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First Things Podcast

Political Philosophy in Crisis

First Things Podcast

First Things

Religion & Spirituality

4.6699 Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode, Glenn Ellmers joins Mark Bauerlein to discuss his new book “The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy.” Music by Advent Chamber Orchestra via Creative Commons.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello there. This is Mark Bowerline with another conversation. Before we get to it, a word about one of our sponsors.

0:17.6

Located in the foothills of Wyoming's spectacular wind river range, Wyoming Catholic

0:22.5

College, an accredited four-year Great Books Institution is built on the ancient western

0:27.2

tradition of the liberal arts and the freedom of the American West. The college offers

0:31.6

its students an immersion in the primary sources of the classical tradition, the grandeur of the

0:36.1

mountain wilderness, and the spiritual

0:37.7

heritage of the Catholic Church. Students experience the illumination of imagination and intellect

0:42.2

through the great books and traditional disciplines, literature and philosophy, mathematics

0:46.0

and theology, science and Latin, and an outdoor program second to none. The college celebrated

0:52.2

an in-person graduation with its seniors last year

0:55.4

and welcomed its largest freshman class ever this year. Learn more about the college's

1:00.2

unique space in the world of American higher education at Wyomingcatholic.edu.

1:05.7

Glenn Elmer's is a research fellow at the Claremont Institute and the author of The Soul of Politics, Harry Jaffa,

1:13.4

and the Fight for America. I believe we covered that on the podcast about a year and a half ago,

1:18.1

Glenn. We did. Thanks. His new book is The Narrow Passage, Plato, Foucault, and the possibility

1:25.4

of political philosophy. That's our topic today. Welcome, Dr. Elmer's.

1:29.2

Thank you, Mark. Thanks for having me. First line of the book, you are being manipulated.

1:36.1

Is this the, well, actually, you go on to say, later in the paragraph,

1:41.5

Americans are lied to on a daily basis. That's what really gets to me. Is this

1:47.8

now, is this really the first principle now of political understanding in the 21st century?

1:56.1

I think so. So let me just say, I mentioned Foucault in the title and a lot of my conservative friends, friends on the right, don't understand why I would take that guy seriously.

2:05.9

But Foucault and the other deconstructionists, who he didn't take seriously in the 80s and 90s when they were writing, actually turned out to be pretty perceptive because they saw we're living in a postmodern world.

...

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