History of Philosophy Audio Archive

“Destroying hope is a critically important project. And when it is achieved, formal democracy is allowed—even preferred, if only for public relation purposes. In more honest circles, much of this is conceded. Of course, it is understood much more profoundly by beasts in men's shapes who endure the consequences of challenging the imperatives of stability and order.” -Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, 2003

Come join my Patreon! https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon Philosophy could be characterized with only a bit of irony as what is left if you begin with the sum total of human thought and subtract those areas in which clear progress has been made.-Talbot Brewer, The Retrieval of Ethics, 2009 -//- Original YouTube: https://youtu.be/geBkIGDEU-k  Published February 2017 by the University of Chicago https://www.youtube.com/@UChicago 

Come join my Patreon! https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon "Human civilization is the result of ten million years of striving after the unspeakable" -Terence McKenna

Come join my Patreon! https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon “Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don't know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dream about it. Happiness is for opportunists. So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves.” ― Slavoj Žižek, Interview with the Guardian, October 2014 -//- Original YouTube: https://youtu.be/lorX77nu3Jk Published April 2024 by Seton Hall University https://www.youtube.com/@setonhall

Come join my Patreon! https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon “We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct, she has little chance of evolving another.” -James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, 2009 Original YouTube: https://youtu.be/JtBuJbCwdyo Recorded 2011, Published October 2016 by CSUMB.https://www.youtube.com/@digitalcommonscsumb2306

“If the experience of the Third Reich teaches us anything, it is that a love of great music, great art and great literature does not provide people with any kind of moral or political immunization against violence, atrocity, or subservience to dictatorship.” -Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, 2003 Original YouTube: https://youtu.be/FAHUyHDTphQ Provided by the Departments of History and Art History at the University of Otago, October 2017: https://www.youtube.com/@OtagoHumanities How did the Nazis conceive of war? In this lecture, Professor Evans—a world authority on Nazi Germany—argues that Hitler's belief that war was necessary for the fitness and survival of the German race led him to promote the indoctrination of German society at every level with a will to wage war and the preparedness to do so. Perpetual conflict was the aim, and the idea that World War II would have ended had the Nazis won is an illusion; it would have been followed by other conflicts, principally with America. In this way, defeat was built in to the Nazi war effort from the beginning.

“Totalitarian states use propaganda to orchestrate historical amnesia, a state-induced stupidity. The object is to make sure the populace does not remember what it means to be free. And once a population does not remember what it means to be free, it does not react when freedom is stripped from it.” -Chris Hedges, The Wages of Revolt, 2015 Original YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXE6T1ySNRM The Sanctuary for Independent Media: https://www.youtube.com/@mediasanctuary Description, per @mediasanctuary: Chris Hedges, whose most recent book "Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt" (Nation Books) was published on May 15, 2015 is also the best-selling author of "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" (2003), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. A quote from the book was used as the opening title quotation in the critically-acclaimed and Academy Award-winning 2009 film, The Hurt Locker. The quote reads: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. In "Wages of Rebellion," Chris Hedges--who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books "Empire of Illusion" and "Death of the Liberal Class"--investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance. Drawing on an ambitious overview of prominent philosophers, historians, and literary figures he shows not only the harbingers of a coming crisis but also the nascent seeds of rebellion. Hedges' message is clear: popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth polarization. Focusing on the stories of rebels from around the world and throughout history, Hedges investigates what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. Utilizing the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Hedges describes the motivation that guides the actions of rebels as "sublime madness"--the state of passion that causes the rebel to engage in an unavailing fight against overwhelmingly powerful and oppressive forces. For Hedges, resistance is carried out not for its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life. Those who rise up against the odds will be those endowed with this "sublime madness."

End the killing now. Description from Media Sanctuary: Chris Hedges, the former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and Palestine. He is the author of numerous books including the New York Times bestsellers War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto. He has also taught students in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system for a decade, the subject of his book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison. This talk was co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace, Albany Chapter; Muslim Solidarity Committee and Project SALAM; Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace; Palestinian Rights Committee-Upper Hudson Peace Action; RPI Muslim Student Association; UAlbany Muslim Student Association; Women Against War. The presentation was made possible by volunteer labor and thousands of small donations from patrons of The Sanctuary for Independent Media. The Sanctuary for Independent Media is a telecommunications production facility dedicated to community media arts, located in an historic former church at 3361 6th Avenue in North Troy, NY. The Sanctuary hosts screening, production and performance facilities, training in media production and a meeting space for artists, activists and independent media makers of all kinds. The Sanctuary for Independent Media https://www.youtube.com/@mediasanctuary Original YouTube: https://youtu.be/ly6lfhOxTe0?si=t6Uk-TzJLdIyF69S Published December 8 2023

“What is required is an attentive response to something real and other than ourselves, of which we have only inklings at first, but which comes more and more into being through our response to it – if we are truly responsive to it. We nurture it into being; or not. In this it has something of the structure of love.” -Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things, 2021 -//- Original YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V3_Y_FuMYk Per the Wonderstruck Podcast: "Delivered at 'A Symposium on Consciousness' on August 2, 2024, at the stunning Kinross House Estate in Scotland, this talk was presented by Wonderstruck, The Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, and Five Books. " https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod

By popular demand, Rick Roderick is back on the History of Philosophy Audio Archive. This is his complete series, Philosophy and Human Values. Come join my Patreon! https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:52 Socrates and the Life of Inquiry 00:47:13 Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics 01:28:45 Kant and the Path to Enlightenment 02:12:47 Mill on Liberty and Utilitarianism 02:56:53 Hegel and Modern Life 03:37:48 Nietzsche on Knowledge and Belief 04:22:21 Kierkegaard and the Modern Spirit 05:08:51 Philosophy and the Postmodern Condition -//-