Author: Paul Fairfield
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Cancel culture and academic freedom
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: I can only hope that cancel culture is a trend that, like many similar phenomena, is here today and will be gone tomorrow, although I’m not about to offer a prediction about this. When a pendulum swings hard in one direction, you can almost predict it’s going to swing back again with terrific force—almost but not…
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What makes innovation possible?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: We all value innovation, or at least we say we do. A question I seldom see answered or even asked, however, is what makes innovation possible? The question, what makes something possible, is often a philosophical one and it’s an important question to ask. In the case of most any innovation in knowledge…
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Paul fairfield interviewed on the canadian story podcast
The Canadian Story is a podcast about what it means to be Canadian. Interviews cover a wide variety topics with the overarching goal of reminding Canadians why we are all so proud of our country. In this interview Paul discusses his thoughts on The Philosophy of Pluralism.
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The search for meaning
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: One of the questions that first attracted me to philosophy when I was a teenager is the perennial problem of the meaning of life. The search for meaning drove me to read widely in academic and popular philosophy, psychology, religion, and literature, and was implicit also to a great deal of the music…
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25 Rules For Life
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: I’ve always made it a point to listen to anyone who dispenses advice on how to live, whoever they are. Anything from ancient moral philosophy to clickbait headlines that read something like “Top ten habits of highly successful people”—all of it gets my attention. There’s always something to learn from this sort of…
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On specialists and interdisciplinarity
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: Many years ago I asked my former Ph.D. advisor why he chose to write a particular book that he had published some years back. His name was Gary Madison and the book in question was on political philosophy. Gary’s field in those days was phenomenology and hermeneutics. His answer surprised me and it…
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On Fanaticism
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: Were I to set out to create a fanaticized society, I would begin by dividing its population into several inward-looking groups, to each of which I would relate a narrative about who they are and how they came to be. This story could be political or religious, true or false, as one likes,…
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The individual against the mass
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: If you’re anything like me, when you see a large mass of humanity going in one direction your instinct is to go another way. I can’t say what this instinct is exactly, where it comes from, or why it has the force that it does, only that it’s deeply rooted and speaks with…
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Rural Royalty
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: On your next day off consider getting in your car and driving far out of the city and deep into the countryside. You’ll find some interesting things there. Some of them are funny and some are not. I do this often. It’s not hard for me because I already live outside of a…
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A New Book by Paul Fairfield
Professor and Philosopher Paul Fairfield has just released a new book. Philosophical Reflections on Antiquity: Historical Change addresses the question of whether there is a logic of historical change, and whether the collapse of teleology should deter us from inquiring anew whether any recurring patterns and themes show themselves amid the complexity of historical life.…
Philosophy Crush 