Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Louis Rougier

  • Individualism and cultural embeddedness

    by Mark English ___ Mark English talks about his general goal of presenting and defending a form of individualism which takes seriously our cultural embeddedness, noting that universal political prescriptions – to the extent that they can be applied at all – are rarely successful. He refers to the surprising origins of neo-liberalism in Europe…

  • Thoughts on the Nature of Language and Meaning

    by Mark English In 1936 the high-profile publisher and promoter of humanitarian and radical causes, Victor Gollancz, published a little book called Language, Truth and Logic. The author was A. J. (Freddie) Ayer, then in his mid-twenties, an Old Etonian and graduate of the University of Oxford. The work was crisply and provocatively written. It…

  • Random Reflections on Intellectual History, Abstraction and Social and Political Values

    by Mark English Complexities Terms like “pragmatism” as it applies to philosophy and the history of ideas – most isms really – are intrinsically vague and useful only to the (necessarily limited) extent that they help to bring out persistent or more fleeting strands or commonalities in thinking within or across populations. Even the views…

  • Self-Expression, Knowledge and Value

    by Mark English Attempts to express a comprehensive personal view of the world are doomed to failure. Each of us has a view of the world; some such views are more developed and plausible than others. But language (even supplemented with other modes of expression) is simply not equipped to articulate the complex and shifting…