26 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Michael Lewis's podcast examining the changing role of referees, umpires, and arbiters of fairness across American institutions — from sports to finance to medicine.
Morris Berman's 1989 history of the body and consciousness in Western civilization — arguing that Western history can be understood as a progressive loss of somatic awareness and embodied knowledge, from heretical body-wisdom traditions through Cartesian mind-body dualism to modern alienation.
British writer and former GQ journalist whose Substack essays synthesizing psychology research, cultural criticism, and philosophical insight into long-form analytical pieces attracted a large following in the intellectual content creation space.
American journalist and cultural critic whose acerbic commentary on American democracy, religion, and culture defined an era of skeptical, elitist journalism.
American conservative journalist and senior editor at The American Conservative — known for her revisionist biographical criticism of progressive icons and her engagement with conservative intellectual debates.
American cultural historian who wrote definitive studies of cities, technology, and civilization — arguing that the modern city and machine civilization had disrupted the organic relationship between humans and their environment.
Canadian media theorist who argued that the form of a medium — not its content — shapes human consciousness and social organization, producing the most influential theory of media in the 20th century.
American cultural critic and historian who wrote The Reenchantment of the World, Coming to Our Senses, The Twilight of American Culture, and Why America Failed — arguing that American culture represents a uniquely hollow form of civilization built entirely on hustling, materialism, and the absence of inner life.
Mike Solana's newsletter covering technology, culture, and Silicon Valley politics — making the case for techno-optimism and against institutional progressive constraints on technology.
Christopher Lasch's 1994 posthumously published argument that the American elite has abandoned the virtues of middle-class democracy — cosmopolitan, mobile, credentialed, and contemptuous of provincial working-class culture — inverting the concern about a revolt of the masses by pointing to the elite's abandonment of democratic norms.
French literary theorist and semiotician who wrote Mythologies, S/Z, The Pleasure of the Text, and A Lover's Discourse — arguing that all cultural products are signs to be decoded ideologically (Mythologies), that texts are infinitely multiple (S/Z), and that Death of the Author separates the text from authorial intention.
Milan Kundera's 1995 novel contrasting the slowness of 18th-century erotic pleasure with the speed of modern life — arguing that speed is a form of amnesia, a way to avoid encountering the self.
A 2020 critical biography by Tom Shone that interweaves deep-dive interviews with Christopher Nolan with thematic analysis of his complete filmography.
British psychiatrist and cultural critic (pen name of Anthony Daniels) who worked in a Birmingham prison and inner-city hospital and writes on the culture of poverty, welfare dependency, and the intellectual corruption of the chattering classes — Life at the Bottom, Our Culture What's Left of It.
Nietzsche's 1888 polemic — 'How to Philosophize with a Hammer' — which delivers quick devastating strikes against Socrates, Kant, German culture, and Christianity in rapid aphoristic chapters, showing how the 'idols' of Western philosophy are merely disguised life-denial.
German-Jewish philosopher and cultural critic — associated with the Frankfurt School — author of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and The Arcades Project — who died at the Spanish border fleeing the Nazis — whose fragmentary, aphoristic style influenced postwar critical theory.
American author and activist who wrote at the intersection of race, class, and gender — critiquing mainstream feminism for its whiteness and developing a vision of love as a political practice.
Charles Taylor's The Ethics of Authenticity diagnoses three modern malaises — individualism, instrumental reason, and the soft despotism of technocratic politics — while arguing that authenticity is a genuine moral ideal that has been debased, not one to be abandoned. Taylor calls for recovering the moral horizon that gives authenticity its point.
Ross Douthat's diagnosis of Western society's decadence — the stagnation, repetition, and failure to generate new ideas or achievements that characterizes early 21st-century Western civilization.
British-German racial theorist and son-in-law of Richard Wagner — whose Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899) was the most influential elaboration of Aryan racial theory before Nazism.
American mathematician and cultural critic who became the most systematic public analyst of 'woke' ideology — co-author of the Grievance Studies Affair (2018) and founder of New Discourses.
James Lindsay's podcast and media platform dedicated to systematic analysis of critical theory, postmodernism, and 'woke' ideology — one of the most detailed academic-style critiques of these traditions in public media.
American critical pedagogy theorist who extended Freire's framework into cultural criticism — arguing that teachers are transformative intellectuals and that education should resist neoliberal cultural hegemony.
A contested concept used by critics of the left to describe the alleged project of applying Marxist class analysis to culture, identity, and education — deriving from the Frankfurt School and Antonio Gramsci's hegemony theory.
Spanish philosopher and cultural critic — author of The Revolt of the Masses (1930), a prescient diagnosis of mass society's dangers, and developer of perspectivism as a philosophy.
Ortega y Gasset's diagnosis of modern mass society — arguing that the triumph of the 'mass man' (technically capable but culturally barbaric) threatens civilizational standards.