Conclusion: Political, Social and Cultural Criticism and Theory 

Probably the best series of lectures on philosophy out there. Fascinating to see how relevant this is even tho it was decades ago.

This lecture showcased the fact that "teaching could be considered more than just a "craft or skill," but a piece of fine "art". It's amazing.

These lectures are phenomenal and I am beyond thankful for your decision to upload them. Your father is in my prayers!

A ruthless interpretation of the 20th century philosophy. And I love it.

Dr. Sugrue please come back and help us through 2021!

The depth and span of this lecture is truly astonishing, then consider the amount of information contained within its parameters is mind boggling. This man is a treasure.

Just when you think there's nothing interesting on RU-vid you stumble onto a channel like this. Thanks for posting. You're making cooking dinner and cleaning my house more stimulating as I consume this content. Also: as a Gen Xer, I'm appreciating the early 90s VHS quality.

The depth and breadth of Dr. Sugrue's knowledge are stunning. Thank you for uploading these lectures!

Thanks so much for uploading these. Your father gave a true gift to humanity with his lectures.

Thank you so much for all these lectures. I've watched them all many times. I studied medicine and always regretted having to turn my back on the humanities, which was always my most intense passion. Professor Sugrue, cheers to you sir for a life spent well. Bless.

you can see the thrill Sugrue gets from these discussions

How wonderfully generous of spirit to release these lectures on RU-vid. I am grateful for your time and effort in uploading all these videos. There is something very special about this man. Thank you.

Your videos deserve many, many more views! Excellent stuff.

Thank you for offering this content for free. Proves your commitment to technology brightening and expanding intellectual discourse.

"“May I suggest to you that our concern with marginalized discourses is a means to take control of the state... postmodernism is the will to power of contemporary intellectuals.” Dr Sugrue argued this, what, 30 years ago? Surely, this kind of insight is the benefit of true scholarship.

2:06 Metaphysics Ended 3:05 Ethics become Asthetics Morals are as Tastes, opinionated Absolute Relativism 4:21 Politics, Will to Power 6:00 Be a Hero 7:07 Doubt Your Self 8:19 Uncertain, Fragmented 9:00 No Meta Narratives 9:39 Social Construction 10:15 Unescapable Broken 10:53 Machines Calculation Storage and Retrieval 12:07 Erosion, Effectiveness 13:47 Biospheric Limitation -Equality- Reality 15:44 Technology 16:10 Distraction from distraction by distraction 17:03 Tail wags Dog 17:30 Liberation Oppressive Surveillance Video Camera - convict authority Anti-oppression 19:55 Fragments 20:17 State-Coercion 25:18 The Intellectual Class 28:01 We only see what is Good for the public 29:01 Respect, Taken Seriously 31:59 Free Play. Existentialism. Commitment Legitimizes 33:03 Marxism in Universities 33:53 Renegade, Socratic Marxist 36:02 Welfare State run by Intellectuals 37:22 Pragmatism 38:57 Separate Languages 39:45 Self-Destructive Machine 42:25 Singapore 🇸🇬 Spiritual Pioneers Religion is Pre-Modern 43:56 Irony, Alienation is an end in itself 45:00 A. Provincial Marginalized & Alienated

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on almost all important philosophers and their philosophies. I am impressed by your clarity of thought and communicative agility. The lectures are succinct but comprehensive. These lectures reflect profound knowledge, deep erudition, and great eloquence. As a teacher, you are an inspiration for me.

I've enjoyed about a dozen or so Michael Sugrue lectures on RU-vid so far. Very fascinating to find this video at the end of the series, which is an absolute lightning strike of prescience regarding life in the 2020s.

‘Postmodernism is the will to power of contemporary intellectuals.’

Unbearably good, thank you for posting!

Seriously this conclusion it's pretty prophetic. Thank you Doc.

What this course illuminates more than anything is the importance of human dedication to politico-cultural study, interpretation, and postulation, and I can hardly think of a better lecturer to inspire others to these grand goals.

Wow!!! Your conclusions are absolutely brilliant and insightful. Now, I'm going to go to the beginning of your lectures and listen to them all.

Never has more ground been eloquently covered in 45 minutes time. Bravo. If I'd have been listening on audio, I'd have thought this was recorded last week.

I’m absolutely blown away about Sugrue’s brevity in concluding the critique and condition of our time. It is almost poetic in some sense, but a stark reminder of many unpleasant conditions

Mr. Sugrue is a hero and it is beyond me how can a person know so much. If he is able, can Mr. Sugrue make like a list of 20, 50 books that are must read? That would be awesome.

Thank you so much. Having immersed myself in all your lectures, I now say goodbye to the world of Tables and Chairs, Bootstraps and Swine. Now...

13:22 whipping out his crystal ball

Phenomenal conclusion to an outstanding series. The professor is a master

Grateful for Dr. Surgue's series, all of them. Loving, too, that he mentions "Cybernetic Communications" here, in the pro and con-- the pro, for me, being that these lectures made their way onto RU-vid, some years after the fact.

This whole series was absolutely amazing, but this last lecture will really stick with me. Thanks for posting these, they're an incredibly valuable resource!

comrade sugrue, thank you for your contribution

"I suspect that 50 years from now Post-Modernism will be a cul de sac, something no one reads anymore and.. I'm not so sure that's a bad idea." !!! Omfg I fucking "DIED" LAUGHING! 🤣🤣🤣. Prof dropped some banger lines in here. Especially the one about Colleges being a safe "Jurassic Park" for modern intellectual Marxists that couldn't survive out in the Darwinian "Real World", so that we can observe them! Props professor Sugrue. Dropping gold bombs I swear.

It is not without a little wistfulness and sadness that I listened to this last lecture especially since it seems to portend the conclusion of a journey and perhaps finally reaching a destination...if in philosophy we ever attain to such. On the road behind lies scattered the dust of misapprehensions, false beliefs, ignorance....of dragons slain and mountains summitted. We stand hopefully wiser, humble, more compassionate. It remains to thank our guides and conductors: Michael's daughter, her acolytes and lastly, the man himself, Michael, our Messiah.

Absolutely love these lectures, this channel has definitely been the one i've visited the most last 2 years or so. Dr. Michael, you are the best teacher I've had, your lectures have enriched my life by orders of magnitude. I teach maths but I am now planning on pivoting towards cognitive science and your teachings played a major role in the realization that this is where my passion is. Calling you an absolute legend would be an understatement - thank you once more and cheers from Poland

I will not lie; sometimes, I have to re-watch some parts because of how deep it can get

Dr Sugrue, thank you so much for making these available and for the podcast on spotify. These works are of indispensable value. I am a master's student in Philosophy and the Humanities and have found these to be, though accessible, to be of a quality that transcends conventional undergrad/grad/postgrad level distinctions.

Solid gold, as usual.

Mr. Sugrue brilliant as usual!

To this day, I listen to his Marcus Aurelius lectures several times a month, never get tired... I have shared with many of my friends and they have become Michael Sugrue followers as well. Last I heard of he was at Ave Maria University in Florida,, any updates on him would be appreciated

The most relevant talk I've listened to this year, wow! There is so much going on behind the facade of the current political landscape and it's nice to hear some substantiation to this idea.

Thanks for this channel. Gracias desde Galicia, España.

Professor. Sugrue, I long for the day I can have a conversation with you and thank you for all your contributions. Would love to invite you on my podcast for a conversation, talking about all things philosophy, theology, and life in general. Thank you!

Thank you so much for the very insightful lectures. My knowledge base in the history of Western philosophy has been greatly enhanced.

Holy molly guacamole. What a prescient lecture. Dr Sugrue was decades ahead of his time. Thank God for the gift of such a brilliant mind!

So on point! How amazing to hear some common sense in the age of informational manipulation

Wish i could have been there to give a standing ovation! Simply fantastic! Useful, inspiring, challenging, and really quite life changing! Thank you Doctor!

My favorite professor

Thank you for making this accessible to all with an internet connection

" Luxuriating in the pleasure of text " sounds really luxurious. 👍🏻

One of the best critiques of post-modernism I’ve heard.

Professor Sugrue I do not know the year of this lecture, but it is remarkably insightful and stands up extremely well in 2022.

Love this, 10/10. A shame that pomo has taken over more and more. Hopefully there will be more lectures to watch in the future from Dr. Sugrue. If not, back to Plato's dialouges for meditation

Amazing! Really enjoying these, thank you

His explanation of Nietzsche was an insightful look into the future we are experiencing today. Moral relativism and chaotic politics

Prophetic presentation. Thank you.

This intro music is top tier

Brilliant as always, thank you again for sharing this invaluable content

In a time of such division, it’s nice to look back. He gently hit on topics I was trivial over with a new insight I wasn’t expecting.

So lucky to have access to these lectures.

I don't always fully agree with Sugrue's takes on these thinkers but his passion for the subject and his ability to communicate their concepts accessibly are incredible. If I had to show anyone a single video explaining why philosophy is worthwhile his lectures would top the list.

I'm not a scholar. If I can understand these lectures. It is because the Professor is amazingly clear..love listening to all his lectures...

This lecture was so prophetic, we're gonna start calling this professor "Dr. Moses Sugrue."

Wow! I mean, WOW!!!!

Amazing!!

" Distracted from distraction by distraction - TS Eliot " Coming across for the third time Prof Sugrue mentioning this in his lectures.

Thank you, Dr. Sugrue

He doesn't even fumble a bit. Very good speaker.

Thanks for the teachings. Happy Tahv Mindedness!

"May I suggest to you..." !!... Sugrue kills it just after 28:00 🤣 sets it so straight up and BOOM!

Finished all the lessons. What à banger

Fascinating as always. Thank you so much for these lectures. Will there be a new series of uploads?

I have really enjoyed the series and am grateful. I wish there was a few more diagrams or other visual aides as it would have helped to covey the information and to assist in analysing the information covered. Again thank you for your excellent series.

i wish my professors were this on point

Wow...Just wow. He helps build a window for a new Humanism in Philosophy...The Academy has become intellectualized into a self-worshipping cult. May the great thinkers of the 21st century bury the Empiricism, Positivism, and other forms of self denial or self hate. There is no limit on the value of human ideas. Philosophy is not pessimistic. Rather, it is a crowning achievement of human life and it signals the possibility of unending development of the greatest resource--explanatory human knowledge.

Oh shit maybe I shoulda worked harder and gone to Princeton. If I had lecturers like this, life would have been different.

The series is pure academic gold, I really appreciate it a lot for a quick and often thorough recollection of all these thoughts (Sugrue should have not mentioned Luhmann, it was embarrassing). I thank him very much for it all. But in this final chapter, in this conclusion I really can smell the ressentment. It is not easy to bring forth a publicly likable judgement about titans of thought who thought so much richer and more imaginative than Sugrue does - and also, he does not have a theory of his own to present. But he still wants to make a strong point against postmodernism in the end and so after all the crazy-good thought he brings out the shallowest, most nonfallible argument of vulgar marxism - oh boy, "there is self-interest!" "Look out! The postmoderns use theory to gain power." But so do their academic opponents and so did Mother Theresa. To me that is like reaching out for the crowbar after having studied surgery for 8 years. Anyway, what a great great series, no complaints could offset the enormous value this collection has. It is a treasure.

Thank You!

I enjoyed this series immensely and learned quite a bit (even if some of the concepts were complex or maddeningly abstract). The lectures were eloquently presented by a master of his profession. (Many thanks for that!) Nevertheless, I'd be lying if I said that most of these brilliant minds were faithful to their theories and lived them fully. Many disconnects exist between their ideas and the way these people chose to live their lives. For the rest of us, that's understandable; philosophy is not our profession, nor do we assume to proffer words of wisdom about life in order to make a living. The standards for philosophers are supremely higher exactly because it IS their profession and livelihood. Electing to impart wisdom is a weighty responsibility; a higher degree of integrity and intellectual honesty is demanded. Some fall woefully short.

I think this is your best lecture yet ❤

Omg where are the rest of the videos? They are the best! You have the best dad

Amazing!

I love you Michael sugrue

I would love to hear him talk about people like Ludwig von Mises,Friedrich Hayek,Murray Rothbard,Henry Haslitt,Frederic Bastiat,Walter Williams,Thomas Sowell,Milton Friedman,Ron Paul and other economists who lean to libertarian side (Austrian and Chicago school of economics) and unlike leftists or right wing conservatives who want to take control of the state for their own intetest,people like libertarians actually want to limit the power of the state and break up its monopoly on violence..neverthless,great lecture as always

Iv been binging these like a netflix special

blimey, what a conclusion - a very interesting take on post-modernism

Hello, it has been a few short months since your last upload. I hope everyone is well. I listen to your lectures frequently and if there is anyway that I could help you to convert old recordings and get them uploaded it would be my pleasure to be of assistance. I know projects such as this can be quite time consuming, so I thank you for all you have done and for sharing your work. These lectures have made a difference in my life and helped me to change the way that I think in a positive way. Thanks very much.

Very spicy lecture, highly based. XD In all seriousness this is a sublime lecture and wonderfully thought provoking and clearly articulated in a balanced and non-biased manner

"Scratch every pragmatist and in every case you'll find a positivist with a broken heart." That one hit home.

We would be so lucky to have intellectuals take the lead

"I suspect that 50 years from now post modernism will be kind of a cul de sac, something nobody reads anymore." Sagrue was off the mark there, and seems to have dramatically underestimated the extent to which the will to power of the Western intellectual class, cloaked in the myth of resentment and justice, could metastasize across our media channels, our bloated non-profit and government bureaucracies, our public schools, and seemingly overnight in the big tech sector. Indeed, he seems to be lecturing as if looking at post-structuralism in the rear-view mirror, but his breakdown of Jurassic Park Marxism and his review of Alvin Gouldner's thinking re: post-structuralism-as-a-tool-of-will-to-power-of-the-intellectual-class (33-37 minutes) is perhaps more relevant now than when the lecture was recorded.

Wish to see a phylosophical debate between Dr. Michael Sandel and you ! I’m sure Prof.Sandel have a lot to learn from!

When one stop to think that Dostoevsky predicted post-modernism on The Possessed (1872), one can really start to comprehend his geniuses.

One of a kind

Dear. Prof. /Daughter of the professor. Could it be possible to arrange these lectures in playlists so we can see the title of the series 🙏🏼please. Thank you SO MUCH professor for these lectures. I’ve learnt so much more here with you for free than in school/college 🤷🏻‍♂️🐸

Amazing lectures sir,

Wow, this one was different, basically saw 2020 coming for a mile away.

Thanks for all the uploads. Will there be a new series of lectures?

His discussion of the Marxist and postmodern Jurassic Park of the modern University is so spot on and even more of a reality in 2023.

This guy absolutely slaps everything on the internet. Watch his videos on Plato. He's read Plato's Republic 5 times front to back. It takes me 45 minutes to read one page of Plato. And the Republic is 3 inches thick. That's insane.