Podcasts about Immanuel Kant

Acquista il mio nuovo libro, “Anche Socrate qualche dubbio ce l'aveva”: https://amzn.to/3wPZfmCIniziamo a parlare di un filosofo su cui resteremo a lungo, il prussiano Immanuel Kant.Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/dentro-alla-filosofia--4778244/support.

Il Decreto Sicurezza approvato dal Parlamento ha scatenato la reazione rabbiosa di una masnada "criminofila" che esalta i reati (in particolare furti, borseggi, rapine e occupazioni di case) come una forma di redistribuzione del reddito e sublime metodo per condurre la lotta di classe.Secondo queste farneticazioni anti legalitarie il criminale è una vittima della società che va giustificato, mentre chi subisce furti, rapine, vessazioni è un essere abietto che si è appropriato di risorse sottraendole ai diseredati. Nell'anniversario dell'arresto di Enzo Tortora(vedi https://www.rtl.it/notizie/articoli/enzo-tortora-42-anni-fa-l-arresto-le-prime-immagini-della-serie-tv-portobello/) ne parliamo con Samuele Murtinu che ha scritto un articolo su l'Opinione disponibile a questo link: https://opinione.it/politica/2025/06/09/samuele-murtinu-decreto-sicurezza-liberta-sinistra-contratto-sociale-cittadini/.In particolare scrive Murtinu "...un'autorità sovrana che fa rispettare il contratto sociale tra cittadini, è necessaria per qualsiasi forma di libertà. Da una prospettiva più liberale, John Locke afferma che diritto alla vita, libertà e proprietà privata richiedono sicurezza, esercitata e garantita dalle istituzioni che facciano rispettare le leggi. La sicurezza e la certezza del diritto rappresentano prerequisiti per la libertà individuale secondo Immanuel #Kant. Si potrebbero citare anche Isaiah Berlin e molti altri. Forse la sinistra dovrebbe seguire John Rawls e interessarsi ai cittadini e alla necessità che questi godano di beni “primari” per esercitare la propria libertà". Invece la sinistra è ancora prigioniera della mentalità deteriore che considera la proprietà un furto e il ladro un benemerito giustiziere.La pagina Wikipedia sul caso Phineas Gage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

What affect does Kant have on our society today?  You can support the show at Buymeacoffee.com/laymenscup If you are listening on iTunes, please subscribe and leave a review.  Laymen on iTunes If you have comments or questions for us, you can email us at laymenscup@gmail.com. Find us on YouTube by searching for LaymensCup. Make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell! We are on Facebook at www.facebook.com/laymenscup. You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter @laymenscup. It is always our hope to get the Gospel out to as many people as possible and you can help us by sharing the show. Word of mouth is the greatest way we will get the show out to the masses. Thank you. Please pray for us, as we are praying for you. Kemp, Bob, Shaun, and Ann Our Sponsors Candee Land Creations Navigating Neverland with Amy Carolina Furniture Mart 

In this podcast we will be talking about 9 Life Lessons From Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand  was a Russian-American writer and philosopher who lived in the twentieth century and is credited as a founder of philosophy of Objectivism.  So with that in mind, here are 9 important lessons that we can learn from Ayn Rand -  01. Use reason in everything 02. Be selfish  03. Follow your own values  04. Don't play the victim  05. Develop your self-esteem 06. Be honest 07. Earn your money honourably 08. Never give up 09. Always Keep growing I hope you enjoyed watching the video and hope these 9 Life Lessons From Ayn Rand will add value to your life.  Ayn Rand  was a Russian-American writer and philosopher who lived in the twentieth century. Born in Russia, she moved to America when she was in her 20's; there she wrote several novels, some of the most famous being: The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Towards the end of her life, she focused more on philosophy, founding the philosophy of Objectivism, the four main principles of which are: Objective reality, which is the reality that exists independently of consciousness, Absolute reason, which means that the guidance of facts far outweighs the guidance of faith or emotion, Individualism, which means the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness, and Laissez-faire capitalism, which is a system based on protecting human rights and property rights. Her main philosophical view is that knowledge can be acquired only through the process of reasoning and she rejected religion and faith. She attacked many past philosophers, with the exception of a few, like Aristotle and Thomas Acquinas. She was inspired by Nietzsche and John Locke and she was against Immanuel Kant, whom she named “the most evil man in mankind's history” because she thought his ethics opposed the self-interests of human beings. During her life, she was involved in many political movements and made connections with journalists, economists, including the economist Ludwig von Mises, who referred to her as "the most courageous man in America", a compliment that pleased her because he said "man" instead of "woman", implying that she was more courageous, had more guts than any man. Through the Objectivism movement, her work became known more and more to the public.

ABOUT Pauline Kleingeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Groningen. Earlier she taught at Leiden University and at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Kant and Cosmopolitanism (CUP 2012), Fortschritt und Vernunft: Zur Geschichtsphilosophie Kants (Königshausen und Neumann 1995) and numerous articles. Her academic interests are in ethics and political philosophy, with a special focus on Kant and Kantian theory. ABSTRACT In the first section of his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (G1), Immanuel Kant claims to identify the supreme principle of morality. After famous discussions of the idea of a ‘good will', ‘acting from duty' and ‘respect', he concludes that the highest moral principle is the following: ‘I ought never to proceed except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law' (G 4:402). He claims that this principle implicitly governs ordinary moral practices and convictions. It is the ‘supreme' moral principle in that it is a meta-principle by means of which substantive Kantian moral principles — such as ‘help others in need' or ‘never lie' — can be derived. Because Kant's argument draws on moral convictions that are still widely shared, and because his conclusion articulates a paradigmatic position in moral theory, G1 has become one of the most renowned texts in the history of philosophy. The structure of Kant's argument towards the identification of the supreme principle, however, has long been the subject of debate. Three serious difficulties stand out in the literature, and they all concern the most important steps of his argument: (1) Kant presents his argument as consisting of three propositions and a conclusion, but he labels only the second and third propositions as such. He does not make explicit what he takes the first proposition to be. In recent decades at least a dozen candidates have been put forward in the literature (see Steigleder 2022). (2) Kant claims that the third proposition follows from the first and the second, but it is widely regarded unclear how it is supposed to follow. (3) Kant's final step to the formulation of the supreme principle is often said to be a jump over a gap, rather than a careful step that follows from the preceding argument. As a result, Kant's reasoning towards the supreme moral principle seems more like a series of assertions and fragmentary arguments rather than a single argumentative chain. In this paper, I argue that Kant's views on philosophical method shed new light on the structure and direction of his argument in G1. It has gone unnoticed that this argument consists of a chain of regressive inferences. I first explain the current positions in the literature regarding Kant's method in G1 (§2). I then turn to Kant's views on method (§3). Using his description of the so-called ‘analytic method', I reconstruct the argument of G1 as a regressive chain. I argue that this reconstruction suggests solutions to the three main difficulties diagnosed in the literature, although several unclarities remain (§4).

Johan, Göran och C-G beskådar Wes Andersons nya, The Phoenician Scheme. Svalt mottagen i Cannes, men detta är Vasastan!!! Sen är det dags för streamingserien Other people's money - eller snarare danska skattebetalares pengar, försnillade av tyska finanshajar. Vi är med på noterna, men samtidigt: det dånar i rättens kratrar, sånt här fuffens får väl inte pågå ostraffat?! Plus: stressade läkare i Köpenhamn! Serietecknare i kris! Techmoguler som felciterar Immanuel Kant! Precis ALLT som någon rimligtvis kan begära! Enligt vår ringa mening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How to find hope in these times? I spoke with political scientist Loren Goldman about the principle of political hope: why we should have hope, how to have hope in dark times, and how political hope differs from naïve optimism, faith in progress, or passive reliance on a hidden logic that will save us in the end. Goldman, who is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of The Principle of Political Hope (Oxford University Press, 2023), where he reveals hope to be an indispensable aspect of much continental and American political thought, especially in the works of Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Ernst Bloch, Richard Rorty, and others. Our conversation on Goldman's study of hope ends with three concrete lessons to counter hopelessness, cynicism, and despair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Jonathan Pageau (  @JonathanPageau  ) & John Vervaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ) have a conversation about the nature of Spirit and the importance of fellowship. We mention Paul Vanderklay (  @PaulVanderKlay  ), Elizabeth Oldfield (  @thesacredpodcast  ), Kale Zelden, Rod Dreer, James Filler, William Desmond, Iamblichus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Johannes Hoffken, Greg Enriqueus, Eric Hull, Dan Chappie, Mike Levin, Jordan Peterson, Jacques Derrida, Hilary Putnam, Willard Van Orman Quine, Catherine Pickstock, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, Owen Barfield, Alfred North Whitehead, Edwin Hutchins, Tanya Luhrmann, L.J. Savage, Parmenides, G.W.F. Hegel, Evan Thompson, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Aristotle, Martin Heidegger, Pavel Florensky, Alex O'Connor, Jesus Christ, Ezekiel, Moses, Muhammad, Michael Jordan, Sebastian Melmoth and more. Midwestuary Conference - https://www.midwestuary.com/What is Spirit Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjEY3BOPPI&t=909sWhat is Spirit Part 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiTAI_r31Ts00:00:00 - Introduction & Midwestuary Conference Announcement00:01:50 - What is Spirit? The Central Question00:03:30 - John's Opening: Relational Ontology & Com-unity00:09:15 - Jonathan's Opening: Synergy, St. Maximus, & the One and the Many00:14:50 - Spiritual Dualism vs. Monism: Deconstructing Modern Dichotomies00:22:30 - Jonathan on Traditional Views of Spirit & Angels00:29:08 - John: Non-Psychological Descriptors of Spirit (Mike Levin's work)00:30:50 - Jonathan: Spirit Animates All Things (St. Maximus)00:34:15 - Where is Self-Consciousness? Persons, Cities, and God-Man00:40:50 - Is Spirit Dependent on Humans? Perception vs. Projection00:44:50 - Going Back & Going Forward: Post-Kantian Neoplatonism00:50:20 - Exaptation, Incarnation, and Levels of Understanding00:53:40 - Barfield, Post-Contian Neoplatonism, and Integrating Science & Myth01:03:30 - Spirit and Fellowship: Superorganisms & Hyperobjects01:09:49 - Liturgy as Theurgy: Making Receptive to Theophany01:15:08 - Prophecy: Channeling the Group or Transcendent Knowledge?01:25:07 - Fellowship in the Digital Age: Breath, Fiber Optics, and AI01:30:00 - John: The Virtual Coming Alive & The Future of Theology (Claude AI)01:40:55 - Final Thoughts: Prioritizing Embodied Fellowship

How to find hope in these times? I spoke with political scientist Loren Goldman about the principle of political hope: why we should have hope, how to have hope in dark times, and how political hope differs from naïve optimism, faith in progress, or passive reliance on a hidden logic that will save us in the end. Goldman, who is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of The Principle of Political Hope (Oxford University Press, 2023), where he reveals hope to be an indispensable aspect of much continental and American political thought, especially in the works of Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Ernst Bloch, Richard Rorty, and others. Our conversation on Goldman's study of hope ends with three concrete lessons to counter hopelessness, cynicism, and despair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

How to find hope in these times? I spoke with political scientist Loren Goldman about the principle of political hope: why we should have hope, how to have hope in dark times, and how political hope differs from naïve optimism, faith in progress, or passive reliance on a hidden logic that will save us in the end. Goldman, who is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of The Principle of Political Hope (Oxford University Press, 2023), where he reveals hope to be an indispensable aspect of much continental and American political thought, especially in the works of Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Ernst Bloch, Richard Rorty, and others. Our conversation on Goldman's study of hope ends with three concrete lessons to counter hopelessness, cynicism, and despair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to find hope in these times? I spoke with political scientist Loren Goldman about the principle of political hope: why we should have hope, how to have hope in dark times, and how political hope differs from naïve optimism, faith in progress, or passive reliance on a hidden logic that will save us in the end. Goldman, who is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of The Principle of Political Hope (Oxford University Press, 2023), where he reveals hope to be an indispensable aspect of much continental and American political thought, especially in the works of Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Ernst Bloch, Richard Rorty, and others. Our conversation on Goldman's study of hope ends with three concrete lessons to counter hopelessness, cynicism, and despair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

This is part two of a series about Jonathan Pageau (  @JonathanPageau  ) and John Verkvaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ) and their respective views on Spirit and pneumatology. I mention Jonathan Pageau, John Vervaeke, Paul Vander Klay, Elizabeth Oldfield, Kale Zelden, Rod Dreher, Grim Grizz, , Ed Hutchins, Tucker Carlson, St. Anthony of the Desert, Athanasius, David Sloan Wilson, John Calvin, Tanya Luhrmann, Charles Taylor, Chuck Colson, Will Barlow, Scott Alexander, Robert Falconer, Richard Schwarz, Chris Masterpietro (Vervaeke's collaborator), Jung (Carl Jung), Michael (Archangel), Jesus Christ, Satan, Andre Antunes, Daniel (prophet), Mary Harrington, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Meno, Gregory of Nyssa, Father John Bear, Hank (presumably Hank Green from a referenced conversation), Barack Obama, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, George Cybenko, Kurt Hornik, Jonathan Losos, Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, Baldwin (James Mark Baldwin), Alex O'Connor, Nero Caesar, Adam, Plotinus, Spinoza (Benedict de Spinoza), Dan Wagenmaker, (Upton) Sinclair, Bishop VT Williams, Raphael (Raff), Anderson Day, William Desmond, Charles StangMidwestuary Info and Tickets - https://www.midwestuary.com/Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjEY3BOPPI&t=928sDavid Sloan Wilson Dialogue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CAyvVdNSzIWill Barlow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DoIgcSWJnE&t=4065s

How to find hope in these times? I spoke with political scientist Loren Goldman about the principle of political hope: why we should have hope, how to have hope in dark times, and how political hope differs from naïve optimism, faith in progress, or passive reliance on a hidden logic that will save us in the end. Goldman, who is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of The Principle of Political Hope (Oxford University Press, 2023), where he reveals hope to be an indispensable aspect of much continental and American political thought, especially in the works of Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Ernst Bloch, Richard Rorty, and others. Our conversation on Goldman's study of hope ends with three concrete lessons to counter hopelessness, cynicism, and despair.

No hay grandeza ajena que resista la lectura de sus WhatsApps. Imaginemos a Sartre mandando besotes a Simone de Beauvoir. A Immanuel Kant diciendo que “Oka” a un cambio en el horario de sus clases. O a Churchill poniendo un emoticón de lagrimita después de un bombardeo. Nada adensa la grandeza como el silencio.

In the shadowy realms of the mind, where nightmares lurk and ancient evils stir, lies the path of Southern Demonology. Our host, JJ, embarks on a captivating journey through the dark corners of demonology, supernatural tales, and the profound depths of the human psyche. In this episode, we delve into the enigmatic world of nightmares, the sublime beauty of terror, and the power of acceptance and love.A Nightmare-Free ParadiseFor years, JJ battled relentless nightmares that haunted his every slumber. These weren't just ordinary dreams; they were harrowing experiences that left him gasping and trembling. In a previous episode, "The Dangers of Dreaming Demonic," JJ recounted his harrowing encounters with infernal entities that inflicted not just fear but physical pain. But then, a miraculous transformation occurred.Equipped with blessed medallions of St. Benedict, JJ found himself in a nightmare-free haven. For the first time in his life, he awoke refreshed and untroubled by the horrors of the night. This newfound peace was a testament to the power of faith and protection. However, the journey wasn't without its challenges. During a trip to Japan, JJ had to remove the medallions due to airport security, but he kept them close, ensuring they still provided their protective magic.From Nightmares to MundanityAs JJ navigated this newfound tranquility, his dreams took a curious turn. The terrifying nightmares that once plagued him were replaced by repetitive and mundane experiences. He likened his dreamscapes to the vast, labyrinthine structures of the Backrooms and the Forever IKEA from internet lore. These dreams, though less terrifying, were far from exciting. They were, as Immanuel Kant might say, the antithesis of the sublime.In his treatise "On the Esthetics of the Beautiful and the Sublime," Kant explores the two categories of the aesthetically pleasing: the beautiful and the sublime. Beauty, for Kant, is akin to a valley filled with flowers and deer grazing, evoking warmth and tranquility. The sublime, on the other hand, is a mountain with a thunderstorm over its peak, inspiring awe and even fear. JJ, with his affinity for the gothic and the terrifying, found himself firmly in the camp of the sublime.The Return of DarknessAfter a year of blissful freedom, JJ's world was once again plunged into darkness.Get access to all of Southern Demonology's episodes, social media links, and even contact JJ by visiting https://www.southerndemonology.com#southerndemonology, #podcast, #demonology, #nightmares, #stbenedict,#immanuelkant, #sublime, #horror, #supernatural, #faith, #protection,#dreams, #terror, #loveandacceptance, #religion, #popefrancis, #ai,#workersrights, #fairwages, #catholicchurch, #backrooms, #foreverikea,#scpl, #horrormovies, #demonization, #hate, #ostracism, #faithandfear,#mindandspirit, #darkcorners, #ancientevils, #humanpsyche,#journeyofdiscovery, #patreonsupport Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/southerndemonology. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our sense of duty to do good can only have meaning if it comes from God. Is this enough to prove that God exists? Today, R.C. Sproul responds to the influential views of Immanuel Kant. For your donation of any amount, get R.C. Sproul's teaching series Defending Your Faith, plus lifetime digital access to all 32 messages and the study guide. We'll also send you two books from Ligonier: A Field Guide on False Teaching and A Field Guide on Gender and Sexuality: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/4024/donate   Live outside the U.S. and Canada? Get R.C. Sproul's digital teaching series and digital study guide for your gift of any amount, plus the two ebooks from Ligonier: https://www.renewingyourmind.org/global   Meet Today's Teacher:   R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine.   Meet the Host:   Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, and host of the Ask Ligonier podcast. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

Send us comments, suggestions and ideas here! In this week's episode Heka Astra brings us full circle to conclude this three part series concerning the philosophy and occult implications found within Rudolph Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom. On the first side of the tape we discuss the philosophy of Monism and just how many concepts fit neatly inside of it and whether or not the world or life itself has a purpose. If so, where does it come from? In the extended show we wrap up all the loose ends and conclude with a rousing discussion on Steiner's ideas about morality, the imagination, the value of life itself, individuality, the genius, racial qualities (warning it gets controversial [not the views of the hosts!]) and answers, finally, once and for all, if we are truly free or not. Thank you and enjoy the show!This episode was written by Heka Astra with additional research and commentary by Luke Madrid and Mari Sama.In this week's episode we discuss: -The Philosophy of Monism-External Control-Moral Compulsion-Purpose and Destiny-Knowledge and Conversation With the HGAIn the extended show available at www.patreon/com/TheWholeRabbit we reach the enlightening conclusion and discuss:-Moral Imagination?-The Value of Life-Antiquated / Controversial Theories of Race From the Text-Individuality-The Final Consequences of Monism-We Are Free!Where to find The Whole Rabbit:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0AnJZhmPzaby04afmEWOAVInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_whole_rabbitTwitter: https://twitter.com/1WholeRabbitOrder Stickers: https://www.stickermule.com/thewholerabbitOther Merchandise: https://thewholerabbit.myspreadshop.com/Music By Spirit Travel Plaza:https://open.spotify.com/artist/30dW3WB1sYofnow7y3V0YoSources:The Philosophy of Freedom PDFhttps://argos.vu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Philosophy_of_Freedom-Rudolf_Steiner-4.pdfSupport the show

As authored by Rafael Ziegler.

This conversation discusses the similarities between Jonathan Pageau and John Vervaeke with regards to ontology, teleology, and epistemology. This is in preparation for a conversation in preparation for the midwestuary conference. I mention John Vervaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ), Jonathan Pageau (  @JonathanPageau  ), Mary Harrington, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Meno's Paradox, Gregory of Nyssa, Father John Behr, Hank, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, George Cybenko, Kurt Hornik, Charles Darwin, Jonathan Losos, The Timmaeus, Jordan Peterson (  @JordanBPeterson  ), Richard Dawkins, The Baldwin Effect, William James, Renes Descartes, Plotinus, and more. Midwestuary - https://www.midwestuary.com/Jonathan Pageau and Mary Harrington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJnGDEAka7I&t=1525sJonathan Losos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70waxmiQa8I&t=1143sPeterson and Dawkins - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wBtFNj_o5k&t=5364sSam and Vervaeke - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0RDjahsd1M&t=5176s

Der wunderbare Titel der heutigen Episode lautet: »Die Natur kennt feine Grade«. Leider stammt er nicht von mir, sondern ist der Titel des neuen Buches meines heutigen Gasts, Prof. Frank Zachos. Aufmerksame Hörer werden sich an Frank erinnern, dazu aber mehr später. Frank Zachos ist seit 2011 Wissenschaftler am Naturhistorischen Museum in Wien und außerdem externer Professor an der Universität in Bloemfontein in Südafrika. Er hat Biologie, Philosophie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte studiert und beschäftigt sich außer mit Zoologie und Evolutionsbiologie auch mit theoretischen und philosophischen Aspekten der Biologie. In dieser Episode beschäftigen wir uns mit der Frage, welche Beiträge Naturwissenschaft im Allgemeinen und Biologie im Besonderen bei fundamentalen Fragen des Menschseins leisten kann. Wir beginnen dabei mit den bekannten Kant'schen Fragen: Was kann ich wissen? (Erkenntnistheorie) Was darf ich hoffen? (Religionsphilosophie) Was soll ich tun? (Ethik / Moralphilosophie) Was ist der Mensch? (Anthropologie im weitesten Sinne) Und zu allen Fragen gibt es, wir wir erkunden werden, eine biologische Dimension. Zahlreiche Fragen werden aufgeworfen: Wie unterscheiden sich Mensch und Tier? Welche Rolle spielt Evolution in den verschiedensten Bereichen unseres Lebens, von der Biologie, über die Erkenntnis bis zur Kultur? Was können wir für Moral und Ethik von der Biologie lernen? Was ist die evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie (die besonders auch in Österreich wichtige Vertreter hatte)? Wir blicken hier zurück auf Konrad Lorenz und Rupert Riedl. Kann man der Philosophie in den Naturwissenschaften entkommen, oder holt sie uns immer ein? »Man kann die Philosophie ignorieren, man kann ihr aber nicht entkommen« Was ist der Unterschied zwischen unwissenschaftlichen und außerwissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen? Was ist metaphysischer Realismus, und warum lässt sich dieser wissenschaftlich nicht begründen. Welche Rolle spielt systemisches Denken in Ergänzung zum Reduktionismus für die komplexen Herausforderungen der Zeit und warum kann biologisches Denken ebenfalls hilfreich sein? »Wer will was Lebendigs erkennen und beschreiben, Sucht erst den Geist herauszutreiben, Dann hat er die Teile in seiner Hand, Fehlt, leider! nur das geistige Band.«, Goethe, Faust I Behaupten wir oft mehr zu wissen und zu verstehen als wir wirklich tun? Warum ist intellektuelle Bescheidenheit gerade heute von zentraler Bedeutung. »Die Wissenschaft ist gewissermaßen Opfer ihres eigenen Erfolgs geworden« Gibt es Kränkungen der Menschheit durch Wissenschaft? Gibt es bei manchen oder gar vielen Menschen eine Art der Realitätsfurcht? Was hat »Follow the Science« ausgelöst, also vor rund 100 Jahren Euthanasie und die Verbesserung der Erbsubstanz des Menschen als Stand des Wissens galt? »Wann immer man Moral mit wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen letztbegründen will, wird es ganz gefährlich« Frank erinnert dabei wieder an Kant: »Es gibt kein Sollen in der Natur.« Womit sich die Frage stellt, was ein naturalistischer Fehlschluss ist, und wie wir ihn vermeiden können? »Wer zwingt uns natürlich zu sein?« Oder wie es Hans Rosling ausdrückt:  »Have you heard people say that humans used to live in balance with nature? […] There was a balance. It wasn't because humans lived in balance with nature. Humans died in balance with nature. It was utterly brutal and tragic.« Kehren wir zurück zur Erkenntnis: was können wir aus der Biologie über Erkenntnisfähigkeit lernen? Konkreter gedacht am Beispiel der evolutionären Erkenntnistheorie sowie den Kant'schen a prioris. »Das was im Idividuum a priori ist (also von Geburt an), ist eigentlich doch etwas erlerntes, aber nicht individuell erlernt, sondern evolutionär/stammesgeschichtlich. Das Kant'sche a priori wird in der evolutionären Erkenntnistheorie zu einem phylogenetischen oder evolutionären a posteriori.« Nicht zuletzt diskutieren wir auch über die Bedeutung von Religion für die Menschen. Verschwindet Religion langsam, wenn unsere Erkenntnisse über die Welt zunehmen, oder passiert eher das Gegenteil? Und damit reißen wir die Fragen die in Franks Buch aufgeworfen werden, nur an. Daher an alle Zuhörer dieser Episode, die Empfehlung, sich das Buch zu besorgen und weiterzulesen. »Wir können mittlerweile Dinge beschreiben, die wir uns gar nicht mehr vorstellen können« Referenzen Frank Zachos Frank Zachos im Naturhistorischen Museum in Wien Frank Zachos, Die Natur kennt feine Grade (2025) Andere Episoden Episode 118: Science and Decision Making under Uncertainty, A Conversation with Prof. John Ioannidis   Episode 106: Wissenschaft als Ersatzreligion? Ein Gespräch mit  Manfred Glauninger Episode 98: Ist Gott tot? Ein philosophisches Gespräch mit Jan Juhani Steinmann Episode 92: Wissen und Expertise Teil 2   Episode 85: Naturalismus — was weiß Wissenschaft? Episode 83: Robert Merton — Was ist Wissenschaft? Episode 75: Gott und die Welt, ein Gespräch mit Werner Gruber und Erich Eder Episode 55: Strukturen der Welt Episode 48: Evolution, ein Gespräch mit Erich Eder Episode 41: Intellektuelle Bescheidenheit: Was wir von Bertrand Russel und der Eugenik lernen können Episode 33: Naturschutz im Anthropozän – Gespräch mit Prof. Frank Zachos Fachliche Referenzen Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781) Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können (1783) Konrad Lorenz, Die acht Todsünden der zivilisierten Menschheit, Piper (1996) Rupert Riedl, Evolution und Erkenntnis, Piper (1985) Rupert Riedl, Strukturen der Komplexität: Eine Morphologie des Erkennens und Erklärens, Springer (2000) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust I (1808) Hans Rosling, Factfulness, Sceptre (2018) Konrad Lorenz Artikel: Die Lehre Kants a priori im Lichte der modernen Biologie. Dave Grossman, On Killing, Back Bay Books (2009)

Send us comments, suggestions and ideas here! In this week's episode we stack up behind Heka Astra who is leading the charge and authoring this three part series through the twisted jungle of Rudolph Steiner's wild mind as he establishes the philosophical framework proving the truth we all feel inside, that we, despite some compelling evidence otherwise, are in fact truly free beings possessed of our own divine will as it is laid out in exhausting detail in his seminal classic “The Philosophy of Freedom.” In part two of our tour of Steiner's work we explore the shortcomings of naive realism and critical idealism which are easier to understand than it first sounds. In the extended episode we discuss how the faculty of feeling corresponds to traditional Hermetic elemental associations, the nature of individuality, the limits of knowledge and the awesome power of the All-Mind or Nous. Make sure to tune in next week to see how it all combines to create a uniquely free spirit. Thank you and enjoy the show. This episode was written by Heka Astra with additional research and commentary by Luke Madrid and Mari Sama.In this week's episode we discuss: Critical Idealism vs. Naive RealismAbsolute IllusionismWhat is a Percept?What is a Concept?The Power of THINKING Parabola ThoughtsThe Power of INTUITIONHave You Ever Seen a “4?” In the extended episode available at www.patreon.com/TheWholeRabbit we go further into the classified domain and discuss:The Hermetic Association of WaterThe Unification of Thought and FeelingThought as a BridgeHuman Individuality Are There Limits To KnowledgeIn A Locked RoomPoimandresThe All Mind / Nous Where to find The Whole Rabbit:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0AnJZhmPzaby04afmEWOAVInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_whole_rabbitTwitter: https://twitter.com/1WholeRabbitOrder Stickers: https://www.stickermule.com/thewholerabbitOther Merchandise: https://thewholerabbit.myspreadshop.com/Music By Spirit Travel Plaza:https://open.spotify.com/artist/30dW3WB1sYofnow7y3V0YoSources:The Philosophy of Freedom PDFhttps://argos.vu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Philosophy_of_Freedom-Rudolf_Steiner-4.pdfSupport the show

2025晨鐘課－每天，都是新的起點 以歷史智慧滋養生活，點亮2025每一天！ 借鑑過去，活在當下，展望未來！ 粵語廣播網站 (時兆出版社授權錄製) https://soundcloud.com/mediahk Podcast@靈修廣播站 4月28日 太空之旅 我觀看你指頭所造的天，並你所陳設的月亮星宿，便說：人算什麼，你竟顧念他！世人算什麼，你竟眷顧他！ 詩篇 8：3、4   德國哲學家伊曼紐爾．康得（Immanuel Kant，1724–1804年）曾說過：「有兩樣東西，越是經常且持久地對它們進行反覆思考，它們就越使心靈充滿常新且日益加深的讚賞和敬畏：一是我頭上的星空，二是我心中的道德法則。」 人類對太空的傾慕和好奇驅使著天文學家和太空科學家們盡力探索上帝所創造的宇宙奇蹟。但到目前為止，太空人只到過月球，並止步於此。 1961年，蘇聯太空人尤里．加加林（Yuri Gagarin）成為第一個進入外太空的人。目睹了這一切的鄧尼斯．蒂托（Dennis Tito，生於1940年）大受震撼，生出了前往太空的夢想。最終在2001年4月28日，他參加了聯盟TM–32飛船的飛行任務，在太空度過了7天22小時4分鐘，繞地球轉了128次。於是，億萬富翁鄧尼斯．蒂托成為第一位自費前往太空的太空遊客。這次冒險花了他多少錢呢？僅是登上飛船一項，就花了他二千多萬美元。，但其實這還沒讓他離開過地球的軌道呢！ 當基督復臨時，來自世界各地、各時代上帝忠心的兒女將穿越星際到達天堂（約14：1–3）。預言之靈告訴我們，從地球到天堂的太空之旅需要「七天」。有人推測之所以需要一個星期，是為了讓那些從未守過安息日的人在進入天國之前守安息日。按照他們的設想，那個安息日會在另一個星球上過。但無論《聖經》亦或懷愛倫的著作都沒有提到這一點。懷愛倫只說升到天堂需要七天。那麼我們需要為這次太空之旅付多少錢呢？一毛錢也不用─上帝已經為我們付過了！ 飛向太空時，太空人只能待在飛船狹小的空間裡，與他作伴的只有幾位同事。相比之下，聖徒將乘坐上帝的交通工具去往天堂。他們將與地球上所有得贖之民為伴，還有聖天使和耶穌基督陪伴左右。任何人類的努力或成就都無法與這至高無上的獎賞相提並論。因著上帝的恩典，你我都會在天家相聚！

De senaste veckorna har vi i podden ägnat oss en del åt Cervantes–Lönsboda-skalan. I ett av prenumerantavsnitten utsågs Immanuel Kant till världshistoriens största Lönsboda-legend.Det kändes inte mer än rimligt att kröna utmärkelsen med ett puttrigt avsnitt om Kant. Han är en av världshistoriens största och viktigaste namn. Men märkligt nog är det nästan mer intressant att läsa och prata om hans inrutade och småborgerliga liv i Ostpreussens pärla Königsberg.Dagens avsnitt handlar om vad kunskap egentligen är, men också om den stora fröjden i att röra sin egen senap till torsken. Och sedan skvallra.—Läslista:Fredriksson, Gunnar, 20 filosofer, Norstedt, Stockholm, 1994Högnäs, Sten (2019). Idéernas historia: en översikt. Lund: Historiska mediaRussell, Bertrand, Västerlandets filosofi och dess samband med den politiska och sociala utvecklingen, 7. utg., Natur och kultur, Stockholm, 1994Magee, Bryan, Bonniers stora bok om filosofi: [från antikens naturfilosofer till dagens moderna tänkare], Bonnier, Stockholm, 1999Encyklopedia Britannica Lyssna på våra avsnitt fritt från reklam: https://plus.acast.com/s/historiepodden. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveThis episode is a bit “meta”: it's about what it means to keep an open mind, how to trust your conscience, why we should all avoid groupthink, and the phenomenon of “self silencing” — keeping your views to yourself when you're afraid it might be too costly to say them out loud. But of course, this being Wisdom of Crowds, we link these meta-topics to the politics of the day. Jenara Nerenberg is a journalist, producer, speaker, and founder of the Neurodiversity Project, which hosts bestselling authors in the arts and sciences who push for “innovation in research and media.” In her work, Jenara applies insights from psychology and public health to question of free speech and the exchange of ideas. Her new book is titled, Trust Your Mind: Embracing Nuance in a World of Self Silencing. You can see why we are excited to have her on Wisdom of Crowds.“I don't think that self silencing is inherently bad,” Jenara says, “but I think that we want everyone to be empowered to know that many people are conditioned to fall into self silencing and they're not doing it consciously.” The goal is to help people become free thinkers. Instead, groupthink and ideology are the default for many people, because “people who are high in self uncertainty are drawn into something with clear boundaries and sense of belonging.” But if you want to think freely, you have to do the work.Shadi Hamid brings up politics. Where we wrong to focus so much on cancel culture on the Left, given the recent suppression of free speech on the Right? “Right has no respect for free speech, they were pretending,” Shadi says. “It was a pretext, they used the language of free speech as a cudgel.” Samuel Kimbriel agrees that the Right is using “the power of the sword” to suppress speech.Apart from the necessary political protection of speech, however, Jenara argues that free speech requires a particular disposition of personal character: “My book and my thinking are really about how do we see each other as human again? And that's where we went wrong with this sort of excessive focus on labels and categories and check boxes.”In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Jenara talks about whether it's possible to be emotionally attached to the principle of freedom of free speech and open inquiry (as opposed to a particular point of view); Sam discusses “infinite proceduralism” and why we need to accept the truth once it's been identified; Jenara talks about growing up in a very unique San Francisco “bubble”; Shadi ponders when it is appropriate to cut people off whose opinions disturb you; and Jenara discusses gendered conversations and people-pleasing.Required Reading:* Jenara's book, Trust Your Mind: Embracing Nuance in a World of Self-Silencing (Amazon). * Jenara's initiative, the Neurodiversity Project (divergentlit).* “A Letter for Justice and Open Debate” (Harper's).* “ ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,' is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.” Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” (Columbia).* Agnes Callard on keeping an open mind (New York Times). * Voltaire on free speech (The Guardian). * Ross Barkan, “How Anti-Woke Went Intellectually Bankrupt” (New York).* About Darryl Davis: “How One Man Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members To Give Up Their Robes” (NPR).This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Governance and Markets.Free preview video:Full video for paid subscribers below:

Send us comments, suggestions and ideas here! On this week's episode we follow our guide Heka Astra into the rarely explored yet vitally important philosophical conundrum of what it means to be free and if such a thing is even possible by exploring turn of the century occultist Rudolph Steiner's seminal classic on the subject, “The Philosophy of Freedom” which to the delight of the spiritually minded explains in, albeit exhaustive detail, the inner and outer workings of perception, will, thought and if or even how we may express our SUPPOSED God given right to freedom.  In the free side of the show we discuss what freedom even is, if it has anything to with choice (or not) and what Will has to do with the suit of wands in the Tarot. In the extended show we discuss the formation of the ego, the effect observation has on both light and our thoughts (we even yell about physics for a while) and the esoteric symbolism of the sword in the Hermetic tradition as it pertains to Steiner's explanation of thought. Thank you everybody and enjoy the show.In this week's episode we discuss: WTF is Freedom Anyway? Book of the Law StyleWhat is Determinism? Is Choice Free Will?Astrology and Free Will?To Will What one Wills…Esoteric Symbolism, The WandThe Power of ThinkingIn the extended show available at www.patreon.com/TheWholeRabbit we go further down the rabbit hole and continue discussing:The Formation of the EgoMonism vs. DualismMaterialismKhemetic WisdomThe Ace of Swords and ThinkingEinstein, Light and Relativity?The Conceptual RealmA Hobo in a Pear Tree Where to find The Whole Rabbit:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0AnJZhmPzaby04afmEWOAVInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_whole_rabbitTwitter: https://twitter.com/1WholeRabbitOrder Stickers: https://www.stickermule.com/thewholerabbitOther Merchandise: https://thewholerabbit.myspreadshop.com/Music By Spirit Travel Plaza:https://open.spotify.com/artist/30dW3WB1sYofnow7y3V0YoSourcesSteiner, Rudolph, The Philosophy of Freedomhttps://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSP1964/GA004_index.htmlHeisenberg Uncertainty Principle:https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/quantum-science-explained/uncertainty-principle#:~:text=Formulated%20by%20the%20German%20physicist,about%20its%20speed%20and%20viceSupport the show

So what, exactly, was “The Enlightenment”? According to the Princeton historian David A. Bell, it was an intellectual movement roughly spanning the early 18th century through to the French Revolution. In his Spring 2025 Liberties Quarterly piece “The Enlightenment, Then and Now”, Bell charts the Enlightenment as a complex intellectual movement centered in Paris but with hubs across Europe and America. He highlights key figures like Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant, and Franklin, discussing their contributions to concepts of religious tolerance, free speech, and rationality. In our conversation, Bell addresses criticisms of the Enlightenment, including its complicated relationship with colonialism and slavery, while arguing that its principles of freedom and reason remain relevant today. 5 Key Takeaways* The Enlightenment emerged in the early 18th century (around 1720s) and was characterized by intellectual inquiry, skepticism toward religion, and a growing sense among thinkers that they were living in an "enlightened century."* While Paris was the central hub, the Enlightenment had multiple centers including Scotland, Germany, and America, with thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume, and Franklin contributing to its development.* The Enlightenment introduced the concept of "society" as a sphere of human existence separate from religion and politics, forming the basis of modern social sciences.* The movement had a complex relationship with colonialism and slavery - many Enlightenment thinkers criticized slavery, but some of their ideas about human progress were later used to justify imperialism.* According to Bell, rather than trying to "return to the Enlightenment," modern society should selectively adopt and adapt its valuable principles of free speech, religious tolerance, and education to create our "own Enlightenment."David Avrom Bell is a historian of early modern and modern Europe at Princeton University. His most recent book, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. Described in the Journal of Modern History as an "instant classic," it is available in paperback from Picador, in French translation from Fayard, and in Italian translation from Viella. A study of how new forms of political charisma arose in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the book shows that charismatic authoritarianism is as modern a political form as liberal democracy, and shares many of the same origins. Based on exhaustive research in original sources, the book includes case studies of the careers of George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture and Simon Bolivar. The book's Introduction can be read here. An online conversation about the book with Annette Gordon-Reed, hosted by the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, can be viewed here. Links to material about the book, including reviews in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues can be found here. Bell is also the author of six previous books. He has published academic articles in both English and French and contributes regularly to general interest publications on a variety of subjects, ranging from modern warfare, to contemporary French politics, to the impact of digital technology on learning and scholarship, and of course French history. A list of his publications from 2023 and 2024 can be found here. His Substack newsletter can be found here. His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hebrew, Swedish, Polish, Russian, German, Croatian, Italian, Turkish and Japanese. At the History Department at Princeton University, he holds the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Chair in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions, and offers courses on early modern Europe, on military history, and on the early modern French empire. Previously, he spent fourteen years at Johns Hopkins University, including three as Dean of Faculty in its School of Arts and Sciences. From 2020 to 2024 he served as Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Bell's new project is a history of the Enlightenment. A preliminary article from the project was published in early 2022 by Modern Intellectual History. Another is now out in French History.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, in these supposedly dark times, the E word comes up a lot, the Enlightenment. Are we at the end of the Enlightenment or the beginning? Was there even an Enlightenment? My guest today, David Bell, a professor of history, very distinguished professor of history at Princeton University, has an interesting piece in the spring issue of It is One of our, our favorite quarterlies here on Keen on America, Bell's piece is The Enlightenment Then and Now, and David is joining us from the home of the Enlightenment, perhaps Paris in France, where he's on sabbatical hard life. David being an academic these days, isn't it?David Bell: Very difficult. I'm having to suffer the Parisian bread and croissant. It's terrible.Andrew Keen: Yeah. Well, I won't keep you too long. Is Paris then, or France? Is it the home of the Enlightenment? I know there are many Enlightenments, the French, the Scottish, maybe even the English, perhaps even the American.David Bell: It's certainly one of the homes of the Enlightenment, and it's probably the closest that the Enlightened had to a center, absolutely. But as you say, there were Edinburgh, Glasgow, plenty of places in Germany, Philadelphia, all those places have good claims to being centers of the enlightenment as well.Andrew Keen: All the same David, is it like one of those sports games in California where everyone gets a medal?David Bell: Well, they're different metals, right, but I think certainly Paris is where everybody went. I mean, if you look at the figures from the German Enlightenment, from the Scottish Enlightenment from the American Enlightenment they all tended to congregate in Paris and the Parisians didn't tend to go anywhere else unless they were forced to. So that gives you a pretty good sense of where the most important center was.Andrew Keen: So David, before we get to specifics, map out for us, because everyone is perhaps as familiar or comfortable with the history of the Enlightenment, and certainly as you are. When did it happen? What years? And who are the leaders of this thing called the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, that's a big question. And I'm afraid, of course, that if you ask 10 historians, you'll get 10 different answers.Andrew Keen: Well, I'm only asking you, so I only want one answer.David Bell: So I would say that the Enlightenment really gets going around the first couple of decades of the 18th century. And that's when people really start to think that they are actually living in what they start to call an Enlightenment century. There are a lot of reasons for this. They are seeing what we now call the scientific revolution. They're looking at the progress that has been made with that. They are experiencing the changes in the religious sphere, including the end of religious wars, coming with a great deal of skepticism about religion. They are living in a relative period of peace where they're able to speculate much more broadly and daringly than before. But it's really in those first couple of decades that they start thinking of themselves as living in an enlightened century. They start defining themselves as something that would later be called the enlightenment. So I would say that it's, really, really there between maybe the end of the 17th century and 1720s that it really gets started.Andrew Keen: So let's have some names, David, of philosophers, I guess. I mean, if those are the right words. I know that there was a term in French. There is a term called philosoph. Were they the founders, the leaders of the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, there is a... Again, I don't want to descend into academic quibbling here, but there were lots of leaders. Let me give an example, though. So the year 1721 is a remarkable year. So in the year, 1721, two amazing events happened within a couple of months of each other. So in May, Montesquieu, one of the great philosophers by any definition, publishes his novel called Persian Letters. And this is an incredible novel. Still, I think one of greatest novels ever written, and it's very daring. It is the account, it is supposedly a an account written by two Persian travelers to Europe who are writing back to people in Isfahan about what they're seeing. And it is very critical of French society. It is very of religion. It is, as I said, very daring philosophically. It is a product in part of the increasing contact between Europe and the rest of the world that is also very central to the Enlightenment. So that novel comes out. So it's immediately, you know, the police try to suppress it. But they don't have much success because it's incredibly popular and Montesquieu doesn't suffer any particular problems because...Andrew Keen: And the French police have never been the most efficient police force in the world, have they?David Bell: Oh, they could be, but not in this case. And then two months later, after Montesquieu published this novel, there's a German philosopher much less well-known than Montesqiu, than Christian Bolz, who is a professor at the Universität Haller in Prussia, and he gives an oration in Latin, a very typical university oration for the time, about Chinese philosophy, in which he says that the Chinese have sort of proved to the world, particularly through the writings of Confucius and others, that you can have a virtuous society without religion. Obviously very controversial. Statement for the time it actually gets him fired from his job, he has to leave the Kingdom of Prussia within 48 hours on penalty of death, starts an enormous controversy. But here are two events, both of which involving non-European people, involving the way in which Europeans are starting to look out at the rest of the world and starting to imagine Europe as just one part of a larger humanity, and at the same time they are starting to speculate very daringly about whether you can have. You know, what it means to have a society, do you need to have religion in order to have morality in society? Do you need the proper, what kind of government do you need to to have virtuous conduct and a proper society? So all of these things get, you know, really crystallize, I think, around these two incidents as much as anything. So if I had to pick a single date for when the enlightenment starts, I'd probably pick that 1721.Andrew Keen: And when was, David, I thought you were going to tell me about the earthquake in Lisbon, when was that earthquake?David Bell: That earthquake comes quite a bit later. That comes, and now historians should be better with dates than I am. It's in the 1750s, I think it's the late 1750's. Again, this historian is proving he's getting a very bad grade for forgetting the exact date, but it's in 1750. So that's a different kind of event, which sparks off a great deal of commentary, because it's a terrible earthquake. It destroys most of the city of Lisbon, it destroys other cities throughout Portugal, and it leads a lot of the philosophy to philosophers at the time to be speculating very daringly again on whether there is any kind of real purpose to the universe and whether there's any kind divine purpose. Why would such a terrible thing happen? Why would God do such a thing to his followers? And certainly VoltaireAndrew Keen: Yeah, Votav, of course, comes to mind of questioning.David Bell: And Condit, Voltaire's novel Condit gives a very good description of the earthquake in Lisbon and uses that as a centerpiece. Voltair also read other things about the earthquake, a poem about Lisbon earthquake. But in Condit he gives a lasting, very scathing portrait of the Catholic Church in general and then of what happens in Portugal. And so the Lisbon Earthquake is certainly another one of the events, but it happens considerably later. Really in the middle of the end of life.Andrew Keen: So, David, you believe in this idea of the Enlightenment. I take your point that there are more than one Enlightenment in more than one center, but in broad historical terms, the 18th century could be defined at least in Western and Northern Europe as the period of the Enlightenment, would that be a fair generalization?David Bell: I think it's perfectly fair generalization. Of course, there are historians who say that it never happened. There's a conservative British historian, J.C.D. Clark, who published a book last summer, saying that the Enlightenment is a kind of myth, that there was a lot of intellectual activity in Europe, obviously, but that the idea that it formed a coherent Enlightenment was really invented in the 20th century by a bunch of progressive reformers who wanted to claim a kind of venerable and august pedigree for their own reform, liberal reform plans. I think that's an exaggeration. People in the 18th century defined very clearly what was going on, both people who were in favor of it and people who are against it. And while you can, if you look very closely at it, of course it gets a bit fuzzy. Of course it's gets, there's no single, you can't define a single enlightenment project or a single enlightened ideology. But then, I think people would be hard pressed to define any intellectual movement. You know, in perfect, incoherent terms. So the enlightenment is, you know by compared with almost any other intellectual movement certainly existed.Andrew Keen: In terms of a philosophy of the Enlightenment, the German thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to be often, and when you describe him as the conscience or the brain or a mixture of the conscience and brain of the enlightenment, why is Kant and Kantian thinking so important in the development of the Enlightenment.David Bell: Well, that's a really interesting question. And one reason is because most of the Enlightenment was not very rigorously philosophical. A lot of the major figures of the enlightenment before Kant tended to be writing for a general public. And they often were writing with a very specific agenda. We look at Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Now you look at Adam Smith in Scotland. We look David Hume or Adam Ferguson. You look at Benjamin Franklin in the United States. These people wrote in all sorts of different genres. They wrote in, they wrote all sorts of different kinds of books. They have many different purposes and very few of them did a lot of what we would call rigorous academic philosophy. And Kant was different. Kant was very much an academic philosopher. Kant was nothing if not rigorous. He came at the end of the enlightenment by most people's measure. He wrote these very, very difficult, very rigorous, very brilliant works, such as The Creek of Pure Reason. And so, it's certainly been the case that people who wanted to describe the Enlightenment as a philosophy have tended to look to Kant. So for example, there's a great German philosopher and intellectual historian of the early 20th century named Ernst Kassirer, who had to leave Germany because of the Nazis. And he wrote a great book called The Philosophy of the Enlightened. And that leads directly to Immanuel Kant. And of course, Casir himself was a Kantian, identified with Kant. And so he wanted to make Kant, in a sense, the telos, the end point, the culmination, the fulfillment of the Enlightenment. But so I think that's why Kant has such a particularly important position. You're defining it both ways.Andrew Keen: I've always struggled to understand what Kant was trying to say. I'm certainly not alone there. Might it be fair to say that he was trying to transform the universe and certainly traditional Christian notions into the Enlightenment, so the entire universe, the world, God, whatever that means, that they were all somehow according to Kant enlightened.David Bell: Well, I think that I'm certainly no expert on Immanuel Kant. And I would say that he is trying to, I mean, his major philosophical works are trying to put together a system of philosophical thinking which will justify why people have to act morally, why people act rationally, without the need for Christian revelation to bolster them. That's a very, very crude and reductionist way of putting it, but that's essentially at the heart of it. At the same time, Kant was very much aware of his own place in history. So Kant didn't simply write these very difficult, thick, dense philosophical works. He also wrote things that were more like journalism or like tablets. He wrote a famous essay called What is Enlightenment? And in that, he said that the 18th century was the period in which humankind was simply beginning to. Reach a period of enlightenment. And he said, he starts the essay by saying, this is the period when humankind is being released from its self-imposed tutelage. And we are still, and he said we do not yet live in the midst of a completely enlightened century, but we are getting there. We are living in a century that is enlightening.Andrew Keen: So the seeds, the seeds of Hegel and maybe even Marx are incant in that German thinking, that historical thinking.David Bell: In some ways, in some ways of course Hegel very much reacts against Kant and so and then Marx reacts against Hegel. So it's not exactly.Andrew Keen: Well, that's the dialectic, isn't it, David?David Bell: A simple easy path from one to the other, no, but Hegel is unimaginable without Kant of course and Marx is unimagineable without Hegel.Andrew Keen: You note that Kant represents a shift in some ways into the university and the walls of the universities were going up, and that some of the other figures associated with the the Enlightenment and Scottish Enlightenment, human and Smith and the French Enlightenment Voltaire and the others, they were more generalist writers. Should we be nostalgic for the pre-university period in the Enlightenment, or? Did things start getting serious once the heavyweights, the academic heavyweighs like Emmanuel Kant got into this thing?David Bell: I think it depends on where we're talking about. I mean, Adam Smith was a professor at Glasgow in Edinburgh, so Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment was definitely at least partly in the universities. The German Enlightenment took place very heavily in universities. Christian Vodafoy I just mentioned was the most important German philosopher of the 18th century before Kant, and he had positions in university. Even the French university system, for a while, what's interesting about the French University system, particularly the Sorbonne, which was the theology faculty, It was that. Throughout the first half of the 18th century, there were very vigorous, very interesting philosophical debates going on there, in which the people there, particularly even Jesuits there, were very open to a lot of the ideas we now call enlightenment. They were reading John Locke, they were reading Mel Pench, they were read Dekalb. What happened though in the French universities was that as more daring stuff was getting published elsewhere. Church, the Catholic Church, started to say, all right, these philosophers, these philosophies, these are our enemies, these are people we have to get at. And so at that point, anybody who was in the university, who was still in dialog with these people was basically purged. And the universities became much less interesting after that. But to come back to your question, I do think that I am very nostalgic for that period. I think that the Enlightenment was an extraordinary period, because if you look between. In the 17th century, not all, but a great deal of the most interesting intellectual work is happening in the so-called Republic of Letters. It's happening in Latin language. It is happening on a very small circle of RUD, of scholars. By the 19th century following Kant and Hegel and then the birth of the research university in Germany, which is copied everywhere, philosophy and the most advanced thinking goes back into the university. And the 18th century, particularly in France, I will say, is a time when the most advanced thought is being written for a general public. It is being in the form of novels, of dialogs, of stories, of reference works, and it is very, very accessible. The most profound thought of the West has never been as accessible overall as in the 18 century.Andrew Keen: Again, excuse this question, it might seem a bit naive, but there's a lot of pre-Enlightenment work, books, thinking that we read now that's very accessible from Erasmus and Thomas More to Machiavelli. Why weren't characters like, or are characters like Erasmuus, More's Utopia, Machiavell's prints and discourses, why aren't they considered part of the Enlightenment? What's the difference between? Enlightened thinkers or the supposedly enlightened thinkers of the 18th century and thinkers and writers of the 16th and 17th centuries.David Bell: That's a good question, you know, I think you have to, you, you know, again, one has to draw a line somewhere. That's not a very good answer, of course. All these people that you just mentioned are, in one way or another, predecessors to the Enlightenment. And of course, there were lots of people. I don't mean to say that nobody wrote in an accessible way before 1700. Obviously, lots of the people you mentioned did. Although a lot of them originally wrote in Latin, Erasmus, also Thomas More. But I think what makes the Enlightened different is that you have, again, you have a sense. These people have have a sense that they are themselves engaged in a collective project, that it is a collective project of enlightenment, of enlightening the world. They believe that they live in a century of progress. And there are certain principles. They don't agree on everything by any means. The philosophy of enlightenment is like nothing more than ripping each other to shreds, like any decent group of intellectuals. But that said, they generally did believe That people needed to have freedom of speech. They believed that you needed to have toleration of different religions. They believed in education and the need for a broadly educated public that could be as broad as possible. They generally believed in keeping religion out of the public sphere as much as possible, so all those principles came together into a program that we can consider at least a kind of... You know, not that everybody read it at every moment by any means, but there is an identifiable enlightenment program there, and in this case an identifiable enlightenment mindset. One other thing, I think, which is crucial to the Enlightenment, is that it was the attention they started to pay to something that we now take almost entirely for granted, which is the idea of society. The word society is so entirely ubiquitous, we assume it's always been there, and in one sense it has, because the word societas is a Latin word. But until... The 18th century, the word society generally had a much narrower meaning. It referred to, you know, particular institution most often, like when we talk about the society of, you know, the American philosophical society or something like that. And the idea that there exists something called society, which is the general sphere of human existence that is separate from religion and is separate from the political sphere, that's actually something which only really emerged at the end of the 1600s. And it became really the focus of you know, much, if not most, of enlightenment thinking. When you look at someone like Montesquieu and you look something, somebody like Rousseau or Voltaire or Adam Smith, probably above all, they were concerned with understanding how society works, not how government works only, but how society, what social interactions are like beginning of what we would now call social science. So that's yet another thing that distinguishes the enlightened from people like Machiavelli, often people like Thomas More, and people like bonuses.Andrew Keen: You noted earlier that the idea of progress is somehow baked in, in part, and certainly when it comes to Kant, certainly the French Enlightenment, although, of course, Rousseau challenged that. I'm not sure whether Rousseaut, as always, is both in and out of the Enlightenment and he seems to be in and out of everything. How did the Enlightement, though, make sense of itself in the context of antiquity, as it was, of Terms, it was the Renaissance that supposedly discovered or rediscovered antiquity. How did many of the leading Enlightenment thinkers, writers, how did they think of their own society in the context of not just antiquity, but even the idea of a European or Western society?David Bell: Well, there was a great book, one of the great histories of the Enlightenment was written about more than 50 years ago by the Yale professor named Peter Gay, and the first part of that book was called The Modern Paganism. So it was about the, you know, it was very much about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the ancient Greek synonyms. And certainly the writers of the enlightenment felt a great deal of kinship with the ancient Greek synonymous. They felt a common bond, particularly in the posing. Christianity and opposing what they believed the Christian Church had wrought on Europe in suppressing freedom and suppressing free thought and suppassing free inquiry. And so they felt that they were both recovering but also going beyond antiquity at the same time. And of course they were all, I mean everybody at the time, every single major figure of the Enlightenment, their education consisted in large part of what we would now call classics, right? I mean, there was an educational reformer in France in the 1760s who said, you know, our educational system is great if the purpose is to train Roman centurions, if it's to train modern people who are not doing both so well. And it's true. I mean they would spend, certainly, you know in Germany, in much of Europe, in the Netherlands, even in France, I mean people were trained not simply to read Latin, but to write in Latin. In Germany, university courses took part in the Latin language. So there's an enormous, you know, so they're certainly very, very conversant with the Greek and Roman classics, and they identify with them to a very great extent. Someone like Rousseau, I mean, and many others, and what's his first reading? How did he learn to read by reading Plutarch? In translation, but he learns to read reading Plutach. He sees from the beginning by this enormous admiration for the ancients that we get from Bhutan.Andrew Keen: Was Socrates relevant here? Was the Enlightenment somehow replacing Aristotle with Socrates and making him and his spirit of Enlightenment, of asking questions rather than answering questions, the symbol of a new way of thinking?David Bell: I would say to a certain extent, so I mean, much of the Enlightenment criticizes scholasticism, medieval scholastic, very, very sharply, and medieval scholasticism is founded philosophically very heavily upon Aristotle, so to that extent. And the spirit of skepticism that Socrates embodied, the idea of taking nothing for granted and asking questions about everything, including questions of oneself, yes, absolutely. That said, while the great figures of the Red Plato, you know, Socrates was generally I mean, it was not all that present as they come. But certainly have people with people with red play-doh in the entire virus.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Benjamin Franklin earlier, David. Most of the Enlightenment, of course, seems to be centered in France and Scotland, Germany, England. But America, many Europeans went to America then as a, what some people would call a settler colonial society, or certainly an offshoot of the European world. Was the settling of America and the American Revolution Was it the quintessential Enlightenment project?David Bell: Another very good question, and again, it depends a bit on who you talk to. I just mentioned this book by Peter Gay, and the last part of his book is called The Science of Freedom, and it's all about the American Revolution. So certainly a lot of interpreters of the Enlightenment have said that, yes, the American revolution represents in a sense the best possible outcome of the American Revolution, it was the best, possible outcome of the enlightened. Certainly there you look at the founding fathers of the United States and there's a great deal that they took from me like Certainly, they took a great great number of political ideas from Obviously Madison was very much inspired and drafting the edifice of the Constitution by Montesquieu to see himself Was happy to admit in addition most of the founding Fathers of the united states were you know had kind of you know We still had we were still definitely Christians, but we're also but we were also very much influenced by deism were very much against the idea of making the United States a kind of confessional country where Christianity was dominant. They wanted to believe in the enlightenment principles of free speech, religious toleration and so on and so forth. So in all those senses and very much the gun was probably more inspired than Franklin was somebody who was very conversant with the European Enlightenment. He spent a large part of his life in London. Where he was in contact with figures of the Enlightenment. He also, during the American Revolution, of course, he was mostly in France, where he is vetted by some of the surviving fellows and were very much in contact for them as well. So yes, I would say the American revolution is certainly... And then the American revolutionary scene, of course by the Europeans, very much as a kind of offshoot of the enlightenment. So one of the great books of the late Enlightenment is by Condor Say, which he wrote while he was hiding actually in the future evolution of the chariot. It's called a historical sketch of the progress of the human spirit, or the human mind, and you know he writes about the American Revolution as being, basically owing its existence to being like...Andrew Keen: Franklin is of course an example of your pre-academic enlightenment, a generalist, inventor, scientist, entrepreneur, political thinker. What about the role of science and indeed economics in the Enlightenment? David, we're going to talk of course about the Marxist interpretation, perhaps the Marxist interpretation which sees The Enlightenment is just a euphemism, perhaps, for exploitative capitalism. How central was the growth and development of the market, of economics, and innovation, and capitalism in your reading of The Enlightened?David Bell: Well, in my reading, it was very important, but not in the way that the Marxists used to say. So Friedrich Engels once said that the Enlightenment was basically the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie, and there was whole strain of Marxist thinking that followed the assumption that, and then Karl Marx himself argued that the documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which obviously were inspired by the Enlightment, were simply kind of the near, or kind of. Way that the bourgeoisie was able to advance itself ideologically, and I don't think that holds much water, which is very little indication that any particular economic class motivated the Enlightenment or was using the Enlightment in any way. That said, I think it's very difficult to imagine the Enlightement without the social and economic changes that come in with the 18th century. To begin with globalization. If you read the great works of the Enlightenment, it's remarkable just how open they are to talking about humanity in general. So one of Voltaire's largest works, one of his most important works, is something called Essay on Customs and the Spirit of Nations, which is actually History of the World, where he talks learnedly not simply about Europe, but about the Americas, about China, about Africa, about India. Montesquieu writes Persian letters. Christian Volpe writes about Chinese philosophy. You know, Rousseau writes about... You know, the earliest days of humankind talks about Africa. All the great figures of the Enlightenment are writing about the rest of the world, and this is a period in which contacts between Europe and the rest the world are exploding along with international trade. So by the end of the 18th century, there are 4,000 to 5,000 ships a year crossing the Atlantic. It's an enormous number. And that's one context in which the enlightenment takes place. Another is what we call the consumer revolution. So in the 18th century, certainly in the major cities of Western Europe, people of a wide range of social classes, including even artisans, sort of somewhat wealthy artisians, shopkeepers, are suddenly able to buy a much larger range of products than they were before. They're able to choose how to basically furnish their own lives, if you will, how they're gonna dress, what they're going to eat, what they gonna put on the walls of their apartments and so on and so forth. And so they become accustomed to exercising a great deal more personal choice than their ancestors have done. And the Enlightenment really develops in tandem with this. Most of the great works of the Enlightment, they're not really written to, they're treatises, they're like Kant, they're written to persuade you to think in a single way. Really written to make you ask questions yourself, to force you to ponder things. They're written in the form of puzzles and riddles. Voltaire had a great line there, he wrote that the best kind of books are the books that readers write half of themselves as they read, and that's sort of the quintessence of the Enlightenment as far as I'm concerned.Andrew Keen: Yeah, Voltaire might have been comfortable on YouTube or Facebook. David, you mentioned all those ships going from Europe across the Atlantic. Of course, many of those ships were filled with African slaves. You mentioned this in your piece. I mean, this is no secret, of course. You also mentioned a couple of times Montesquieu's Persian letters. To what extent is... The enlightenment then perhaps the birth of Western power, of Western colonialism, of going to Africa, seizing people, selling them in North America, the French, the English, Dutch colonization of the rest of the world. Of course, later more sophisticated Marxist thinkers from the Frankfurt School, you mentioned these in your essay, Odorno and Horkheimer in particular, See the Enlightenment as... A project, if you like, of Western domination. I remember reading many years ago when I was in graduate school, Edward Said, his analysis of books like The Persian Letters, which is a form of cultural Western power. How much of this is simply bound up in the profound, perhaps, injustice of the Western achievement? And of course, some of the justice as well. We haven't talked about Jefferson, but perhaps in Jefferson's life and his thinking and his enlightened principles and his... Life as a slave owner, these contradictions are most self-evident.David Bell: Well, there are certainly contradictions, and there's certainly... I think what's remarkable, if you think about it, is that if you read through works of the Enlightenment, you would be hard-pressed to find a justification for slavery. You do find a lot of critiques of slavery, and I think that's something very important to keep in mind. Obviously, the chattel slavery of Africans in the Americas began well before the Enlightment, it began in 1500. The Enlightenment doesn't have the credit for being the first movement to oppose slavery. That really goes back to various religious groups, especially the Fakers. But that said, you have in France, you had in Britain, in America even, you'd have a lot of figures associated with the Enlightenment who were pretty sure of becoming very forceful opponents of slavery very early. Now, when it comes to imperialism, that's a tricky issue. What I think you'd find in these light bulbs, you'd different sorts of tendencies and different sorts of writings. So there are certainly a lot of writers of the Enlightenment who are deeply opposed to European authorities. One of the most popular works of the late Enlightenment was a collective work edited by the man named the Abbe Rinal, which is called The History of the Two Indies. And that is a book which is deeply, deeply critical of European imperialism. At the same time, at the same of the enlightenment, a lot the works of history written during the Enlightment. Tended, such as Voltaire's essay on customs, which I just mentioned, tend to give a kind of very linear version of history. They suggest that all societies follow the same path, from sort of primitive savagery, hunter-gatherers, through early agriculture, feudal stages, and on into sort of modern commercial society and civilization. And so they're basically saying, okay, we, the Europeans, are the most advanced. People like the Africans and the Native Americans are the least advanced, and so perhaps we're justified in going and quote, bringing our civilization to them, what later generations would call the civilizing missions, or possibly just, you know, going over and exploiting them because we are stronger and we are more, and again, we are the best. And then there's another thing that the Enlightenment did. The Enlightenment tended to destroy an older Christian view of humankind, which in some ways militated against modern racism. Christians believed, of course, that everyone was the same from Adam and Eve, which meant that there was an essential similarity in the world. And the Enlightenment challenged this by challenging the biblical kind of creation. The Enlightenment challenges this. Voltaire, for instance, believed that there had actually been several different human species that had different origins, and that can very easily become a justification for racism. Buffon, one of the most Figures of the French Enlightenment, one of the early naturalists, was crucial for trying to show that in fact nature is not static, that nature is always changing, that species are changing, including human beings. And so again, that allowed people to think in terms of human beings at different stages of evolution, and perhaps this would be a justification for privileging the more advanced humans over the less advanced. In the 18th century itself, most of these things remain potential, rather than really being acted upon. But in the 19th century, figures of writers who would draw upon these things certainly went much further, and these became justifications for slavery, imperialism, and other things. So again, the Enlightenment is the source of a great deal of stuff here, and you can't simply put it into one box or more.Andrew Keen: You mentioned earlier, David, that Concorda wrote one of the later classics of the... Condorcet? Sorry, Condorcets, excuse my French. Condorcès wrote one the later Classics of the Enlightenment when he was hiding from the French Revolution. In your mind, was the revolution itself the natural conclusion, climax? Perhaps anti-climax of the Enlightenment. Certainly, it seems as if a lot of the critiques of the French Revolution, particularly the more conservative ones, Burke comes to mind, suggested that perhaps the principles of in the Enlightment inevitably led to the guillotine, or is that an unfair way of thinking of it?David Bell: Well, there are a lot of people who have thought like that. Edmund Burke already, writing in 1790, in his reflections on the revolution in France, he said that everything which was great in the old regime is being dissolved and, quoting, dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. And then he said about the French that in the groves of their academy at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing but the Gallows. So there, in 1780, he already seemed to be predicting the reign of terror and blaming it. A certain extent from the Enlightenment. That said, I think, you know, again, the French Revolution is incredibly complicated event. I mean, you certainly have, you know, an explosion of what we could call Enlightenment thinking all over the place. In France, it happened in France. What happened there was that you had a, you know, the collapse of an extraordinarily inefficient government and a very, you know, in a very antiquated, paralyzed system of government kind of collapsed, created a kind of political vacuum. Into that vacuum stepped a lot of figures who were definitely readers of the Enlightenment. Oh so um but again the Enlightment had I said I don't think you can call the Enlightement a single thing so to say that the Enlightiment inspired the French Revolution rather than the There you go.Andrew Keen: Although your essay on liberties is the Enlightenment then and now you probably didn't write is always these lazy editors who come up with inaccurate and inaccurate titles. So for you, there is no such thing as the Enlighten.David Bell: No, there is. There is. But still, it's a complex thing. It contains multitudes.Andrew Keen: So it's the Enlightenment rather than the United States.David Bell: Conflicting tendencies, it has contradictions within it. There's enough unity to refer to it as a singular noun, but it doesn't mean that it all went in one single direction.Andrew Keen: But in historical terms, did the failure of the French Revolution, its descent into Robespierre and then Bonaparte, did it mark the end in historical terms a kind of bookend of history? You began in 1720 by 1820. Was the age of the Enlightenment pretty much over?David Bell: I would say yes. I think that, again, one of the things about the French Revolution is that people who are reading these books and they're reading these ideas and they are discussing things really start to act on them in a very different way from what it did before the French revolution. You have a lot of absolute monarchs who are trying to bring certain enlightenment principles to bear in their form of government, but they're not. But it's difficult to talk about a full-fledged attempt to enact a kind of enlightenment program. Certainly a lot of the people in the French Revolution saw themselves as doing that. But as they did it, they ran into reality, I would say. I mean, now Tocqueville, when he writes his old regime in the revolution, talks about how the French philosophes were full of these abstract ideas that were divorced from reality. And while that's an exaggeration, there was a certain truth to them. And as soon as you start having the age of revolutions, as soon you start people having to devise systems of government that will actually last, and as you have people, democratic representative systems that will last, and as they start revising these systems under the pressure of actual events, then you're not simply talking about an intellectual movement anymore, you're talking about something very different. And so I would say that, well, obviously the ideas of the Enlightenment continue to inspire people, the books continue to be read, debated. They lead on to figures like Kant, and as we talked about earlier, Kant leads to Hegel, Hegel leads to Marx in a certain sense. Nonetheless, by the time you're getting into the 19th century, what you have, you know, has connections to the Enlightenment, but can we really still call it the Enlightment? I would sayAndrew Keen: And Tocqueville, of course, found democracy in America. Is democracy itself? I know it's a big question. But is it? Bound up in the Enlightenment. You've written extensively, David, both for liberties and elsewhere on liberalism. Is the promise of democracy, democratic systems, the one born in the American Revolution, promised in the French Revolution, not realized? Are they products of the Enlightment, or is the 19th century and the democratic systems that in the 19th century, is that just a separate historical track?David Bell: Again, I would say there are certain things in the Enlightenment that do lead in that direction. Certainly, I think most figures in the enlightenment in one general sense or another accepted the idea of a kind of general notion of popular sovereignty. It didn't mean that they always felt that this was going to be something that could necessarily be acted upon or implemented in their own day. And they didn't necessarily associate generalized popular sovereignty with what we would now call democracy with people being able to actually govern themselves. Would be certain figures, certainly Diderot and some of his essays, what we saw very much in the social contract, you know, were sketching out, you knows, models for possible democratic system. Condorcet, who actually lived into the French Revolution, wrote one of the most draft constitutions for France, that's one of most democratic documents ever proposed. But of course there were lots of figures in the Enlightenment, Voltaire, and others who actually believed much more in absolute monarchy, who believed that you just, you know, you should have. Freedom of speech and freedom of discussion, out of which the best ideas would emerge, but then you had to give those ideas to the prince who imposed them by poor sicknesses.Andrew Keen: And of course, Rousseau himself, his social contract, some historians have seen that as the foundations of totalitarian, modern totalitarianism. Finally, David, your wonderful essay in Liberties in the spring quarterly 2025 is The Enlightenment, Then and Now. What about now? You work at Princeton, your president has very bravely stood up to the new presidential regime in the United States, in defense of academic intellectual freedom. Does the word and the movement, does it have any relevance in the 2020s, particularly in an age of neo-authoritarianism around the world?David Bell: I think it does. I think we have to be careful about it. I always get a little nervous when people say, well, we should simply go back to the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenments is history. We don't go back the 18th century. I think what we need to do is to recover certain principles, certain ideals from the 18 century, the ones that matter to us, the ones we think are right, and make our own Enlightenment better. I don't think we need be governed by the 18 century. Thomas Paine once said that no generation should necessarily rule over every generation to come, and I think that's probably right. Unfortunately in the United States, we have a constitution which is now essentially unamendable, so we're doomed to live by a constitution largely from the 18th century. But are there many things in the Enlightenment that we should look back to, absolutely?Andrew Keen: Well, David, I am going to free you for your own French Enlightenment. You can go and have some croissant now in your local cafe in Paris. Thank you so much for a very, I excuse the pun, enlightening conversation on the Enlightenment then and now, Essential Essay in Liberties. I'd love to get you back on the show. Talk more history. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Jordan Hall and I discuss he exploration and reflections about the doctrine of the Trinity. We mention John Vervaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ), Jonathan Pageau (  @JonathanPageau  ), Paul Vanderklay (  @PaulVanderKlay  ), Kale Zelden (  @thekalezelden  ), Jim Rutt (  @jimruttshow8596  ), Elizabeth Oldfield (  @thesacredpodcast  ), Rod Dreher, Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch, The Cappadocian Fathers, Jordan Peterson (  @JordanBPeterson  ), Forrest Landry, Iain McGilchrist, Immanuel Kant, David Bentley Hart, James Filler, and more. Midwestuary - https://www.midwestuary.com/First convo with Jordan Hall - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkHeudFqPnk

Nghe trọn sách nói Những Nhà Tư Tưởng Lớn – Schopenhauer Trong 60 Phút trên ứng dụng Fonos: https://fonos.link/podcast-tvsn --Về Fonos:Fonos là Ứng dụng âm thanh số - Với hơn 13.000 nội dung gồm Sách nói có bản quyền, PodCourse, Podcast, Ebook, Tóm tắt sách, Thiền định, Truyện ngủ, Nhạc chủ đề, Truyện thiếu nhi. Bạn có thể nghe miễn phí chương 1 của tất cả sách nói trên Fonos. Tải app để trải nghiệm ngay!--Arthur Schopenhauer (22 tháng 2 năm 1788 – 21 tháng 9 năm 1860) là một nhà triết học duy tâm người Đức, nổi tiếng với trước tác Thế giới như là ý chí và biểu tượng xuất bản năm 1818. Xây dựng trên nền tảng triết học duy tâm siêu nghiệm của Immanuel Kant, ông đã phát triển một hệ thống luân lý và siêu hình vô thần bác bỏ những ý tưởng thời thượng lúc bấy giờ của trào lưu duy tâm Đức. Schopenhauer là một trong những trí thức phương Tây thế hệ đầu chia sẻ nhiều tư tưởng chung với triết học Ấn Độ, chẳng hạn như sự khổ tu, sự chối bỏ bản thân, và ý niệm cho rằng thế giới là sự phô chiếu ảo ảnh. Lý thuyết siêu hình của ông chính là nền tảng cho các tác phẩm về đề tài tâm lý học, mỹ học, đạo đức học và chính trị học, Phật học... những tác phẩm đã để lại tầm ảnh hưởng tới các danh nhân sau này như Friedrich Nietzsche, Wagner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud và nhiều người khác. Sách nói Những Nhà Tư Tưởng Lớn - Schopenhauer Trong 60 Phút sẽ cung cấp cho bạn những thông tin ngắn gọn và dễ hiểu nhất về Schopenhauer cùng tư tưởng triết học của ông.--Tìm hiểu thêm về Fonos: https://fonos.vn/Theo dõi Facebook Fonos: https://www.facebook.com/fonosvietnam/

====================================================SUSCRIBETEhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNpffyr-7_zP1x1lS89ByaQ?sub_confirmation=1==================================================== DEVOCIÓN MATUTINA PARA ADULTOS 2025“CON JESÚS HOY”Narrado por: Exyomara AvilaDesde: Bogotá, ColombiaUna cortesía de DR'Ministries y Canaan Seventh-Day Adventist Church ===================|| www.drministries.org ||===================07 de AbrilLa principal referencia«Y comenzando desde Moisés y siguiendo por todos los profetas, les declaraba en todas las Escrituras lo que de él decían» (Luc. 24: 27).Hace unos años leí una frase que me llamó bastante la atención, ya que procedía de un periódico de izquierda. Decía lo siguiente: "casi todo lo que importa lo dijeron ya entre Cervantes y Shakespeare, pero todo estaba ya dicho en la Biblia» (texto adaptado de Manuel Rodríguez Rivero, "El primer superventas", El País, 2.3.2011, pág. 39).Merece reflexión el hecho de que un libro, que es la suprema referencia para millones de creyentes, siga causando admiración entre los que dicen no creer. Si entendemos que para unos es «Palabra de Dios», sorprende que para otros sea» inspiración espiritual», «vademecum de sabias leyes de usos religiosos y civiles» o «enciclopedia de la sabiduría universal».En un mundo en que cada vez se lee menos, la Biblia sigue siendo la principal referencia espiritual de gran parte de la humanidad. Además de continuar vendiéndose por millones de ejemplares, este libro, que lleva ya casi tres milenios en catálogo, se ha publicado en todos los soportes capaces de difundir un texto escrito, desde los pergaminos y papiros de la antigüedad hasta el último modelo de e-book, o de cualquier otro formato digital o electrónico.A pesar de las terribles persecuciones de que ha sido objeto, la Biblia no es solo el best seller más global sino también el más vivo. La Biblia no ha cesado de crear e irradiar cultura. Desde la Edad Media hasta ahora ha fijado, normalizado y difundido varias lenguas nacionales, con tanta eficacia o más como más tarde lo harían la radio y la televisión. Immanuel Kant llegó a decir que «la existencia de la Biblia como texto para el pueblo es el más valioso bien que posee el género humano. Todo intento de menospreciarla constituye un crimen contra la humanidad».La Biblia sigue siendo una fuente inagotable de historia, narraciones y temas inspiradores de algunos de los más grandes escritores y artistas de todas las épocas. Hoy podemos decir que este libro forma parte esencial del legado de la cultura universal, más allá de su valor religioso.Sin embargo, lo más importante de la Biblia no es eso, sino su capacidad de acercarnos a Dios y de transmitirnos su mensaje de amor, de fe y de esperanza. Y de seguir llevando «vida eterna» a sus lectores, al dar testimonio de Jesús, nuestro Salvador.Gracias, Señor, por el alimento espiritual que me aporta tu Palabra cada día. 

“Travel does not require leaving your city or state or country, but it does require leaving your comfort zone. And that can happen a block or two away from where you live.” –Chloe Cooper Jones In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Chloe talk about why a section about “slum tourism” was cut out of Rolf’s newest book The Vagabond’s Way (2:30); how so much of what we talk about when we talk about travel has industrialized middle-class presumptions (7:30); the motivations and ethical considerations that underpin seeking out disadvantaged neighborhoods as a traveler (15:00); how preconceived narratives and “cultural extraction” often motivates people’s experience in a city, in ways that do not always benefit the city (25:00); what “dark tourism” and “voluntourism” are, and what the ethical ramifications are for travelers (32:00); and the difference between articulating ideals, and the work of acting on those ideals (45:00). Chloe Cooper Jones (@CCooperJones) is the author of Easy Beauty: A Memoir. She has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Feature Writing, and was the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, as well as a Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University. Notable Links: Integrating love of travel & love of home (Deviate episode 210) The Vagabond's Way, by Rolf Potts (book) The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, by John Baxter (book) Slum tourism (tours to poor areas of a city) Poetics, by Aristotle (dramatic theory) Republic, by Plato (Socratic dialogue) Immanuel Kant (philosopher) Slumdog Millionaire (2008 movie) Apartheid (system of institutionalized racial segregation) Favela (slum in Brazil) Yelp (crowd-sourced business review app) Dark tourism (tourism to places associated with tragedy) 1990 Hesston tornado outbreak (Kansas weather event) Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (tourism attraction in Cambodia) Saw (movie franchise) Voluntourism (volunteering-themed travel) Hurricane Katrina (2005 Gulf Coast weather event) Lower Ninth Ward (New Orleans neighborhood) The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel's 2017 album Lumber. Note: We don't host a “comments” section, but we're happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

Marcela Ceribelli recebe Renato Noguera no programa Bom Dia, Obvious para falar sobre ser feliz - passando pela relação com a natureza, pela gramática emocional, por diferentes perspectivas, pelo equilíbrio da vida profissional e pessoal, pelo que nosso corpo fala, e, claro, pelas nossas relações. O episódio é a convite do Grupo Heineken, que acredita que a felicidade deve fazer parte do dia a dia dentro das empresas. Por isso, criou a Diretoria da Felicidade, uma iniciativa pioneira de psicologia positiva no ambiente de trabalho. Afinal, o bem-estar não deveria ser limitado a alguns espaços ou a algumas horas do dia. Bem-estar é pra ser vivido. Aprecie com moderaçãoReferências:“Romeu e Julieta”, William Shakespeare - https://a.co/d/fv9kZgu“Orunmilá”, Rogério Athayde - https://a.co/d/8APQ9U3“Ética a Nicômaco”, Aristóteles - https://a.co/d/j3SkH3T“Ética”, Spinoza - https://a.co/d/j5WahBA“A terra dá, a terra quer”, Antônio Bispo dos Santos (Nêgo Bispo) - https://a.co/d/39fXXJO“A vida não é útil”, Aílton Krenak - https://a.co/d/4Wi9Ka1“Ubuntu todos os dias”, Mogobe Ramose - https://a.co/d/04S61mA“Crítica da razão pura”, Immanuel Kant - https://a.co/d/75u6uPiCurso na Casa do Saber - https://curadoria.casadosaber.com.br/professores/renato-noguera Nos acompanhe também:Instagram da Obvious: https://www.instagram.com/obvious.cc/ TikTok da Obvious: https://www.tiktok.com/@obvious.cc Chapadinhas de Endorfina: https://www.instagram.com/chapadinhasdeendorfina/ Marcela Ceribelli no Instagram: https://instagram.com/marcelaceribelli/Renato Noguera no Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noguera_oficial/ Styling:Vestido: @ANIMALEJaqueta: @osklenColares: @elisa.parpinelliBrinco: @renatanobrejoiasAnéis: @andressadelamutaSapato: @carranooficial

Jordan Hall and I discuss he exploration and reflections about the doctrine of the Trinity. We mention John Vervaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ), Jonathan Pageau (  @JonathanPageau  ), Paul Vanderklay (  @PaulVanderKlay  ), Kale Zelden (  @thekalezelden  ), Jim Rutt (  @jimruttshow8596  ), Elizabeth Oldfield (  @thesacredpodcast  ), Rod Dreher, Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch, The Cappadocian Fathers, Jordan Peterson (  @JordanBPeterson  ), Forrest Landry, Iain McGilchrist, Immanuel Kant, David Bentley Hart, James Filler, and more. Midwestuary - https://www.midwestuary.com/First convo with Jordan Hall - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkHeudFqPnk

Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists. Read more about our partnership. Sign up for the “Brain Inspired” email alerts to be notified every time a new “Brain Inspired” episode is released. To explore more neuroscience news and perspectives, visit thetransmitter.org. The concept of a schema goes back at least to the philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 1700s, who use the term to refer to a kind of built-in mental framework to organize sensory experience. But it was the psychologist Frederic Bartlett in the 1930s who used the term schema in a psychological sense, to explain how our memories are organized and how new information gets integrated into our memory. Fast forward another 100 years to today, and we have a podcast episode with my guest today, Alison Preston, who runs the Preston Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. On this episode, we discuss her neuroscience research explaining how our brains might carry out the processing that fits with our modern conception of schemas, and how our brains do that in different ways as we develop from childhood to adulthood. I just said, "our modern conception of schemas," but like everything else, there isn't complete consensus among scientists exactly how to define schema. Ali has her own definition. She shares that, and how it differs from other conceptions commonly used. I like Ali's version and think it should be adopted, in part because it helps distinguish schemas from a related term, cognitive maps, which we've discussed aplenty on brain inspired, and can sometimes be used interchangeably with schemas. So we discuss how to think about schemas versus cognitive maps, versus concepts, versus semantic information, and so on. Last episode Ciara Greene discussed schemas and how they underlie our memories, and learning, and predictions, and how they can lead to inaccurate memories and predictions. Today Ali explains how circuits in the brain might adaptively underlie this process as we develop, and how to go about measuring it in the first place. Preston Lab Twitter: @preston_lab Related papers: Concept formation as a computational cognitive process. Schema, Inference, and Memory. Developmental differences in memory reactivation relate to encoding and inference in the human brain. Read the transcript. 0:00 - Intro 6:51 - Schemas 20:37 - Schemas and the developing brain 35:03 - Information theory, dimensionality, and detail 41:17 - Geometry of schemas 47:26 - Schemas and creativity 50:29 - Brain connection pruning with development 1:02:46 - Information in brains 1:09:20 - Schemas and development in AI

Send us a textJoin us for an in-depth discussion with Dr. Robert Hanna on Immanuel Kant's philosophy, covering transcendental idealism, the transcendental deduction, and free will. We explore key concepts from Critique of Pure Reason, including synthetic a priori knowledge, causality, and the limits of human understanding, as well as the distinction between noumenal and phenomenal reality. Dr. Hanna explains how Kant's ideas revolutionized metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, shaping modern philosophy. Faith That Challenges. Conversations that Matter. Laughs included. Subscribe Now!Breaking down faith, culture & big questions - a mix of humor with real spiritual growth. Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show--------------------------If you would want to support the channel and what I am doing, please follow me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/christianityforall Where else to find Josh Yen: Philosophy YT: https://bit.ly/philforallEducation: https://bit.ly/joshyenBuisness: https://bit.ly/logoseduMy Website: https://joshuajwyen.com/

Language Failure: How Words Shape Our RealityA Long-Form Summary of the PodcastOpening Hook: The Illusion of RealityImagine walking through downtown San Francisco. On your phone, you see pristine streets and a bustling city. But when you look up, the reality is starkly different—crumbling infrastructure, vacant storefronts, and widespread urban decay. This isn't an episode of Black Mirror; it's what happened in 2023 when San Francisco created a Potemkin village—a facade meant to impress foreign dignitaries while hiding the city's deeper issues.This phenomenon isn't just about urban aesthetics; it signals something deeper: the failure of language to accurately reflect reality. When we manipulate language, we manipulate perception, and when perception detaches from truth, society begins to collapse.The San Francisco example proves that we know what a functional city looks like—we can manufacture an illusion of order when necessary—but we don't maintain it. Instead, we mask the problem rather than solving it. This mirrors the broader theme of the podcast: language, like infrastructure, is breaking down, and instead of repairing it, we disguise its failure with illusions.The Problem: The Breakdown of RealityWhat happens when our words and perceptions no longer match reality?We see this in:Infrastructure decay: Baltimore's bridge collapse, failing subway systems, and deteriorating roads.Media and distraction: Instead of addressing problems, we divert our attention—scrolling through TikTok instead of engaging with real-world issues.Social and political discourse: Headlines inflame emotions, but we rarely engage with the underlying facts.We live in a loop of anxiety and escape, toggling between existential threats and dopamine-fueled distractions. This is not just modern life—it's a historical pattern that has preceded societal collapse before.Historical Warning Signs: Orwell, Cuenco, and the Soviet UnionMost people remember 1984 for its themes of surveillance and thought control. But Orwell also illustrated a world where physical reality itself was decaying—the elevators don't work, the food rations shrink, and yet, the Party insists everything is improving.Michael Cuenco builds on this idea in his 2021 essay, Victory Is Not Possible, arguing that today's culture wars function in the same way as Orwell's language control. The ruling elite isn't just lying—it's actively shrinking language, making dissent impossible because people lack the vocabulary to express opposition.The Soviet Union offers another chilling parallel. Adam Curtis's documentary, HyperNormalisation, explores how, in the USSR's final years, everyone knew the official narrative was false—record-breaking harvests were announced while store shelves were empty. But rather than resist, people played along, creating a world where fantasy replaced reality.The result? A world where illusions become more real than facts. People, exhausted by the gap between truth and propaganda, retreated into cynicism, vodka, and pop culture.Today, we are experiencing a similar detachment from reality—not through authoritarian control, but through semantic drift, emotional manipulation, and digital distractions.The Mechanism: How Language Becomes UntetheredHow does language lose its connection to reality? Through concept creep and false logic.Concept Creep (Semantic Drift)Words broaden in meaning, diluting their original precision.Example: Trauma once meant a physical wound (1850s), but by 1895, William James and Freud extended it to psychological wounds. Today, it describes any discomfort—I was traumatized by cold coffee.Hyperbole and Semantic InflationOveruse weakens terms: Abuse now includes neglect, fascism is applied to trivial disagreements, bullying can refer to mere criticism.Example: Courage once meant facing real danger, but now can mean avoiding offense.Semantic InversionWords flip in meaning—what was once good can become bad and vice versa.Example: Freedom increasingly means freedom from reality and consequences rather than actual agency.When words become unanchored from objective meaning, they create ideological vacuums—leaving us drifting like astronauts in space, weightless, disconnected, and incapable of grappling with reality.The Ladder of False Logic: How We Convince Ourselves of LiesThe Ladder of Inference, or false logic, explains how we trick ourselves into believing distorted realities:Observable Facts – A politician says, Education is declining despite higher spending.Selected Data – You focus on a single phrase that confirms your bias.Interpretation – This sounds like something a dictator would say.Assumption – They must have a hidden agenda.Conclusion – They're trying to destroy public education.Belief – They are evil and must be stopped.Action – Post an outraged rant online, comparing them to Hitler.Each step takes you further from reality—until your worldview becomes purely ideological, detached from objective facts.At this point, we are radicals—not because of some external manipulation, but because we self-radicalized through unchecked emotional reasoning.The Philosophical Root: Kant's Detachment from RealityMatthew Crawford critiques Immanuel Kant, arguing that his philosophy set the stage for modern detachment from reality.Kant suggested true freedom means acting according to self-imposed rational laws, independent of external influences.This led to a view of reality as subjective—where internal logic overrides external truth.Instead of grounding ourselves in the real world, we live in a mental space station, floating free but becoming increasingly weak and incapable of dealing with reality.Astronauts in zero gravity may enjoy their detachment, but their bones and muscles deteriorate. Likewise, the more detached we are from reality, the weaker our ability to engage with it becomes.Contemporary Crisis: The Illusion EconomyModern financial markets and politics operate not on productivity or value, but on perception and emotion.Stocks rise and fall based on optimism, not output.Presidential campaigns are waged on vibes, not policy.Social movements focus on interpretations rather than material outcomes.In San Francisco, the government hid homelessness rather than solving it. This is how language manipulation replaces action.When words detach from material reality, truth becomes contingent, and society drifts into ideological orbit.The Challenge of Re-Entry: Reclaiming RealityHow do we return from orbit and reconnect words with truth?Verify personally – Base beliefs on direct observation, not media narratives.Reality-check assumptions – Climb down the ladder of inference before reacting.Resist semantic drift – Demand precision in language.Closing: The Fight for TruthWe are at a turning point. We can either continue floating in ideological orbit, or we can re-enter reality.Re-entry is painful. It requires effort, humility, and engagement with the material world—but it's necessary.In the next episode, we'll explore specific tools for resisting semantic drift and maintaining a clear connection to reality.Until then, stay grounded.

Elon Musk's $56 billion compensation package from Tesla sparked intense debate and legal scrutiny. Approved in 2018, the performance-based package hinged on Tesla reaching ambitious market and operational milestones. As Tesla's stock price soared beyond expectations, the package's value ballooned to $101.4 billion by 2024. Notably, Musk would have earned nothing had Tesla not achieved these metrics at the time, few could imagine the company's stock crossing $400. Was Musk simply rewarded for creating shareholder value, or does this case highlight deeper concerns about executive compensation?While Musk's package is an extreme example, the broader debate persists. In 2023, CEOs of S&P 500 companies earned an average of $17.7 million, 268 times more than their median employees.In this episode, we explore the ethical and practical implications of capping CEO pay relative to lower-wage workers. Would salary caps promote equity or hinder performance incentives? We turn to the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and John Rawls to examine concepts of justice, fairness, and equity in compensation structures. We also look at historical efforts to tackle income inequality and debate how organizations can balance rewarding leadership with ensuring fair treatment across all levels.

Det har aldrig været god skik at se andre som rene og skære sexobjekter. Alle mennesker er mål i sig selv, ikke kun midler, skrev filosoffen Immanuel Kant. Men i en globaliseret, kapitalistisk verden er sex en vare, som bliver udbudt alle vegne, bl.a. af tilrejsende sexarbejdere. Og som har adskillige antropologiske og filosofiske perspektiver. Medvirkende: Sine Plambech antropolog, Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier (DIIS) og Morten Ebbe Juul Nielsen lektor i filosofi, KU. Tilrettelægger og vært: Carsten Ortmann.

This essay, written in 1795, puts forth a plan for a lasting peace between nations and peoples. Kant puts forth necessary means to any peace, and argues that nations can be brought into federation with one another without loss of sovereignty. In one translation, telling of the historical impact of this essay, this federation is called a “league of nations.”The supplements and appendices are of considerable interest on their own. The supplements contain an argument regarding the use which nature makes of war, and the way in which nature, in the end, impels us towards peace. The appendices return to the question of whether his theory is mere theory, or whether it bears translation into practice. In this, he distinguishes between the moral politician and the political moralist, pointing out ways in which practical considerations conceal and excuse behavior that leads us towards discord and war.This essay continues to be relevant, and of great importance today, much to our shame. We hope still to find the perpetual peace which Kant argued as a obligatory goal, and we still have need of fear that we will, as Kant warned, “find Perpetual Peace only in the wide grave which is to cover all the abomination of the deeds of violence and their authors.”Translated by W. Hastie.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This essay, written in 1795, puts forth a plan for a lasting peace between nations and peoples. Kant puts forth necessary means to any peace, and argues that nations can be brought into federation with one another without loss of sovereignty. In one translation, telling of the historical impact of this essay, this federation is called a “league of nations.”The supplements and appendices are of considerable interest on their own. The supplements contain an argument regarding the use which nature makes of war, and the way in which nature, in the end, impels us towards peace. The appendices return to the question of whether his theory is mere theory, or whether it bears translation into practice. In this, he distinguishes between the moral politician and the political moralist, pointing out ways in which practical considerations conceal and excuse behavior that leads us towards discord and war.This essay continues to be relevant, and of great importance today, much to our shame. We hope still to find the perpetual peace which Kant argued as a obligatory goal, and we still have need of fear that we will, as Kant warned, “find Perpetual Peace only in the wide grave which is to cover all the abomination of the deeds of violence and their authors.”Translated by W. Hastie.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of The Mona Charen Podcast, Mona Charen speaks with author Jonathan Rauch about his new book, Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. They explore the decline of Christianity in America, its impact on democracy, and whether faith can be depoliticized. Rauch, a self-described “atheistic homosexual Jew,” makes the case that Christianity has been a vital “load-bearing wall” for American democracy and argues for a return to its core principles. The conversation touches on political polarization, the role of faith in public life, and what small-l liberals and conservatives alike can learn from the evolving role of religion in society. REFERENCES: Books by Jonathan Rauch: Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy (his new book) The Constitution of Knowledge (his previous book) Articles: An article by Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic (2003) celebrating secularization, which he later called "the dumbest thing I ever wrote." Books and Works Referenced: Tim Alberta's The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory (referred to in discussion about the church and politics) A quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton: “When people cease to believe in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything” (noted as possibly apocryphal). Russell Moore's commentary on the state of the church. The Bible (including references to Jesus' teachings such as "forgive your enemies" and "the least of these"). A quote from John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The Book of Mormon (mentioned in the discussion of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Immanuel Kant's ethical philosophy (used to support moral arguments). Rabbi Hillel's summary of the Torah: “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your neighbor. All the rest is commentary. Now go and study.” Legislation and Policies Referenced: The 1964 Civil Rights Act (mentioning its religious exemptions). The Utah Compromise (2015) on LGBT rights and religious freedoms. The Respect for Marriage Act (2022), which protected same-sex marriage while also ensuring religious protections.

Immanuel Kant was popular at his death. The whole town emptied out to see him. His last words were "it is good". But was his philosophy any good? In order to find out, we dive into Chapter 7 of Conjectures and Refutations: Kant's Critique and Cosmology, where Popper rescues Kant's reputation from the clutches of the dastardly German Idealists. We discuss Deontology vs consquentialism vs virtue ethics Kant's Categorical Imperative Kant's contributions to cosmology and politics Kant as a defender of the enlightenment Romanticism vs (German) idealism vs critical rationalism Kant's cosmology and cosmogony Kant's antimony and his proofs that the universe is both finite and infinite in time Kant's Copernican revolution and transcendental idealism Kant's morality Why Popper admired Kant so much, and why he compares him to Socrates Quotes Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! "Have courage to use your own understanding!" --that is the motto of enlightenment. - An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (Translated by Ted Humphrey, Hackett Publishing, 1992) (Alternate translation from Popper: Enlightenment is the emancipation of man from a state of self-imposed tutelage . . . of incapacity to use his own intelligence without external guidance. Such a state of tutelage I call ‘self-imposed' if it is due, not to lack of intelligence, but to lack of courage or determination to use one's own intelligence without the help of a leader. Sapere aude! Dare to use your own intelligence! This is the battle-cry of the Enlightenment.) - C&R, Chap 6 What lesson did Kant draw from these bewildering antinomies? He concluded that our ideas of space and time are inapplicable to the universe as a whole. We can, of course, apply the ideas of space and time to ordinary physical things and physical events. But space and time themselves are neither things nor events: they cannot even be observed: they are more elusive. They are a kind of framework for things and events: something like a system of pigeon-holes, or a filing system, for observations. Space and time are not part of the real empir- ical world of things and events, but rather part of our mental outfit, our apparatus for grasping this world. Their proper use is as instruments of observation: in observing any event we locate it, as a rule, immediately and intuitively in an order of space and time. Thus space and time may be described as a frame of reference which is not based upon experience but intuitively used in experience, and properly applicable to experience. This is why we get into trouble if we misapply the ideas of space and time by using them in a field which transcends all possible experience—as we did in our two proofs about the universe as a whole. ... To the view which I have just outlined Kant chose to give the ugly and doubly misleading name ‘Transcendental Idealism'. He soon regretted this choice, for it made people believe that he was an idealist in the sense of denying the reality of physical things: that he declared physical things to be mere ideas. Kant hastened to explain that he had only denied that space and time are empirical and real — empirical and real in the sense in which physical things and events are empirical and real. But in vain did he protest. His difficult style sealed his fate: he was to be revered as the father of German Idealism. I suggest that it is time to put this right. - C&R, Chap 6 Kant believed in the Enlightenment. He was its last great defender. I realize that this is not the usual view. While I see Kant as the defender of the Enlightenment, he is more often taken as the founder of the school which destroyed it—of the Romantic School of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. I contend that these two interpretations are incompatible. Fichte, and later Hegel, tried to appropriate Kant as the founder of their school. But Kant lived long enough to reject the persistent advances of Fichte, who proclaimed himself Kant's successor and heir. In A Public Declaration Concerning Fichte, which is too little known, Kant wrote: ‘May God protect us from our friends. . . . For there are fraudulent and perfidious so-called friends who are scheming for our ruin while speaking the language of good-will.' - C&R, Chap 6 As Kant puts it, Copernicus, finding that no progress was being made with the theory of the revolving heavens, broke the deadlock by turning the tables, as it were: he assumed that it is not the heavens which revolve while we the observers stand still, but that we the observers revolve while the heavens stand still. In a similar way, Kant says, the problem of scientific knowledge is to be solved — the problem how an exact science, such as Newtonian theory, is possible, and how it could ever have been found. We must give up the view that we are passive observers, waiting for nature to impress its regularity upon us. Instead we must adopt the view that in digesting our sense-data we actively impress the order and the laws of our intellect upon them. Our cosmos bears the imprint of our minds. - C&R, Chap 6 From Kant the cosmologist, the philosopher of knowledge and of science, I now turn to Kant the moralist. I do not know whether it has been noticed before that the fundamental idea of Kant's ethics amounts to another Copernican Revolution, analogous in every respect to the one I have described. For Kant makes man the lawgiver of morality just as he makes him the lawgiver of nature. And in doing so he gives back to man his central place both in his moral and in his physical universe. Kant humanized ethics, as he had humanized science. ... Kant's Copernican Revolution in the field of ethics is contained in his doctrine of autonomy—the doctrine that we cannot accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the ultimate basis of ethics. For whenever we are faced with a command by an authority, it is our responsibility to judge whether this command is moral or immoral. The authority may have power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist. But unless we are physically prevented from choosing the responsibility remains ours. It is our decision whether to obey a command, whether to accept authority. - C&R, Chap 6 Stepping back further to get a still more distant view of Kant's historical role, we may compare him with Socrates. Both were accused of perverting the state religion, and of corrupting the minds of the young. Both denied the charge; and both stood up for freedom of thought. Freedom meant more to them than absence of constraint; it was for both a way of life. ... To this Socratic idea of self-sufficiency, which forms part of our western heritage, Kant has given a new meaning in the fields of both knowledge and morals. And he has added to it further the idea of a community of free men—of all men. For he has shown that every man is free; not because he is born free, but because he is born with the burden of responsibility for free decision. - C&R, Chap 6 Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Follow the Kantian Imperative: Stop masturbating and/or/while getting your hair cut, and start sending emails over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, about what is involved in comparing individual human lives to the whole of human history. How can we compare them, or understand the results of the comparison? Kant's question injected a new, future-oriented dimension into existing discussions of prevailing norms, challenging their orientation toward the past. This reversal made Kant's question a bridge between three successive sets of arguments: between the supporters of the ancients and moderns, the classics and romantics, and the Romans and the Germans. Sonenscher argues that the genealogy of modern political ideologies—from liberalism to nationalism to communism—can be connected to the resulting discussions of time, history, and values, mainly in France but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain, in the period straddling the French and Industrial revolutions. What is the genuinely human content of human history? Everything begins somewhere—democracy with the Greeks, or the idea of a res publica with the Romans—but these local arrangements have become vectors of values that are, apparently, universal. The intellectual upheaval that Sonenscher describes involved a struggle to close the gap, highlighted by Kant, between individual lives and human history. After Kant is an examination of that struggle's enduring impact on the history and the historiography of political thought. Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge. His many books include Before the Deluge (Princeton), Sans-Culottes (Princeton), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, about what is involved in comparing individual human lives to the whole of human history. How can we compare them, or understand the results of the comparison? Kant's question injected a new, future-oriented dimension into existing discussions of prevailing norms, challenging their orientation toward the past. This reversal made Kant's question a bridge between three successive sets of arguments: between the supporters of the ancients and moderns, the classics and romantics, and the Romans and the Germans. Sonenscher argues that the genealogy of modern political ideologies—from liberalism to nationalism to communism—can be connected to the resulting discussions of time, history, and values, mainly in France but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain, in the period straddling the French and Industrial revolutions. What is the genuinely human content of human history? Everything begins somewhere—democracy with the Greeks, or the idea of a res publica with the Romans—but these local arrangements have become vectors of values that are, apparently, universal. The intellectual upheaval that Sonenscher describes involved a struggle to close the gap, highlighted by Kant, between individual lives and human history. After Kant is an examination of that struggle's enduring impact on the history and the historiography of political thought. Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge. His many books include Before the Deluge (Princeton), Sans-Culottes (Princeton), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, about what is involved in comparing individual human lives to the whole of human history. How can we compare them, or understand the results of the comparison? Kant's question injected a new, future-oriented dimension into existing discussions of prevailing norms, challenging their orientation toward the past. This reversal made Kant's question a bridge between three successive sets of arguments: between the supporters of the ancients and moderns, the classics and romantics, and the Romans and the Germans. Sonenscher argues that the genealogy of modern political ideologies—from liberalism to nationalism to communism—can be connected to the resulting discussions of time, history, and values, mainly in France but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain, in the period straddling the French and Industrial revolutions. What is the genuinely human content of human history? Everything begins somewhere—democracy with the Greeks, or the idea of a res publica with the Romans—but these local arrangements have become vectors of values that are, apparently, universal. The intellectual upheaval that Sonenscher describes involved a struggle to close the gap, highlighted by Kant, between individual lives and human history. After Kant is an examination of that struggle's enduring impact on the history and the historiography of political thought. Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge. His many books include Before the Deluge (Princeton), Sans-Culottes (Princeton), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, about what is involved in comparing individual human lives to the whole of human history. How can we compare them, or understand the results of the comparison? Kant's question injected a new, future-oriented dimension into existing discussions of prevailing norms, challenging their orientation toward the past. This reversal made Kant's question a bridge between three successive sets of arguments: between the supporters of the ancients and moderns, the classics and romantics, and the Romans and the Germans. Sonenscher argues that the genealogy of modern political ideologies—from liberalism to nationalism to communism—can be connected to the resulting discussions of time, history, and values, mainly in France but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain, in the period straddling the French and Industrial revolutions. What is the genuinely human content of human history? Everything begins somewhere—democracy with the Greeks, or the idea of a res publica with the Romans—but these local arrangements have become vectors of values that are, apparently, universal. The intellectual upheaval that Sonenscher describes involved a struggle to close the gap, highlighted by Kant, between individual lives and human history. After Kant is an examination of that struggle's enduring impact on the history and the historiography of political thought. Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge. His many books include Before the Deluge (Princeton), Sans-Culottes (Princeton), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, about what is involved in comparing individual human lives to the whole of human history. How can we compare them, or understand the results of the comparison? Kant's question injected a new, future-oriented dimension into existing discussions of prevailing norms, challenging their orientation toward the past. This reversal made Kant's question a bridge between three successive sets of arguments: between the supporters of the ancients and moderns, the classics and romantics, and the Romans and the Germans. Sonenscher argues that the genealogy of modern political ideologies—from liberalism to nationalism to communism—can be connected to the resulting discussions of time, history, and values, mainly in France but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain, in the period straddling the French and Industrial revolutions. What is the genuinely human content of human history? Everything begins somewhere—democracy with the Greeks, or the idea of a res publica with the Romans—but these local arrangements have become vectors of values that are, apparently, universal. The intellectual upheaval that Sonenscher describes involved a struggle to close the gap, highlighted by Kant, between individual lives and human history. After Kant is an examination of that struggle's enduring impact on the history and the historiography of political thought. Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge. His many books include Before the Deluge (Princeton), Sans-Culottes (Princeton), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, about what is involved in comparing individual human lives to the whole of human history. How can we compare them, or understand the results of the comparison? Kant's question injected a new, future-oriented dimension into existing discussions of prevailing norms, challenging their orientation toward the past. This reversal made Kant's question a bridge between three successive sets of arguments: between the supporters of the ancients and moderns, the classics and romantics, and the Romans and the Germans. Sonenscher argues that the genealogy of modern political ideologies—from liberalism to nationalism to communism—can be connected to the resulting discussions of time, history, and values, mainly in France but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain, in the period straddling the French and Industrial revolutions. What is the genuinely human content of human history? Everything begins somewhere—democracy with the Greeks, or the idea of a res publica with the Romans—but these local arrangements have become vectors of values that are, apparently, universal. The intellectual upheaval that Sonenscher describes involved a struggle to close the gap, highlighted by Kant, between individual lives and human history. After Kant is an examination of that struggle's enduring impact on the history and the historiography of political thought. Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge. His many books include Before the Deluge (Princeton), Sans-Culottes (Princeton), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Almost everyone feels uneasy about their relationships with their smartphones. But the question is why? In today's episode, Cal looks past the most common answers to seek a deeper understanding built on an unexpected source: the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He then answers listener questions and ends the show with another edition of the tech corner segment.  Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here's the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo  Video from today's episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia  Deep Dive: Would Kant Use TikTok? [6:13]  - Do “distraction free” apps work? [30:36] - How can I finish what I start? [34:24] - Is context shifting slowing down my work as a teacher? [37:42] - How should I organize my official podcast duties with my traditional teaching requirements? [43:08] - Is “slow living” and “slow productivity" the same thing? [49:00] - CALL: Deep work blocks in the afternoon [55:58]  CASE STUDY:  Re-designing a life with a new job [1:00:07]  TECH CORNER: How do recommendation algorithms work? [1:11:00]   Links: Buy Cal's latest book, “Slow Productivity” at calnewport.com/slow Get a signed copy of Cal's “Slow Productivity” at peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/cal-newport/ Cal's monthly book directory: bramses.notion.site/059db2641def4a88988b4d2cee4657ba? youtu.be/SeZ1YOgbz18?si=kuCksvy_dGoOfx8Q  Thanks to our Sponsors:  shopify.com/deep drinklmnt.com/deep expressvpn.com/deep mintmoblie.com/deep  Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for the slow productivity music, and Mark Miles for mastering. 

This week, in their liturgical recitation and study of the Hebrew Bible, Jewish communities all over the world will relive the terrifying moment when God commands Abraham to take his son, his beloved son, who was to be his heir and fulfill his deepest dreams for family transmission and ancestry, Isaac, and sacrifice him. What is this passage all about? What does it mean? What can be learned about Abraham, about Isaac, or about God by reading it carefully? Joining Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver to discuss these questions on this week's podcast (originally broadcast in 2023) is Jon D. Levenson, a professor of Jewish studies at Harvard Divinity School and frequent Mosaic contributor. Levenson has written about this episode in several books, including The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son published in 1993 by Yale University Press, and also in Inheriting Abraham, published in 2012 by Princeton University Press. Akeidat Yitzḥak, the binding of Isaac, as the Jewish people traditionally refer to this episode, has a long afterlife in Christian and Muslim traditions; it is also a centerpiece of philosophical reflection among modern thinkers like Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierkegaard. Reading the text now in the aftermath of those later reflections, it's difficult to retrieve its original meaning. The temptation is overwhelming to propose moral justifications for Abraham and for God, to excuse or at least to try to soften the drama of Genesis 22. To hear what the text of the Hebrew Bible really might have to say in response to that temptation requires undoing some modern assumptions—a task that Levenson and Silver take up.

What's wrong with donating to charity for the tax write-off? Should we think less of people who do volunteer work to pad their resumes? And why is Angela stopping women in public parks to compliment them? SOURCES:Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Geoffrey Goodwin, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Jon Huntsman, politician, diplomat, and businessman.Immanuel Kant, 18th-century German philosopher.Emrys Westacott, professor of philosophy at Alfred University. RESOURCES:"How Inferred Motives Shape Moral Judgements," by Ryan W. Carlson, Yochanan E. Bigman, Kurt Gray, Melissa J. Ferguson, and M. J. Crockett (Nature Reviews Psychology, 2022)."Just 2 Minutes of Walking After a Meal Is Surprisingly Good for You," by Rachel Fairbank (The New York Times, 2022)."Psychological Egoism," by Emrys Westacott (ThoughtCo, 2020)."A Meta-Analytic Review of Moral Licensing," by Irene Blanken, Niels van de Ven, and Marcel Zeelenberg (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2015)."Selfish or Selfless? On the Signal Value of Emotion in Altruistic Behavior," by Alixandra Barasch, Emma E. Levine, Jonathan Z. Berman, and Deborah A. Small (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014)."Greenwashing — the Deceptive Tactics Behind Environmental Claims," by the United Nations. EXTRAS:"Giving It Away," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022)."How Can We Get More Virtue and Less ‘Virtue Signaling'?" by No Stupid Questions (2020)."Does Doing Good Give You License to Be Bad?" by Freakonomics Radio (2018).