Tom Marven

Jun 18, 2024 | voegelinview.com | Melvin Rogers |Tom Marven

“Freedom demands that individuals resist domination as much as it calls them to oppose being the perpetrators of domination.” – Melvin RogersI could be overplaying my hand here, but I take Rogers’ quote to reinforce my thinking regarding humanization and authenticity. My own individual freedom, I think Rogers is saying, consists not only in my not being dominated by others, but also in my refusal to dominate others.

May 13, 2024 | voegelinview.com | Jack Schneider |Ethan L. Hutt |Tom Marven

The infamous anecdote regarding French television executive Patrick Le Lay comes to me via the philosopher Bernard Stiegler. According to Stiegler, Le Lay had stated publicly that his primary job was to create an audience for commercials, and that this was the purpose of television shows.

Jan 15, 2024 | voegelinview.com | Tom Marven

My basic takeaway from reading some of Immanuel Kant’s political essays a few years ago, including the one posing the question of enlightenment, is that the latter consists of a combination of private obedience and public disobedience. By private obedience, Kant means showing up at work, doing your job, and following the law, among other things. By public disobedience, he means critiquing these things as written above. Critiquing, yet obeying, is enlightenment.

Sep 22, 2023 | voegelinview.com | Tom Marven

To say there is a crisis in philosophy could be the understatement of the past few centuries. Ever since Kant, and especially since Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the rise of postmodernism, philosophy has been responding to the crisis of modernity which is the crisis of reality versus unreality. Understanding this crisis involves demonstrating the connections between three forms of what may be called “instrumentalization”: that of myself, of others, and of nature itself.