumbed-down distortion of that erudite approach to social analysis. Particularly Jordan Peterson deliberately fails to realize this, and annoyingly presents CM as a fast track to Orwell's "Animal Farm," although "The Emperor's New Clothes" would be a more truthful analogy. I'd love to hear an intelligent lecture comparing the two disciplines.
@@alannothnagle Jordan Peterson doesn't fail to realise this. It is his agenda to misinterpret CRT,queer theory,and critical theory.
As for cultural marxism, that's literally an new version of the old nazi propaganda "cultural Bolshevism".
And no, none of these theories you just mentioned thinks the universe revolves around somebody's skin colour. Infact CRT's is trying to understand in how many ways the skin colour and class position of an individual has affected his or her life,and trying to dismantle it.
@@shahsadsaadu5817 You sound like a marxist knowingly lying their ass off parroting instructed talking points about the hot topics deconstructing the evil you are gleefully supporting.
@@bluesteel6310might be a bit projecting there bud. Everything i said is true,and you know it. So does Jordan Peterson
@@shahsadsaadu5817 Yes of course, how silly of me, I'm projecting that 33 video playlist of marxist dogma literally titled Marxism that is on your channel, whoopsie my bad.
Watching this as I've recently read the OSS supported the Frankfurt School.
37:00 Eerily prescient for our times
Miss you Professor
This guy is the Nardwuar of philosophy
This is awesome!! My brain hurts.
"You must always think back to the context of German politics: There's no center to move towards. If you don't support the Marxist alternative, then almost by default you find yourself among the fascists."
Something especially salient now that our politics are more polarized than they ever have been since the civil war.
Normally, extreme leftists think that way. To them, even moderates are the enemy. Funnily enough, there is a thin line separating fascism and communism at the other end, because the political spectrum is like a ring.
Welcome to Weimar 2.0 AKA USA.
These lectures are amazing! I wonder how he would now view his own stance of the Frankfurt school with the new rise of fascism across the globe that’s seemingly in tandem with the information/social media age-vast amounts of “truncated reasoning.” Any dubious ethos can be attached to this wealth of information and weaponized.
A bit reductive to say Erdogan and Modhi and Xi are fascist, though certainly authoritarian. I would considsr Erdogan and Xi left wing
Great work Dr Sugrue
Always interesting to hear others perception. Thanks for sharing freely.
Horkheimer and Adorno were in real psycological peril. In my opinion some of their harsh criticism is rooted in that.
Just imagine being a jewish Marxist having to flee the culture you love. The comerades in Moscow are not really friendly towards you. So you have to take refuge with the class enemy. They must have felt humiliated.
Touche. This is a very good point that I had never considered before. Thinking about Marxist/Freudian refugees in their own terms is a very insightful train of thought. Let's extend this to include Dante. The deepest pit of Hell is reserved for the grossest evil, returning evil in return for good like Brutus, who was rendered inhuman by political fanaticism, who helped assassinate Caesar after Caesar spared his life and that of his family during the Civil Wars. Unlike Benjamin who committed suicide (despairing of capture by the Nazis) Adorno and Horkheimer and their ilk spent the war working on their pallor in LA and then moved to Columbia University postwar.Their response to surviving the war was to publish books claiming that the was no substantial difference between the Nazi regime, which had recently killed twelve million people in death camps and the US, which had saved their lives and helped destroy the Nazi regime.
You have a good mind. Please don't go to grad school in the soft sciences.
@@dr.michaelsugrue thoughts on Rick Roderick and his interpretation of the Frankfurt school?
@@dr.michaelsugrue Jewish ‘secular identity’ is a fascinating subject. Skepticism. Cynical. Ingratitude. Even vitriolic hatred and spite. Lacking elements of grace and forgiveness. A falsified belief in their own messianic vision. Tikum Olam as they say. The most peculiar aspect is their sense of ethnic superiority, despite their secular religious distortion. I’d be curious to hear more about how Sabbateanism changed European Jewry and how it flowed into sociological movements. It’s a movement that has also been cleverly whitewashed from history. But it’s relevant.
Save the antisemitic conspiranoia for somebody who finds you as interesting as you find yourself. If you are not intellectually housebroken, I will ban you. Only warning.
@@warreng3813 Well spoken. The Culture of Critique would break Dr Michael Sugrue.. Although his only cope is to call you a conspiracy theorist. Pathetic for such an educated individual.
thank you
Absolutely great lecture
Thank You!
Holy shit! That was the funniest of all the lecture series. I love the Frankfurt School - but they are nuts. This prof is excellent - very technical but accessible.
I love this guy!
Okay at this point I have to stop and write a comment because over and over again these things he disagrees with the Frankfurt school for are things I agree with so much and it's jut getting funny at this point, culminating in the point at 31:00 where he's mentioning how they viewed America's authoritarianism as very insidious which is something I've always thought for years already. Sure, the way they "proved" that conclusion wasn't very sound, and I know I can't prove it myself, it's just something you feel, just as he surely feels the opposite.
10:41 this is what makes Sugrue a great lecturer
Thanks for uploading, these fantastic lecturers, I can't get enough. The Frankfurt school ought to be better known; they've had a very quiet but pernicious effect on culture.
its now shown in full force the subversion of western society...
Yep, and all the more amazing that the same culture which gave us so many of history's greatest thinkers, also gave rise to two World Wars and some of the greatest human atrocities of modern times.
How relevant is this now 😂😂 Bravo Sugrue! Algorithms be damned!
Dad said, "Gramsci was raised Catholic and he wasn't a member of the Frankfurt School, but since you haven't read his work nor that of these other writers you mentioned, that may have escaped your notice. Hitler rejected what he called "Jewish physics" in the Theory of Relativity because Einstein and many of his fellow physicists were Jews. You know as much about the Frankfurt School as you do about General Relativity - zero - and the fact that you share with a Hitler a hatred of Jews so desperate that you erupt in vacant rage about the activities of Jewish intellectuals on the basis of their religion rather than on the content of their thought, about which, I reiterate, you understand sweet nothing, is unbright. An empty head and an angry heart are a poisonous mixture, young man."
@F.W. Yes if he can't even mention at ALL that they are Jews he just shows that he has a blind spot. And his latest comment shows that he's a clown. We have woken up and realised that Capitalism AND Communism are two sides of the same Shekel.
How about he go over Hilaire Belloc or Julius Evola or Ezra Pound?
I'm tired of this Neo-Liberal Jewish Materialism, it's soul-sucking.
Brilliant lecture in a series of them. I still wonder though, what Sugrue would have to say about the emerging autocratic minority-rule movement in the US and other nations in the past 10 or so years. An update would be great--does he still feel that the liberal democracies (as exemplified by 20th century USA) are so different from/act as a bulwark against ------ these tendencies?
EXCELLENT EXCELLENT EXCELLENT
21:20 A man is never so provincial as when he begins to legislate for the universe. 💫
"Man is always in chains but he is born free." We are in chains because upholding life i a constant struggle, although much less after industrialization. Tell me what animal is free to do what it wants. Most spend nearly all their time searching for food. We search to generate value that we can sell in order to buy what we need for our sustenance. And an iPad now and then...
Well on polarization . I feel like the US is about to catch up.
Explains the popularity of Frankfurt school among US leftist activists.
7:20. We can stop there. A trick of a foundation for all that this devastating school of thought has wrought on our modern world.
Agree
Beautiful lesson! Unfortunately, nowadays it seems that the heirs of the Frankfurt School have managed to obtain a great deal of political power. But I am optimistic: the tide will hopefully turn again.
Thank you so much.
I would like to ask the professor now if he still thinks pretty much the same way towards what The Frankfurt school was postulating
I have no idea. I never listen to my own lectures. When I give a lecture, 30 seconds after I've finished I forget everything I've said. They slip away like dreams do just after waking.
I refuse to accept the exclusive choice between Heidegger and Marcuse. I think them both bombastic advocates of midcentury German pseudo omniscience. The Nazi right gave us death camps, the Marxist left gave us the Gulag, there is no point in preferring one to the other. I am not inclined to participate in an insane dispute about whose atrocities are the most atrocious.
I despise the gnostic resentment central to Critical Theory. I propose something better: instead of make believe gnostic omniscience, a Socratic humility about ourselves is more honest. Instead of resentment I suggest a deep and complete thankfulness for all we have been given. We are not entitled to exist and yet we are gifted an entire universe. Everything (like resentment) that is not gratitude is pathology.
@@dr.michaelsugrue First of all thank you for answering me...secondly I still think that that "pathological" search for errors in what it is and looking for meaning beyond what we see in front of our objective and social world is in a way one of the many "ontological conditions" of being with capital B ...or basically said, we just cant help it...we wanna break the norm, criticize the status quo and so on...