The Wes Cecil Podcast

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q13: Enlightened?We can see from this that the sovereign power, absolute, sacred and inviolable as it is, does not and cannot exceed the limits of general conventions, and that every man may dispose at will of such goods and liberty as these conventions leave him; so that the Sovereign never has a right to lay more charges on one subject than on another, because, in that case, the question becomes particular, and ceases to be within its competency. Rousseau Social ContractWhen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. In days gone by, there were people who said to us: "You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so." Nothing could be more convincing. Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil. Once a single faculty of your soul has been tyrannized, all the other faculties will submit to the same fate. This has been the cause of all the religious crimes that have flooded the earth. Voltaire Question of Miraclesadmit no more causes of natural things than are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances,to the same natural effect, assign the same causes,qualities of bodies, which are found to belong to all bodies within experiments, are to be esteemed universal, andpropositions collected from observation of phenomena should be viewed as accurate or very nearly true until contradicted by other phenomena. Newton Principia (third edition?)Next Week: "What is this Science Thing?"Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The combination of new crops, new outlooks, new technologies but, most importantly, the expansion of the primate intellectual and imaginative capacities led to the explosive growth in human population that created the world we live in today.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q12: What was reborn?1374 death of Petrarch   1413 Brunelleschi systematizes perspective 1439 Movable Press 1492 Columbus  1514 More's Utopia and Machiavelli's The Prince 1528 Castiglionie's The Courtier 1543 Copernicus The Revolution of the Heavens No one, it seems to me, can hope to equal Augustine. Who, nowadays, could hope to equal one who, in my judgment, was the greatest in an age fertile in great minds? Petrarch.When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely. MachiavelliI have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes. ErasmusMany will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. These rules are sufficient to enable you to know the true from the false — and this aids men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation — and not to wrap yourself in ignorance, a thing which can have no good result, so that in despair you would give yourself up to melancholy.  da VinciUtopus having understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him, every different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had subdued them he made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavour to draw others to it by the force of argument and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other force but that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery.  Thomas More (Utopia)Next Week: "Enlightened?"Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Despite the general acknowledgement of the importance of the printing press, I argue that why the press had such an impact is largely misunderstood. The printing press was the technology that most powerfully transitioned us from a face to face very personal experience of the world to one in which abstraction, distance, time and imagination slowly came to dominate our experience of the world. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A follow up to my lecture on America seen from France that explores in more detail some of the data behind American consumerism and how this translates into lived experience. In sum, while consumerism is a real issue everywhere, the comparisons between Europe and the US mask how utterly dedicated the US is to consumerism as a way of life.Image Attribution: Lionel Allorge, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsSign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following a question from a Patreon member, here is a reflection on Baudrillard and his theory of the Simulacra and how it relates to us and our condition today. Spoiler alert, I’m pretty sure he was really accurate in his analysis of the problem. Seemingly much less helpful, however, in what we can do about the position we find ourselves today.Image Attribution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ayaleila, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsSign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q11: Why Golden?800 ad Abbasid Capital is established in Baghdad displacing the Umayids801-873 Al Kindi and the Translation Movement980-1037 Avicenna Medicine, Philosophy Bukhara1126-1200 Averroes and the Al-Andalus1258 Mongols sack Baghdad and destroy most libraries and booksMuḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī played a significant role in the development of algebra, arithmetic and Hindu-Arabic numerals. He has been described as the father of algebra. Another Persian mathematician, Omar Khayyam, is credited with identifying the foundations of algebraic geometry and found the general geometric solution of the cubic equation. His book Treatise on Demonstrations of Problems of Algebra (1070), which laid down the principles of algebra, is part of the body of Persian mathematics that was eventually transmitted to Europe. Yet another Persian mathematician, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī, found algebraic and numerical solutions to various cases of cubic equations. He also developed the concept of a function.Ibn al-Haytham was the first to explain that vision occurs when light reflects from an object and then passes to one's eyes. And he was the first to point out that vision occurs in the brain, rather than in the eyes. He was also an early proponent of the concept that a hypothesis must be proved by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical evidence—hence understanding the scientific method five centuries before Renaissance scientists.Hospitals, Pharmacies, medical case studies, drug testing, trade with China, Travel writing, histories, philosophy, linguistic studies, literature, educational institutions, hydrology, astronomy.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wow, Iron is a huge, huge deal. Both the impact of the Iron itself and the cultural infrastructure necessary to harness the potential of Iron contributed to a revolution in civilization and a noticeable increase in both the global population and the rate of population increase. In some ways, Iron is likely as significant a contributor to civilization's growth as agriculture. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A reflection on some of the differences I have experienced between France and the US. I start with some, at least to me, startling statistics about French working lives and economic situation and then expand to a more subjective sense of what I have ‘felt’ living in France that is quite distinct from the US. Delivered in lieu of my cancelled lecture.Image Attribution: Lionel Allorge, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsSign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q10: So, About God?Timeline of Catholicism313 Legalization of Christianity under Constantine325-800 Beginning with the Council of Nicaea a series of councils attempt to deal with various controversies and Heresies.900-1200 Catholic Church consolidates Papal primacy and civil power and begins to systematize church hierarchy.1200-1520 Beginning of the Inquisition and rise of the power of the Franciscans and Dominicans as enforcers of Church authority ending in the Reformation. Gnosticism 100: The word is the manifestation of a lesser being that deceives us about our own divinity and the true nature of the universal spirit. Arianism 300: Long running debate about the nature of Christ and the Trinity. Arianism denies that Christ was equal to God but rather subordinate and created by God. Essentially a type of Monotheism in debate with the concept of the Trinity.Pelagianism 400: Man is not born with original sin, men's will is sufficient to live a perfect life, grace of god is helpful but no necessary to good works.Catharism 1130-1300: Two gods - Old Testament god is evil, New Testament God is good and they are at war. Christ is an Angel so no actual resurrection.Henricians 1130-1180: Rejects authority of the central church, the Gospels openly read as the sole foundation of truth, most all organized forms of worship.Fraticelli 1270-1440: Strict adherence to a vow of poverty. All wealth and property were seen as falling from the true teaching of Christ. American Liberalism 1176-today: Pope Leo XIII (1895 and 1899) Condemned many aspects of American liberalism - particularly separation of church and state, freedom of speech, divorce laws,  and reliance on reason. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.