Science is commonly portrayed as an avatar of knowledge, truth, and progress. Lately, science is more held up as an exemplar of oppression: colonialist, too suffused with patriarchy, too white, too male, too western, its heroes not worthy of admiration. Self-loathing and abnegation seems to have permeated the entire establishment of science: its funding agencies, its journals, its professional associations. What is the meaning of this remarkable cultural transformation? Is it merely political, or something deeper?
According to Benedict Beckeld, this is a reflection of oikophobia, a “cultural malaise that befalls civilizations during their declining days.” He argues that oikophobia is the terminal state in the comings and goings of great civilizations. The self-hatred that presently permeates the sciences thus reflects the broader decline of western civilization.
This event features Benedict Beckeld, a philosopher whose focus is aesthetics, political philosophy, and culture. He is the author of “Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Declines of Civilizations” which traces the “historical apparition” of oikophobia as a “type of social decadence” to which civilizations are prone.
This event is moderated by J. Scott Turner of the National Association of Scholars.
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