When Nietzsche asks in Ecce Homo: »Who among the philosophers before me was a psychologist, rather than the opposite, a ‘higher swindler,’ an ‘idealist’?« it naturally raises the question of whether it is still possible to practice Philosophy in the traditional, time-honored way today. Maarten Boudry, who as a young man was faced with the choice of becoming a jazz pianist or a philosopher, answered this question in his own way. Starting with his doctoral thesis, he has been concerned with errors in thinking, intellectual negligence, and ideology-driven fallacies—in short, everything that can prevent a thinker from becoming a higher swindler. That this runs counter to the spirit of the times became even clearer to him when, after the pogrom of October 7, he witnessed the reactions of his colleagues and even the university itself. And consequently, our conversation revolves around the question of how academia could have fallen into such a self-destructive vortex. A question that prompts Boudry to quote Orwell, who made the beautiful statement: »Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.«
Maarten Boudry is a philosopher of science, first holder of the Etienne Vermeersch Chair of Critical Thinking at Ghent University and a Fellow of the Roots of Progress Institute. Besides publishing on his Substack, he is a regular contributor to Quillette, The Conversation, The Independent and Human Progress.
Maarten Boudry has published
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