Martin Heidegger: Routledge Critical Thinkers (2nd ed.), Timothy Clark. 197 pages. Routledge, London and New York. Reviewed by Jonathan Reynolds As postmodernism has faded for professional intellectuals in the West and also, still, because of his engagement with Nazism (unsettled whether flirtation or serious or profound), Heidegger is the one major modern philosopher who remains […]
Positivism and its Discontents: A Sidebar to The Sokal Hoax
An appendix by Jonathan Reynolds, offering some background to the debates that gave rise to The Sokal Hoax For Spike readers who wish to grasp the basics of the modern argument which culminated in the controversy (full article here), a key term and concept to understand is positivism. A positivist stance encapsulates the furthest reach, […]
The Sokal Hoax Fifteen Years Later: A Philosophical Reading of the Controversy
In 1996, the physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated a hoax on the academic journal Social Text intended to text the intellectual rigor of postmodernist thinking. Jonathan Reynolds reassesses the affair Mixing metaphors, celebrating the 15-year anniversary of what still must be considered a total slam dunk in what was called the “science wars” or the “culture […]
Proposal for a Theme Park (or) The Continuing Relevance of the Frankfurt School
A call to arms (and mind) by Jonathan Reynolds A Theme Park; Consciousness; and the Reasonable Pessimism of the Frankfurt School What certainly a consensus in social scientific circles has isolated and denominated as “capitalism” and “neoliberal democracy” has triumphed on the world stage. Many people seem to take this triumph as much for granted […]
