The Frankfurt School in Context (1923-69)

Brage, Mikael and Rudy sit down to talk about Scandinavian social democracy, with a focus on Norway and Sweden. We discuss the periodization of social democracy, starting from the 1905 independence of Norway, through the first World War period, the rise of social democracy in the ...  Show more

Amelia, Rudy and Matt sit down to discuss the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's political economy, with a focus on the distinct periods. We discuss the "information problem" and how it frames the discussion, before detailing the history of the DPRK's formation after Japanes ...  Show more

“Enlightenment is totalitarian.”—Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The c ...  Show more

What is the legacy of the Enlightenment in political struggles today and how are socialists and Marxists to relate to the Enlightenment? Must we rely on first principles and an a priori theory of knowledge in our understanding of capitalism and exploitation? Or must we proceed ...

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss phenomenology, a style of philosophy developed by the German thinker Edmund Husserl in the first decades of the 20th century. Husserl's initial insights underwent a radical transformation in the work of his student Martin Heidegger, and played a ke ...  Show more

In this episode, I expound on Lukács's later work and the meaning of irrationalism. I analyze Marxist reason in contradistinction to neo-Kantian thought and touch on what is most distinctive about philosophy for Marx and Engels and how Marx breaks with both Kant and Hegel. Fro ...