Is Ideology Unconscious? with Kenny Novis and Gil Morejon

21 snips

Nov 12, 2022

Guest

Kenny Novis

Guest

Gil Morejon

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Unconscious Ideology's Power

Ideology often operates unconsciously, shaping desire and action beneath reason and conscious critique.
Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hume’s theories help explain why rational argument rarely dislodges ideological beliefs.

INSIGHT

Unconscious Thought Challenges Locke

Locke equates thought strictly with consciousness, dismissing unconscious ideas as nonsensical.
Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hume challenge this, positing unconscious thought as essential to understanding mind and habit.

INSIGHT

Leibniz vs Spinoza on Determinism

Leibniz distinguishes possible and actual worlds, positing a principle to actualize one world.
Spinoza denies possible vs. actual worlds, asserting all possible are necessarily actual in God’s essence.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

From Gil's book: Three early modern philosophers - Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume - understood that minds necessarily involve ideas and patterns of thinking that are not conscious. Morejon shows that in this way they sharply distinguish themselves from other major early modern thinkers whose conceptions of the mind tended to identify thinking with consciousness, such as Descartes, Malebranche and Locke. This conception of the thinking mind as conscious remains popular even today. By contrast, Leibniz, Spinoza and Hume argue instead that thought is not, as such, a matter of consciousness.

Morejon explores the significance of this insight for their conceptions of freedom and ethics. By systematically analyzing the major writings of these three thinkers and placing them in the context of the history of Western philosophy, he shows that together they provide us with a metaphysics of ideas that is uniquely helpful for thinking through important problems in contemporary political theory. In particular, it allows us to understand how it is possible for people to act against their own interests and in spite of their consciously knowing better.

Readers will gain a sophisticated understanding of what Leibniz, Spinoza and Hume thought about the metaphysics of ideas, the nature of the human mind and the limits of individual freedom.

Gil's work: https://gilmorejon.wordpress.com/writings/

Support Zer0 Books on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/zerobooks
Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SubZeroBooks
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZeroBooks/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/zer0books

-----

Other links:

Check out the projects of some of the new contributors to Zer0 Books:

Acid Horizon

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/acidhorizon
Merch: crit-drip.com
The Philosopher’s Tarot from Repeater Books: https://repeaterbooks.com/product/the-philosophers-tarot/

The Horror Vanguard

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/horror-vanguard/id1445594437
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/horrorvanguard

Buddies Without Organs

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/buddies-without-organs/id1543289939
Website: https://buddieswithout.org/
Xenogothic: https://xenogothic.com/

Support Daniel Tutt's work by visiting the Torsion Groups
Patreon account: https://patreon.com/torsiongroups

Support Zer0 Books and Repeater Media on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/zer0repeater
Subscribe: https://www.patreon.com/zer0repeater
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZeroBooks/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/zer0books, https://twitter.com/RepeaterBooks