The Voegelin-McLuhan Correspondence
Editorial Note This is the first part of a multipart series. It gives the 4 letters exchanged by Eric Voegelin and Marshall McLuhan in 1953. Other parts…
Editorial Note This is the first part of a multipart series. It gives the 4 letters exchanged by Eric Voegelin and Marshall McLuhan in 1953. Other parts…
If 30-60 men can be found, gradually, and encouraged to talk to one another instead of to the robots they must pretend to talk to for a…
In 1946 McLuhan’s friend, Cleanth Brooks (then a visiting professor at the University of Chicago), facilitated a meeting between him and Robert Hutchins — the UC chancellor…
Introduction The “End of History,” as the Marxist philosopher Alexandre Kojève argued, signified the triumph of rational atheism in which man makes himself God and abolishes the…
Marshall McLuhan identified our time of postmodernity as the “ecological age” in which technological dominance has become planetary. This undeniable truth is a fact that may be…
“The world exists to end in a book” — Stéphane Mallarmé “Happy is your Grace, That can translate the stubbornness of fortune Into so quiet and…
In this digital age of polarized politics, where can we look for guidance on how to turn down the heat? After all, we don’t want to blow…
“There’s Nothing Like a Best Seller to Set Hollywood a-Tingle” —The New York Times Book Review (Sep 16, 1962) “I’d willingly start my next novel—about a small…
He could not go. He wanted neither to eat nor to sleep. Only to lie there — eyes insatiably Gazing into the eyes that were no eyes.…
The West shall shake the East awake While ye have the night for morn. — James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake 企者不立;跨者不行; 自見者不明;自是者不彰; 自伐者無功;自矜者不長。 其在道也,曰:餘食贅行。 物或惡之,故有道者不處。 — Lao Tzu,…
In the first chapter of Understanding Media (1964), called “The Medium is the Message,” Marshall McLuhan begins the book by explaining his most famous aphorism. Over time, the…
Postmodern intellectual culture is perhaps best characterized as adhering to the thesis that all reality is socially constructed. Many have mistaken Marshall McLuhan for being a prophet…
In order to explain surprising political phenomena like Donald Trump and Brexit, we have to look at the unprecedented impact of new technologies on our total environment.…
Modern technological innovation has made globalization possible. And globalization’s new social reality is unparalleled in history. Accordingly, it presents politics with new challenges. But it also presents…
Selected Correspondence 1950-1984 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 30). Thomas Hollweck, ed. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2007. This big volume is one…