Then & Now: Philosophy, History & Politics

Exploring the concept of modernity and the impact of Enlightenment philosophers in shaping the modern world. Discussing the separation of time and space through clocks and maps. Exploring the role of technology in depersonalizing interactions and shaping modern attitudes. Discussing the importance of trust and specialized knowledge in modern life. Exploring the promises of modernity and the potential shift to a post-modern era.

Jordan Peterson is famously critical of ideology. He has a particular distain for Marxism, Stalinism, Nazism, Postmodernism, Feminism, in fact, any ism. Instead, he argues, that the individual is sovereign, ideology should be renounced, and that, quote, ‘If we each live properly, we will collectively flourish.’Rule VI of Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life is 'Abandon Ideology'.Drawing on the Russian novelist Dostoevsky, Peterson interprets ideology as ‘rigid, comprehensive, utopian’ and predicated on a few ‘apparently self-evident axioms’. An ism theorist, he argues, ‘generates a small number of explanatory principles of forces’ that can supposedly ‘explain everything: all the past, all the present, and all the future.’ An ideologue, he continues, ‘grants these small number of forces primary causal power, while ignoring others of equal or greater importance.’The result of this is that ‘an ideologue can consider him or herself in possession of the complete truth.’ I take a look at what philosophers say ideology is, what Jordan Peterson’s ideology – a type of Juedo-Christian Mythic Conservatism – look at its limits, and finally, ask why we need ideology.#jordanpeterson #peterson #ideology #politics #philosophyThen & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Through 12 Rules for Life and Beyond Order, I examine Jordan Peterson’s philosophy of responsibility. First, I try to understand what Peterson says about individual responsibility. Second, I take a look at the philosophy of free will and responsibility. I look at determinism, psychology, and history to begin to draw a between what we’re responsible for and what we’re not. Ultimately, I argue that Peterson holds us individually responsible for too much, and that when we look to the history of social movements, we see that social and collective action is just as necessary. Peterson emphasizes individual responsibility to an unreasonable degree, while discounting the necessity and power of social or collective responsibility.We also take a few detours down some familiar routes: feminism, postmodern neo-Marxism, and identity politics.#jordanpeterson #critique #identitypolitics #responsibilityThen & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a tale of three revolutions. Revolutions past – twin revolutions that served as lessons. The second was a counter-revolution, a result of not learning those lessons. And the third, well it begins in 2030, but stirrings of it are already being felt.I look at the causes of revolutions and state crises in the past, looking specifically at the English Civil War and the French Revolution, to argue as historian Jack Goldstone does, that we're following a dangerous path to potential revolution. The Baby Boomers were the most heavily invested in generation in history but as the population boomed, debt has grown with it. Millennials, on the other hand, are underinvested in, under-housed, and are experiencing wage stagnation.This is a tour of generational debt, neoliberal revolution, tax cuts, plague, stagnant incomes, Kings, the guillotine, and more.There’s a growing consensus on both sides of the aisle: neoliberalism has failed. And history teaches us that if peaceful social solutions designed to mitigate against excess and injustice aren’t implemented, then more chaotic, violent, and revolutionary solutions will inevitably follow.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philosophy is often too abstract, but the Existentialists are known for being (a bit) more practical occasionally. Here are 5 useful things we can learn from the Existentialists and existentialism, specifically Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus.They are:Laugh at yourself (looking at Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus) Stop Thinking (looking at Kierkegaard’s ‘leap of faith’, ‘passionate action’, and ‘subjective truth’)Be Creative (looking at Nietzsche and Heidegger, authenticity, the ‘They’)All of our Projects are Connected: Treat them like Rocks (looking at Sartre)Turn off Autopilot (Looking at Kierkegaard and ‘double reflection’)Full article: http://lewwaller.com/5-useful-things-... Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The pursuit of an authentic self is often compared with the desire for uniqueness, of individuality, of creative freedom. But does this mean, as some have argued, that ‘authenticity’ itself is an individualistic, egotistical, narcissistic, and self-absorbed concept? After all, ‘be yourself', to thine own self be true, and ‘follow your heart’ all conjure up the idea of stepping away from the crowd, not towards it, of living a life for yourself, not for others.If we are an authenticity-seeking species, if we crave our own independence, have a desire to be the master of our own choices, need creative freedom, what does this mean for our politics? What does it mean for social life, for businesses and organizations?Does ‘being you’ – rather than pursuing ‘duty’, for example – result in a narrowing of focus just to yourself as an individual? A loss of a broader social vision?The philosopher Charles Taylor describes this as a horizon.Does the horizon shrink to focus just on yourself? Do we each have a separate horizon? Are our values relativistic? Or do certain things transcend this horizon? Are certain horizons shared? Does the shared pursuit of timber in the town disappear once the residents go their separate ways?How do we think about societies that still share horizons, that consist of individuals pursuing both their own authentic interests and dutifully respond to the needs of the wider community? Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who are we? How do we find out? What is it to find our authentic selves? What can we learn from the history and philosophy of authenticity?Today, supposedly, we’re free. Free, to do what makes us happy, to be anything we strive to be, to choose our own paths. We even feel free from parts of ourselves – that our emotions are something separate from us, that there’s a real us beneath them, a supra-inner rational core that transcends everything outside of it, that is somehow higher than fleeting emotions that make us do things that aren’t really us.The history of the search for authenticity has sought to understand this true core of human experience. It has been approached in many ways. Sometimes as a revolt against the outer layer, against standards given to us by society. Other times as taking off a mask. Or rejecting reading a script someone else has written for us, whether god or the bible or society and its rulesPhilosopher Jacob Golomb writes that ‘the concept of authenticity is a protest against the blind, mechanical acceptance of an externally imposed code of values.’ The history of authenticity tells us much about the modern world. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, discovering our authentic self meant removing the masks society encourages us to wear, about confessing why we really say or do certain things. Kierkegaard encouraged us to take passionate leaps of faith, to find subjective truths that were meaningful for us, to take action, to make difficult either/or choices.Nietzsche knew that the death of god meant that humans were free to create their own values, to pursue the will to power creatively, to break free from the chains others imposed on us. We should love our fates - amor fati - but give style to our characters.Heidegger thought authenticity meant facing our own deaths, as beings-towards-death, overcoming our own anxiety, and stepping away from the 'They' to create something unique and lasting in the worldAnd finally, Jean-Paul Sartre argued that we are, above all us, free to choose who we are, what we do, and what meaning we attach to the world and its objects. We have a piercing, lucid, and powerful consciousness that can explore the world and our own characters, and not using that reflective power, not interogating our own traits, beliefs, and actions meant we'd be living in 'bad faith', inauthentically ignoring our true human potential.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard is best known for giving us the concept of a leap of faith. He was a deeply religious thinker, but his ideas have as much relevance for secular lives as Christian ones. He was the grandfather of existentialism, a purveyor of authenticity, and of discovering, amid conflicting beliefs and the demand to conform to the rules of society, who you really are. Although he was born in 1813, his works were not widely read in English until the middle of the twentieth century.He published Either/Or, his most famous work in 1843, and in it, through an array of pseudonyms and fictional characters, he discusses competing and contradictory ways one might live life. Should you live for the moment? Seeking pleasure? Or should you live for the interesting? Should you live dutifully? Ethically? Should you conform to the rules? He suggests there are three stages of life, three spheres of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Some of the key concepts are reflective aestheticism, the rotation of crops, subjective truth, passion, and, of course, Christianity.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker argues that human violence has declined across history. One part of this argument is that life in a state of nature – before civilization – was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Amongst other things, Pinker argues that hunter-gatherers, tribal societies, were – and are - much more violent than later more civilized societies. Both Pinker and Thomas Hobbes argue that the state and its monopolisation on force and authority have pacified our darker human nature.This is a common trope:In the 1996 book War Before Civilization, for example, archaeologist Lawrence Keeley argues that prehistoric violent deaths probably ranged from around 7-40% of all deaths. He says: ‘there is nothing inherently peaceful about hunting-gathering or band society’.In 2003, Steve LeBlanc and Katherine Register claimed in their book Constant Battles that ‘everyone had warfare in all time periods’Biologist Edward Wilson ‘Are human beings innately aggressive?’ Yes. Coalitional warfare is ‘pervasive across cultures worldwide’John Tooby and Leda Cosmides declare that ‘Wherever in the archaeological record there is sufficient evidence to make a judgment, there traces of war are to be found. It is found across all forms of social organization—in bands, chiefdoms, and states.’The book Demonic Males argues that ‘"neither in history nor around the globe today is there evidence of a truly peaceful society’.Pinker has written that ‘Hobbes was right, Rousseau was wrong.’Are – and were – hunter-gatherers really that violent? Brian Ferguson and Douglas Fry argue no. Looking at chimpanzees, bonobos, Otzi – the iceman – and a range of much more insightful ethnographical and archaeological evidence is the best way to find out.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An introduction to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes looms over all of us as the preeminent defender of the modern state and sovereign authority. Nuanced and original, he is probably the most influential figure in modern political philosophy who, and could be described as the father of both modern liberalism and modern conservatism.Hobbes’ originality was his belief that political theory could be deduced from scientific principles about psychology, the senses, language, morality, knowledge, and power. To understand politics, he argued, you had to understand people. Hobbes grounds Leviathan in a state of nature – a theoretical situation in which humans have no institutions, no government, no coercive power – a pre-societal condition.Human existence in a state of nature is, according to Hobbes, pretty undesirable. In the most famous passage of Leviathan he says that in a state of nature there are ‘no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’In a state of nature, we have a right to all things, but because we seek our own self-preservation, there are ‘laws of nature.’ Hobbes says that the first law of nature is ‘that every man seek peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.’Because some ignore or misunderstand the laws of nature we require a sovereign power to keep us in awe; a leviathan.Hobbes has been reinterpreted in the 20th century in game theory terms as a prisoner’s dilemma.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.