August Denys > Recent Status Updates

It is interesting to see the development of the UDHR along with the strange lengths the Neoliberal advocates went to undermine them. The UDHR had problems, but the Neolibs were wrong (surprise) in their criticisms. Also... Mises considered Mill the greatest advocate of Socialism, not Marx... and we basically live in the world the Neolibs created... great.

The introduction itself could be a paper that people should read. The Neoliberal thinkers (as well as Chicago School and possibly James Buchanan) tried to pass their ideology as apolitical and amoral. Amoral in the sense that this was not something that could be disputed morally. There is a short but brilliant section that compares the Young Marx's critique of Liberal Values to the Neoliberals.

Just putting this out there, tomorrow is Amazon Prime Day, and Goodreads is owned by Amazon.

47 paragraphs in: I may actually be starting to understand Hegel immediately when I read it, not having to spend and hour on each paragraph...

So the Miller translation is terrible, but is the Findlay analysis also trash?

The chapter simply titled Details may be the best of this book. It is spot on with its philosophy and give the reader what seems to be a genealogy of the history of racism and its imprint within the social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and especially Kant. If I were ever able to teach a class on Social Contract theory, this would be a necessary addition in this chapter alone.

I cannot believe that this book is 20 years old because its content seems so fresh while extremely applicable to today. One can tell from the first line how good of a book it is, "White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today."

... So... my edition ends on 257... I don't know where goodreads is getting this 280 page figure from...

Interesting critique of philosophy's linguistic turn... this is worth a second read, but the context within the Frankfurt school is beyond my experience. I'll have to see where the ending leads.

He brings up important things in his analysis, and his best work so far is in regard to the functionalization of Political Discourse which results in his analysis of a One-Dimensional Society; however, in chapter three he tries to focus on the commodification of art, but at this point, especially in music, I felt that the analysis was inaccurate, but still and important dimension to understand.

I definitely feel that this will be a book to reread, for while one can simply say that it has been critiquing Sartre's (and other parts of Les Temps Modernes) stance on the USSR, the angle which he has come at it was unexpected. There is almost a precursor to Derrida in here, "It is essential for peace that communism stop being this ghost floating somewhere between transcendental freedom and everyday prose,..."