VIDEO: Oikophobia and the Sciences

National Association of Scholars

Science is commonly portrayed as an avatar of knowledge, truth, and progress. Lately, science is more held up as an exemplar of oppression: colonialist, too suffused with patriarchy, too white, too male, too western, its heroes not worthy of admiration. Self-loathing and abnegation seems to have permeated the entire establishment of science: its funding agencies, its journals, its professional associations. What is the meaning of this remarkable cultural transformation? Is it merely political, or something deeper?

According to Benedict Beckeld, this is a reflection of oikophobia, a “cultural malaise that befalls civilizations during their declining days.” He argues that oikophobia is the terminal state in the comings and goings of great civilizations. The self-hatred that presently permeates the sciences thus reflects the broader decline of western civilization.

This event features Benedict Beckeld, a philosopher whose focus is aesthetics, political philosophy, and culture. He is the author of “Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Declines of Civilizations” which traces the “historical apparition” of oikophobia as a “type of social decadence” to which civilizations are prone.

This event is moderated by J. Scott Turner of the National Association of Scholars.


Photo: Adobe Stock

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