Philosophic Musings

Great War, Great Pessimism.

2011-08-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another post on philosophical audio collections and lectures. Today we hit on a lecture that talks about one of the biggest changes in European thought, culture and civilisation. The lecture is called "The Great War and Cultural Pessimism" from the course "European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century", which is taught by Professor Lloyd Kramer.

Professor Lloyd Kramer

Every now and then when I am not looking into philosophy courses, I probably end up listening to history lectures. The thing is that sometimes philosophical ideas drive the changes throughout history, but every so often it is the great events of the age that influence philosophical ideas. The Great War, otherwise known as World War I certainly influenced many ideas on the western stage.

If you manage to get hold of this course, pay some attention to this lecture, especially if you are interested in how Europeans saw themselves after the disastrous Great War. Lloyd Kramers lecturing style keeps the listener interested from start to go, especially since lectures on the Great War can be quite difficult since many historians still research on what was to blame in leading up to the clash of European nations and what led to the decline in European power and influence.

Within this lecture Lloyd covers what the Great War was about. We get to listen to why Britain, France and Russia (The Triple Entente) went to war again Germany, Austria and the Ottoman Empire (Triple Alliance). There are many questions that one needs to consider before listening to the lecture. Why did the war last so long? What were the freedoms of those who continued to sign up to the front? Even though so many died, why did many continue to go to the front? What ideas came out of the disaster of the Great War?

Professor Lloyd then moves on to the ideas of two famous people who experienced the Great War. The first is on Robert Graves who wrote the autobiography called "Good-Bye to All That", which was released around 1929. Robert Graves book summarised what many people were thinking about the rapid changes after the great war. The good times for the previous generation were gone and now the age of pessimism begins. Robert Graves served as a British army officer during the battle of Loos. His book gives account of the horrors and realities of the Great War, which so many governments at the time were trying to hide within the cloak of nationalism.

Robert Graves

The next person Professor Lloyd focuses on is Oswald Spengler whose book called "The Decline of the West", which was very popular after the war. Many Europeans were soul searching wondering if the ideals of Europe were the best to follow if it led to the disasters of the Great War. Within this book, we have Oswald explain that the west is currently in decline as with many other eras of the west. His book mentions different cultures from the Babylonian, Chinese and 6 other cultures. He compares them to the western view of culture and states there are patterns where decline was inevitable for the west. Each culture goes through a season of changes from spring to winter, where winter would be the decline and fall.

Oswald Spengler

At the end of the lecture we get to look into who benefited from the war and who suffered. Obviously those who lost their lives from the war gained nothing and they needed a voice. Women's rights gained some important changes as governments began to recognise the value, commitment and rights of women. We then look at the break up of 3 empires after the war and touch on those who felt alienated from society after the war.

The Social Contract

2011-08-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another post on philosophy-101 blog. Today we have an audio introduction to The worlds 100 greatest books. This audio package delivers an introduction to why these books are the greatest, the period the books were set in, the brief introductions about the author of the book and then the audio goes into some detail about the story. Some books in this package are not even novels; some of the books are non-fiction. Just like the one I hope to describe here in this blog.

There are such a vast array of books within the audio collection, that the package will not give you the whole story of each book word to word. That would take far too long, but you will get some idea about why such the books are so famous.

The audio package is released by intelliquest who also did the audio collection called "The world's 100 greatest people". The reason they released such a collection on books, is because life is so short and some books can take so long to read. One of the books called “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy would take months to read, maybe years, however it is a very easy book to read, but here the audio collection will give you a much shorter the breakdown, summary and idea behind the book along with some symbolism. Can you imagine trying to read and understand “Ulysses” by James Joyce? Unfortunately this collection does not cover James Joyces materials, but it does cover Shakespeare, Stendhal, Gustave Flaubert, Goethe and many more.

I recommend if you are really interested in the study of literature, please visit shmoop gamma. With that site you get an even more detailed analysis, summary and plenty of famous quotes. Shmoop offers breakdowns on tougher books including “Altas Shrugged” by Ayn rand, “Ulysses” by James Joyce and so much more literature. Perhaps you can use the Shmoop in conjunction with the audio collection.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Well lets delve into the book I hope to discuss on the blog today. The book is indeed quite famous or infamous depending who you are talking to. The book is called “The Social Contract" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This book is number 73 within the audio package and each section is usually 30 to 45 minutes. Rousseau did not have an easy upbringing, his mother died after his birth and his father left him when he was aged 10.

When Rousseau was in his teens, he left for Paris because he became bored and felt trapped in his home town. He was drawn to the bright lights of the city, working in many fields. He found his calling in literature and philosophy, although Rousseau was skilled in many fields. Rousseau won a competition which raised the question if the arts and sciences did society a disservice. Rousseau submitted a paper called "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences", which argued why the arts and sciences were dangerous to society.

Rousseau took this step further by publishing his most famous book called "The social contract", which this audio collection describes in some detail.

Interestingly Rousseau is nearly the opposite of what Thomas Hobbes (another philosophy from England) explained about the state of man's nature in society. In Hobbe's book called "leviathan". Thomas felt that man without an established society was weak, living in fear, violent and dangerous. Hobbes argued for a social contract where all would give up their power to the absolute ruler and that contract would hopefully bind all men to live in safety.

Thomas hobbes

Rousseau disagreed and felt that complex societies actually made men more brutal, dangerous, and living in fear and stress. Rousseau felt that man who lived without the need society or possessions did better off, because they did not fear who would take things away from them. All man would need was a place to sleep, eat and not be corrupted by power or knowledge. Rousseau felt such men were "Noble savages".

Rousseau's ideas caused friction with those who were in power at the time and Rousseau was hounded by the government and monarchy. Rousseau was even jailed when he criticised those in power. The audio book discusses Rousseau's life, the idea behind his book and its influences.

You will not be disappointed with this collection. That is unless you really want to read all the books on the list and there is no reason why, but to get through 100 books can take nearly a life time, and some books are not always a fun read.

Art defining man's nature and itself

2011-08-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

Back for a new month and I have been so busy listening to audio courses over the internet, I have forgotten all about the blog. Well I have decided to add another post today on a lovely lecture, which I have listened to for the 10th time. This particular lecture is "lecture 5 art and the Post-War "Crisis of Meaning"". The lecture is from the course called "Interpreting the 20th Century: The Struggle over Democracy".

Professor Pamela Radcliff

The course has been around for some time, but it’s still available off The Teaching company’s website. It is taught by Professor Pamela Radcliff. So then, why do I listen to this particular lecture so many times? even though there are 48 lectures in the course. Do not get me wrong, I do listen to some of the other lectures, but this one grabs my attention for a number of reasons. Basically I am interested how high art and culture affects and inspires society. The other reasons are that this lecture is highly informative on some of the major art movements after the turn of the war. Within this lecture it discusses Dadaism, Surrealism and futurism art movements.

To be honest, art analysis can be difficult to understand, so the next reason why I replay this lecture is that some notes are not so easy to take in, but it’s worth the time because understanding art makes you understand the period or time the art was set. This then lends to your cultural understanding of artist movements.

So then? What are these art movements and why were they formed? You might have noticed that I mentioned these art movements sprung up after the Great War or World War I. If there was high culture influencing nationalism, imperialism and man's reason to fight, then after a devastating war, there must be a counter culture. These were some of the movements.

The first being Dada or Dadaism. Its main point was to state that everything means nothing, I mean everything is nonsense. Do not try to even bother to understand or interpret dada because you will be sucked into meaningless confusion. Dada was a criticism of the rationality that drove the great nations to war. It was an attack on colonisation and superiority over others. Aimed at the masses, Dada hoped to push its message across that everything is meaningless.

Dadaist Art

Next we move on to another big art movement called Surrealism, which actually came out of a mix of Dadaism. Surrealism relied heavily on producing art which seems to come out of someone’s dreams. It looks so real, but then the art is odd, what the art defines cannot possibly exist and yet it is right before us in its representation. No more do we have art representing the landscape, the trees or portraits, no much pictures representing religion. We now have art representing the impossible, the imaginative the sublime. Surrealism lent itself not only to art, but also the philosophical theories, to literature and films. If you want to look into surrealist art then Salvador Dali is a good start, but there are many others.

Gala and the Tigers, Surrealist art

Next we move onto the last of the major art movements after the Great War and this would be the futurist movement or futurism. The main point of this movement was the look towards the future. Futurists are sick and tired of anything old. The old art is slow, distant and boring. Now we get art that emphasis speed, technology and most of all the future. Pamela gives a great example of how futurists see themselves, she gives an example of a person getting into a car and driving off, but futurists see themselves moulding with the car. The see the car as something completely different, they see movement as a potential for violence.

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space

Every so often I tend to visit the Tate modern museum and up on the top floor you will see pop art and the famous “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space" by Umberto Boccioni. Notice that even though the art is still, it defines speed and movement. You can just imaging the human moving at great speed.

One thing to notice about these movements is that they lend themselves to the Postmodern tradition. It can be very hard to work out what the actual paintings, sculptures or designs mean. The representation is all over the place and that’s the way these artists like it. This is one defining feature of Postmodernism, which is a critic of modernism. Or a critic of what came before it.

If you ever get hold of this course, you will enjoy this lecture. Pamela's lecture style isn’t too exciting, but she makes up for it in sheer detail and information, which is why I come back again and again.

The Meaning of Death

2011-07-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

It had to happen. I mean although it’s not one of the biggest questions concerning philosophers, usually it is one of the answers to the meaning of life.

Death.

Yet, it’s not so simple, because as you might know within philosophy there are questions about questions and that’s when we get metaphysical. So now the biggest question is what is the meaning of death?

Well I have two great pieces of news. The first is there is a course on the meaning of death. It is called "death", which is obvious for a course on death I guess. It is taught by Professor Shelly Kagan from Yale University. The second piece of great news is that this course is FREE! Unlike the audio book for the meaning of life which isn't really free.

Prof Shelly Kagan

The course has 23 lectures and it covers several aspects relating to the meaning of death, but be warned, some of the lectures are aimed at high level graduates, while most of the lectures are available for anyone to dive into.

Let’s have a closer look at what this course covers?

Kagan lets us know his conclusion about death at the start of the course, if you do not like his answers, do not let it put you off the course entirely, since the course is quite an eye opener. We all can get something from the course.

We get to look into the dualism which is mind/body problem of death, which is to state what happens after death. Do we get to live on in another form? Do we have a soul? Does that soul die also?

We then move on the Plato's arguments for the soul and for most of you out there, Plato believed that we can live on in another form, but are his arguments cohesive? Do they make sense?

Next the course moves on to personal identity, I would say this part of the course is where things get little tough, because the course seems to move on to what is known as individuation theory. What is the identify of something through space and time when it ceases to exists? We then move on to how we can be sure if the identify of something or a person is lost? Such theories work best on mechanical objects like a car or train, which Kegan will actually use to define this difficult concept.

We then move on to the badness of death, where we get help from Leo Tolstoy (the Great Russian novelist) and some other great novelists. What is so bad about death? How does existentialism fit into the definition of death? This lecture I felt was a real eye opener, but at times I just cannot help trying to break or counter Kagan's logic on why he felt some arguments for the badness of death does not make sense.

The course then moves on to immortality, who on earth does not want to be immortal? I mean is death such a bad thing that one prefers to live forever instead? Maybe this is not such a good idea as Kagan explores this subject in great detail. I have not been through all the lectures, but mainly identify theory, badness of death and dualism. I have also just listened to lecture 22 called “The fear of death”.

Time flows away

Fear of death

On this particular lecture, we look at the emotions. Is it appropriate to have a fear of death? What are the conditions for these emotions? Here we look at the psychology of death concerning if we have anyone to blame for death. We know death is coming, so who is to blame? How shall we feel when death takes its icy claws and draws nearer to us?

This lecture also takes a look at our personification of death? If there is someone to blame, then how does this affect our emotions? Examples of the personification of death would be god, since many people would blame god for allowing us to live and then taking our lives or placing in the condition that we have to die, this idea is explained psychologically in this lecture.

We examine pride, fear, sadness and anger. One thing about being alive is that we cannot avoid our emotions. Our emotions revel themselves to events even before we think, maybe perhaps they are ingrained deep within us, perhaps learnt from society or from our habits. Yet when it comes to death, are our emotions rational? Are the emotions appropriate?

Some emotions like sadness or worry might make sense, but it seems fear actually might not be rational since fear does not three conditions. I will not tell you all of the conditions, because I want you to listen to this lecture, heck! I want you to listen to the course (if you have time). Alas time is short, so make time before death takes us, because the meaning to life can heavily lend to the meaning of death and to make sense of life, we must come to terms with death. Within this course we shall find meaning and this is the meaning of death.

Style of course

The lectures (except the first one) are long, nearly an hour per lecture. That’s good, because there is so much to get out of this course, but then it’s bad if you want to get a straight answer. It is worse if you find the course might be out of your level and you still find that you do not understand the meaning of death.

Kagan loves to use examples for his theories, which is good because some theories are difficult to get your head around. This course looks at highly metaphysical arguments, which means beyond ideas that could be easily measured, so Kagan will try to lessen the damage by tackling tough answers from our psychological understand of death.

Sometimes Kagan might take some time to get to a point, but its worth waiting around, because again the ideas can be pretty hard to work out. You might have to read in between the lines. Make sure you listen to the lectures more than once, some will not make sense and you may have to reference the lectures against other material.

Philosophy talk from Australia, back to the old style

2011-07-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

Just been listening to a radio show based in sunny Australia. The show is a slot on ABC radio and it looks to be still running. This particular show is called "The Philosophers Zone" and has been running since 2005. Their site must have over 300 dedicated philosophy subjects and guess what? They are all free for download.

Today I was listening to a 25 minute talk hosted by Alan Saunders. The subject was about the rise of three Greek schools in the Hellenistic period. The title of the subject is called "The Therapy of Desire - Epicureans and Stoics on the good life".

Alan Saunders

We have Alan Saunders talk to Martha Nussbaum from the University of Chicago, who seems to be a specialist of Greek philosophy. She mentions about why these schools were founded, their philosophy and influence on later philosophers, especially in towards the Roman period.

So let’s have a brief look at these schools.

The Epicureans

The Epicureans basically looked at philosophy being used for therapy against irrationality and harmful desires. Their view on life would be an appreciation of beauty, detachment from earthly delights and being free for fear, especially death. We have the famous quote from Epicurus who said, "When we exist death is not, and when death exists we are not"

The Stoics

Here in this school, the Stoics wanted to spread forth the belief that our emotions can be destructive if we act upon irrationality. Stoicism pushes forward the idea that men should be free not only from grief, but also from Joy and be steadfast not only in belief, but how we behave.

Our emotions can obviously be destructive to others if we act irrationally from anger, but worst of all; we can eventually destroy ourselves.

The stoics stressed that each man must live according to the reason within nature.

The Cynics

The talk does not go deeply into what the cynics did, but here is a little breakdown. Mainly what the modern age knows of the Cynics is that they are doubtful of knowledge and felt that all knowledge should be questionable. Cynics also taught that people must live free from desires, being wealth, fame, power and even being overly concerned with our health. Our lives must be lived through a rational agreement with nature. You might notice some stoicism within the cynics, so their ideas did merge from the two schools.

Why did these schools form?

Well, back in the Hellenistic period, war was rife and it was hard enough to survive. Fights broke out over the simplest things due to anger, desire, fear and irrationality and it seemed the best way to counter such emotions was through rationality.

What best way to do this then use Philosophy of course!!

With such rationality, we can cure the irrational thoughts that can lead to pain and sorrow, thus people will become peaceful and seek higher forms of living. Notice I have mentioned peaceful rather than happier, because again being happy might be brought around by irrational thoughts. These being lust, money, fame can all make one happy, but in the end those emotions (if unchecked) can cause stress to society.

The talk continues on the problems of these philosophies. Sometimes the philosophies go to their extremes, where one not only detaches themselves away from the painful emotions, but eventually detaches themselves away from their loved ones, even family and friends. I think its because death takes us all and we must learn not to become too attached to each other. Not only can death destroy our attachments, but people can be un-trust worthy, people can turn on you for the slightest of reasons, so we must hold our emotions back, keep them in check and not be so vengeful.

The show is quite short and could only cover the ethics taught within these schools. The schools also looked at logic, poetry, physics and the study of nature.

There are hundreds of episodes from "The Philosophers Zone". I hope to cover many of them. Feel free to download from their site.

The Meaning of Life

2011-07-15T04:10:00.000-07:00

Hello folks.

I have just listened to an audio book called "The Meaning of life" by Terry Eagleton. To be fair I have not listened to the entire book as yet, but I thought I would mention it today in the blog. Why should I mention such a book? Well come to think of it, the question "What is the meaning of life" is perhaps one of the most basic, most philosophic questions of all.

Book Cover

I usually visited a site called Yahoo Answers to answer questions asked to budding armchair philosophers and the question that most pops up within the forum is "What is the meaning of life?". Well this audio book, or book depending what you get hold of, will help us discover the answers to such a basic question. Yet be warned. There are many answers to this question and although the audio book is simple in tone, the answers the book gives lead on to more difficult questions.

One might as well ponder if it was even worth asking such a question.

Take heart though, it is always good at some point to ask such a question, because the information we receive lets us ponder over life's questions, which can hopefully lead to wisdom.

Let us now take a deeper look at the first part of the audio book. The first section is called Questions and Answers. There are other sections, but I have not listened to those yet.

As I have listened to the audiobook around several times, I decided to break down the main answers the audiobook has passed on.

We shall look at around Seven sections.

The question - What is so important about the question of the meaning of life?

The question definition - What does this question actually mean?

The history of the meaning - The questions progression throughout history
What it means to different philosophers - Different interpretations.

It’s Role - How does the question serve us?

It’s Usage - How it is used each time the question is asked?

The Answer - Well, plain and simple, the answers of the meaning of life.

The question

Let us examine briefly how this lovely audio book looks at what is so important about such a question. The question "What is the meaning of life" actually used to be the most fundamental question asked to philosophers, considering before that, the question used to be "Why is there something, rather than nothing?".

I guess such a question could have been asked to the Greek philosopher Socrates, until he in turn started to ask questions to other people, rather than answering people's questions.

The book shows us how such a question can twists and turn each time we ask about it, but the thing is such a question is important, because it gives our lives meaning. We need to sometimes stop and check if we are not wasting our time. Perhaps we just want to copy what other people are doing with their lives.

The question definition

This is perhaps the answer most philosophers of the modern age will reply to anyone who asks them such a question. Perhaps Wittgenstein turned around and answered that it is not the answer, but how the question is asked.

It might go so far to be said that you will not get a right answer if you ask an impossible question. Most philosophers these days will look at the structure of the question or go so far to deconstruct the question (break down the hidden meaning of the question). The audio book will help us examine the questions structure

The history of the meaning

It used to be so easy in the early days; it used to be all so easy. When someone asked such a question, the answer would be "God". God is the meaning to all life and all our problems will be solved. This perhaps was the earliest answer to the question one can probe. You can replace the word "God", with other religious deities, but there is no denying that religion will often point on the responsibility of such an answer to another mysterious force.

Now throughout the ages, people who hit a life crisis, or even just began to seriously ponder to themselves, they just kept asking the question over and over again. The answer to this question began to change as religion in the west ended up letting people down through corruption, persecution and most often unexplained answers.

(I am not saying that religion is fully at fault, but this is the history of the meaning of life problem)

So in turn people invented their own meaning, perhaps a good era would be idealism, romanticism, enlightenment and modernism, but even those ideas failed, because after the horror of world wars leading to the cold war. We are again forced to ask ourselves what is the meaning to life.

Now fast forward to the present. It’s not so easy anymore because Postmodernism has crept in and says "We know the answer, but unfortunately there are so many standpoints, there are many answers and perhaps too many answers". This audiobook will tell us the history of such a question.

What it means to different philosophers

There is not one type of philosopher these days. If you are a philosopher you might end up being classed in a category of philosophers. Perhaps you’re a Structualist, a Pragmatists, Rationalist, maybe a Postmodernist or Nilhist, maybe your not in a group of philosophies and follow a major philosopher instead. What I am trying to say is that you will get a different answer depending on which philosopher you ask.

A nilishist will tell you that there is no meaning to the meaning of life; a deconstructor will ask you 10 questions to your 1 question. Some philosophers will tell you to think for yourself. Others will say that that the question has a language problem.

It’s Role

I can guess that the role of such a question is to give our lives meaning. So the meaning of life is the value or quality that is fed back to our lives or at least what we take from it. This would be a pragmatists way of viewing the meaning of life.

Yet, oddly enough, the answer to the meaning of life will twist and turn each stage of our lives. To make things worse, as soon as you ask such a question, For example I could ask "What is the meaning of life", then end up asking "What is the meaning of the answer to the meaning of life" or worse "what is the meaning to the question of what is the meaning of life", which is what we are defining now.

So in essence the answer will in turn lead to more questions, but we all have to start somewhere. Don't we?

The usage

One thing about asking what the meaning of life is, that it can be asked even if your not in a crisis. It is a misconception that those who ask such a question are always depressed. You can actually ask such a question out of some life affirming value. Perhaps some of us are not too easily satisfied. Yet those who do not ask such questions might actually be worried the answer, which might make them depressed.

The answer

The meaning of life hopefully aims to push us into viewing the answers of life with profound thought, usually there are no single answers. Perhaps we can view it as that there is no meaning of life, it could be that the problem is with the question and how it is asked.

It could be counted that it is the questions, not answers which are the most difficult thing.

Yet the good news is there are answers and if you get hold of this audio book, your life will bring onto itself new meaning. Even if you have to ask new questions.

One last note: Always look on the bright side of life.

Big Brother is still Watching you

2011-07-13T17:04:00.000-07:00

Here is a lecture I have been listening time and time again. It’s from the audio company, which is called "The Teaching Company" and the course is called "Books that Can Change Your Life" taught by J. Rufus Fears.

Well what can I say about this particular lecture? I have watched the film starring John Hurt. I read part of the book, listened to the play narrated by David Niven and now I get a detailed analysis of the famous book "1984". The book was written by George Orwell and in a nutshell the book was aimed at communist Russia just after the Second World War.

Book Cover of 1984

This lecture is number 19 out of 32 lectures, I could not help skip some of the other lectures. They are all important books and I am sure listen to them in time, but 1984 is so controversial, so terrifying and almost predicts what could happen in the future. Well about the style of the lecture. It is always fun listening to Rufus, he never seems to talk in a one tone voice, it is almost as if he is beckoning you further with his style. Drawing you into the story of the book and what the book is about. Rufus sometimes breaks into voice acting of the characters and does voice of Winston Smith (The main character of the book) superbly.

You really get the feel of the terror and mystery of Big Brother, which is the dictatorship style of government Winston Smith is living under. You see the thing is Winston Smith does not like Big Brother, I mean when he does not life Big Brother, he literary HATES Big Brother and from there we get an epic story.

I will not go into the full details of the story 1984, you can either listen to this particular lecture or get hold of the book. I also recommend that you watch the film starring John Hurt (watch trailer), which actually did come out in 1984.

George Orwell

Why did George Orwell write this book? Why did he perceive communism as evil and how does this book even relate to problems of communism? Come to think of it, how does this book change your life?

So many questions and hopefully the lecture will answer them for you. I can also try and answer a few questions myself about this book. George Orwell was unfortunate enough to take part in the Spanish civil war of the 1930's and although he came to participate of his own willing, he had to ally himself with those who wanted to push for communist ideals in Spain while fighting against those with fascist ideologies.

Well, George saw what the Russians under Stalin were like and he did not like this one bit. Over the years throughout the Second World War, he could not keep what he saw bottled up and wrote the book 1984. He foresaw what life would be like under Stalin once the war would draw to a close.

Why was this book banned?

Well Russia took the main brunt of the war against the Nazis. The British government felt that at the time such criticisms of Russia and communism was going too far and could damage relations. Yet in time Winston Church (does the name “Winston” ring a bell?) spoke out in his famous speech of "The Iron Curtain" closing down over Eastern Europe.

How can this book change your life?

To be honest, any book can change your life. Yet this book is unrelenting on how a government can turn on its citizens. We can almost imagine ourselves living under this style of government and come to think of it. parts of Big Brother can be implemented in the governments of today, think of surveillance eroding into your privacy.

The big question is, would you take a stand like Winston smith? Would you try to make a change? Or would you keep your head down. Perhaps would you bow to the government and do as they tell you to, even if you know deep down it is wrong, but be so fearful of your life that you cannot afford to displease big brother.

Take some time to listen to this lovely lecture and maybe it will inspire you to think carefully about the times we are living in, but remember......

Big Brother is WATCHING YOU!!

Knowledge Products on Nietzschie

2011-07-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

God is Dead!

This is how the audio course Giants of Philosophy starts off on its explanation of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. If you find the introduction of this course startling and profound Just wait till you hear the rest of the course. The narration is done by the late great actor Charlton Heston and he does a brilliant job of it too. Charlton keeps us interested through the course throughout.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche was no stranger to controversy as the start of the course rightly points out. Within the first 10 minutes we learn that the philosophies of Nietzsche was easily adapted for the Nazi's, Nietzsche hated the Jewish religions and Christianity. At times Nietzsche was extremely nationalistic, deplored morality and through it weak for the heard mentality. Nietzsche also adored those who were strong and were honest enough to use their strength to gain power and flaunt their power.

Nietzsche felt European civilisation was dying off due to its constant belief in Christianity and felt that Europe was becoming decadent. Nietzsche wanted the new man, the “Overman” who would not only become man, but over him, this man would not do deny the meaning of the earth, but enjoy it. Nietzsche hated the pseudo talk of Christianity and felt many Christians could not live up to the ideals of Christianity anyway.

The course examines how Nietzsche fell in love with the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Søren Kierkegaard, but then Nietzsche disagreed with the conclusion of Schopenhauer’s view of “the will”, which Schopenhauer stated that the meaning of the earth is a cruel meaningless place, where our desires consume us and thus as we try to fight "this will", it is a losing battle and the only way we could challenge "the will" would be through artistic appreciation or through contemplation, but rationally “the will” concludes absurdity and Nihilism will reign supreme. Nietzsche agreed the world was cruel, but felt that there was little wrong with this, we should celebrate it and we should affirm life. Pointless Nihilism is just a form of giving up.

By the way, Nihilism is the idea that life and rationality is so meaningless, so absurd, that life becomes pointless and we ultimately will believe in nothing, perhaps this nothing will even erode belief. We just live to eat, breed and then die.

Nietzsche also disagreed with Kierkegaard's view of throwing ourselves into a leap of faith to religion. As pointed out earlier in this course, Nietzsche despised religion and felt religion was for the weak masses, who chain the strong so that the weak could be kept safe. Nietzsche felt religion was a lie that denied the true meaning of the earth.

The course has many voice actors narrating how Nietzsche would have talked. There is also a narration for Bertrand Russell, which I found quite funny, because Bertrand was severely dismissive of Nietzsche and his philosophy, you can listen to Bertrand’s criticism here.

We get to listen to Nietzsche's idea of the overman, his views into morality. We also hear of Nietzsche's criticism of how philosophy was developing, where Nietzsche felt philosophy was inventing the world, not realizing the world. The course examines and discusses Nietzsche's friends and how he fell out with some of them. How Nietzsche felt about women and Nietzsche's view on art, his admiration for Greek culture and then the course moves on to Nietzsche view on art.

What I have mentioned so far is on the two first tapes and there is around two or three more to go. The style of the course makes it easy for the listener to take in Nietzschian philosophy and it’s easy to listen again and again. The break music can be a bit off putting at times though. You will love the voice acting, its just as if Nietzsche was talking to you, trying to persuade you with his arguments. You will not get a lesson like this from many other courses.

Why was Nietzsche so hated by some philosophers and then only to be cherished by later philosophers?

There are a mix of reasons and I hope to at least point a few out.

The reason why some hate Nietzschian philosophy.

Quite a few Christians (although not all Christians) felt Nietzsche was a blasphemer, you can also imagine what the Jews think of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche was not too fond of women and said pretty horrible things about them, including how to treat women and how he felt they lacked rationality.
Others questioned Nietzsche ideas of morality. Stating that the results led to the destructive world wars.
Some major philosophers dismiss Nietzsche because his philosophy did not seem to take the rigid structure philosophy can demand, some philosophers go so far to state Nietzsche as poetic, which is quite true in some regards.
Nietzsche's work was easily twisted for Nazi propaganda purposes, especially since Nietzsche despised Jewish religion. There is a good documentary called "Nietzsche and the Nazis" on this subject here.
Other philosophers felt Nietzsche was too abstract and his solution to Nihilism does not make much sense.
Some philosophers felt Nietzsche cure for Nihilism was worse than the disease.
Nietzsche’s disapproval for democracy.
Nietzsche’s reaffirmation of values clashes against biological values or is a poor misinterpretation of Darwinism.
His philosophy is aimed at the few, this being the elite and perhaps the individual at the cost of the masses. The mass and perhaps downtrodden is ignored since Nietzsche despises them.

Some reasons why Nietzsche philosophies are praised.

Some felt that Nietzsche gave birth to Existentialism, although he did not claim to be an existentialist himself, some felt that religion was too stifling and we get a chance to examine how man could perceive himself in the world, even if the world turns out to be cruel.
Some major philosophers felt that even if Nietzsche's philosophy was not so well structured, it is still easily understandable and most influential.
We have quite a few state that Nietzsche's work was adapted for Nazi use by Nietzsche's sister (Elisabeth Förster) and that the later version of Nietzsche's work were not his main world. It is known that Nietzsche fell out with his sister because she married an anti-Semite. He also fell out with the great composer Wagner because of his anti-Semitism.
Nietzsche would have laughed at the idea of the Germans being a great and noble culture or race. At times Nietzsche would criticise his culture as decadent. Nietzsche can easily be associated with anarchy.
If your the elite, power hungry or even an artist, you ll love Nietzsche.
If Nietzsche can influence literary greats like George Bernard Shaw, postmodern and existentialists philosophers (who are hard to please), feminist movements and psychologists, then something must be good. However we need to note that there is a battle to have Nietzsche as someone who recommends an idea, because he is a much sort after icon.

I am sure I have missed a large amount of points and there are plenty of points others can think of.

Even if you do not manage to get hold of this particular course. It is always possible to read many of Nietzsche's works.

Cover of course

The thing is that "Knowledge products" is a very old course and its highly unlikely that the knowledge products site even sells the course, but many other audio sites might sell them.

There are other courses mainly from "The Teaching Company" that cover Nietzsche in depth and I hope to revisit this famous or infamous philosophy again at some point.

The Self under Siege

2011-07-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

We have a nice lecture today. This one is another course from The Teaching Company series; however it can be viewed from YouTube, since I tried to find it on The Teaching company site, but nothing doing. This course is called "The Self under Siege" taught by the late Rick Roderick.

The late Rick Roddick

The lecture I want to talk about today is lecture 2 "Heidegger And The Rejection Of Humanism". You know of Heidegger right? I mean Martin Heidegger, the influential German philosopher whose studies into Phenomenology led to the growth of the philosophy movement called Existentialism, which is the study of being and how we tackle our existence in the world.

Phenomenology is the study of consciousness, reflection and how we perceive things, although close to psychology its main aim is to reflect rather than be too scientific. This has led to many criticisms of this philosophical school, but without a doubt Phenomenology has opened up many areas into the subject of being. Jean Paul Sartre examined Heidegger ideas and produced his own theories on the subject of being, areas of psychology and AI. Hiedegger's ideas led to the impressive Existential movement from the 1950's.

Martin Hiedegger

Jean Paul Sartre (the famous French philosophy) had read Heidegger's famous and lengthy book "Being and Time" and was impressed by its subject content, which was no easy feat, Being and Time is around 600 pages, is full of abstract words in German that have double meanings and at times can be dry.

Going back to the lecture, its style is easy on the ear. Rick guides you quite easily through a difficult subject and tries very hard to get us to relate to Heidegger's main theories. One of them is the problem that we are thrown into the world and must learn the rules in order to get on in the world and as soon as we are struggling to adapt we then realize not only do we suffer, but we die.

We will be thrown out of the world. YIKES!!

Rick does not pull any punches with this lecture. He is most critical of institutions that adhere to Heidegger's terms of rulemaking. It is like we become lost in the world and we must do things that we do not like to do in order to continue to live.

Heidegger's life choices were not so great either; did I forget to mention he was a member of the Nazi party? Oh hum, well not so easy to wipe that slate clean, still he was a genius if not a tainted one.

Rick makes folly of those who wish to live forever and states that death will come, but although we fear death, we should embrace it. As Rick mentions in this lecture, who wants to be a 90 year old running up a treadmill? What is the point of that? You see death gives our lives meaning, it makes us see that since our time can be short, our choices become critical. Still, even fearing death is important, not only because it gives life meaning, but it’s what makes us human. We are conscious that death will take us, but we must realize our being.

Heidegger moves onto some solutions on the problem of existence, he states that we need to become authentic in order to give our lives the meaning we cherish, but Rick becomes most critical of such a solution, which you will see if you view this lecture. I will not tell you why Rick is critical of this, so please view the lecture on YouTube. Some YouTube files actually have the whole course, so if you’re brave you can watch the other lectures Rick as produced, those being on Habermas, Sarte and the postmodern greats such as Derrida and Foucault.

One thing I have noticed about the lecture is Rick assumes you know a fair bit about some of the philosophic ideas, but again he will get you to relate to some of the issues and pulls no punches. Rick at times may stray from the subject, he will often become humorous and make jokes. Yet in a nutshell, Rick says it as it is.

Please enjoy the lecture on Self under siege.

Lecture on John Locke

2011-07-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

Today we have another podcast rather than course, which is good because it’s a lecture you do not have to pay for. However this podcast lecture can be a little tough to digest, because it’s aimed at university level students, but do not let this put you off. You can always replay the lecture again in case things to not seem too clear.

The podcast I have chosen to summarize on is called "The history of political philosophy from Plato to Rothbard" taught by David Gordon. The lecture I am interested in today is on a major political and philosophical thinker John Locke. John Locke was an English philosopher who published several Treatise concerning governance, epistemology (study of knowledge) and religious toleration. His most famous writings are "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" and "Two Treatises of Government".

John Locke

John Locke is also known for his famous theory of the tabula rasa. This theory states that we are born with a clear blank state of mind and that we have limited or no understanding of the world, until society and developing mental capacity shapes our world.

Other theories John Locke is famous for are his political theories concerning governance. He was controversial in his day, where we had the rule of Absolutism, which is divine ultimate rule from monarchy. This was around the period of the English Civil War, where the king Charles the 1st wanted to raise taxes for expensive wars and if parliament questioned why he needed more money, the king would just keep dissolving parliament. Well John Locke had much to say about this and was in some disagreement with another political philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

John Locke felt that submitting to a divine contract to the king was giving the king far too much power. We need to question the idea of human rights and property. Why should the government or monarch have absolute rights to what is naturally on the earth, especially if people have worked for it?

The lecture, which is number 5 out of 10, starts off about Thomas Hobbes idea of giving some of our rights away, but if you wish you can go onto lecture number 6 to get an in-depth understanding of Thomas Hobbes theories. The lecture sounds a bit quiet, so you might have to turn the sound up. David also writes stuff on the board and tends to drink some water to clear his throat, but he does lecture for a good hour and a half. Apart from that this lecture discusses why poor Locke had to go into exile, not once but twice, because some of his Treatises were so controversial that they had upset the major rulers of the day, one being the royalists and the others belonging to the church.

The lecture then looks into the nature of substances and John Locke's theory of how our rationality is set by the mind of god. Most of the lecture of course will look at the political theories of Locke. Especially how the law of nature can help people live together.

We get to look at the definition of how Locke says people can claim property by mixing our labour with it, but there are criticisms from other major political philosophers, one being from Robert Nozick, who is actually covered in the first lecture.

Robert Nozick

The lecture then moves on to the problem of giving up our rights and what belongs to us. John Locke is incredibly influential not only to the US constitution, but to other nations struggling to get out colonisation, notably those under British rule after the Second World War.

Try out this lecture one day if you’re up for political philosophy.

Supermodernism introducing postmodernism

2011-07-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

One of the last movements of philosophy is called postmodernism. A very difficult theory to break down, because it has been used to describe the changes in art, architecture, philosophy, religion, fashion, dance, literature, culture and feminism. This is where a brilliant audio book can help us. This one i believe is around 2 hours long, but unlike any other audio books out there. The book is called "Introducing Postmodernism" by Richard Appignanesi.

Cover of audio book

Most philosophy audio books can be dry, complex and long, but this one is dramatized, funny and breaks you in gently. Well worth a listen, especially on one of philosophy's most difficult subject. I am hoping that one day the introducing series will bring out an audio on chaos theory or quantum theory, which they actually have in book form.

The book by its title is a beginner’s guide to a very difficult subject. Postmodernism is usually a critic about where all the modernist changes have brought us, but not only is it a reflection, its mainly aim is an eternal regress to state that things will always change. I think through postmodern views of literature, there is no absolute truth, no big idea. We must have a world view, rather than a dominant European view.

We need to take note of other cultures, the minority. If rationality was the biggest and best idea, what has it brought us to so far? Postmodernism attacks science as the main aim for the brightest and cleanest way for improvement of society and it also seems postmodernism attacks itself. Many of those who may champion postmodernism actually state they are not even postmodernists, while others would go so far to mention that postmodernism attacks itself.

The audio book tries to cover all areas of postmodernism. The audio book mainly covers postmodernist views on language and art, and then it goes onward to look at architecture, capitalism and music.

Most people out there will recognise postmodernism through changes in art since they are easier to see. Also when you manage to get hold and listen to the audio book, once finished, go out and recognise what buildings are postmodern, what ones are modern and what buildings are from an earlier period. That is another way to examine postmodern attitudes.

Its not cheap and makes an impact, but is it postmodern?

The audio book introduces theories from Jean Baudrillard, Jean Francois Lyotard, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. There are many more included and you might recognise why some of these famous names were mentioned in this book. Oddly enough most of the theorists here are French, but it might be at the time the French school of philosophy was moving away from the existential period brought on by Jean Paul Sarte and moving into structuralism.

Jacques Derrida

Jean Baudrillard

Structuralism attacked the idea of existentialism in stating that we cannot always be possible free to do what we want, by its very name, structuralism states there are structures to society, institutions and economic systems. There are structures even to gender and power positions. People in poverty cannot always escape their means, women cannot always redefine themselves because of how men have structured women's role.

Postmodernism thus notices these structures and begins to attack them. It attacks the structure of the institution; this is where Michel Foucault comes in as he attacks the idea of how we separate the mad, the criminal and minority so in order to control them. Michel attacks even knowledge itself as a power base, stating that those who have education use it only as a means to power. Postmodernism attacks gender roles and even attacks feminists, but there are parts of postmodernist ideas that boost feminism. Oddly enough postmodernism attacks itself. As soon as you get close to the idea of postmodernism, it begins to change, to warp and what is now modern becomes postmodern again.

There is no main view, so where are we?

One thing to note about postmodernism is that some of its ideas seem strangely out of tune with reality, we get from Jean Baudrillard that The Gulf War of 1991 did not take place or that women as gender do not even exist because man has become so dominant that women can only define themselves as of how men define women. Most people view such ideas as rubbish and out of touch, how can the gulf war not take place, Women do exists and the author is not dead, but one thing we have to note is that postmodernists are not only trying to convince the public about the changes in society, but they are at the same time in a battle with other philosophers and intellectuals where ideas have become so complex that at first their ideas do not seem to make sense. Postmodernism is worth checking out, even if it is just a way to know your enemy.

Hopefully this audiobook will break things down, but the theory postmodernism is vast. There are free postmodernist lectures on itunes, but most will cover postmodern religion, mainly Christianity which allows the theory to challenge its structure base. Other religions are resistant to the postmodernists view e.g. The statanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, but then rightly so, because is there really a bird’s eye view of all cultures and relgion? Perhaps no.

Dionysus requests a sacrifice for our pleasure

2011-07-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

When delving into Nietzschean philosophy, which relates to philosophic ideas from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. This philosopher who looked into idea of the superman or Übermensch as the rebirth of man. Anyway there came an interesting subject from one of his books called "Birth of Tragedy". I did not think too much into it at the time, but then when surfing the net, I kept finding reference to Dionysus each time. This intrigued me.

Who was Dionysus? Why is Nietzsche so interested in him?

Well A couple of months ago. I decided to listen to a couple of lectures from the teaching company series. One of them was called "Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition". There was this particular lecture, which is "lecture 14. Bacchae". The lecture was quite difficult to get into at first, so I had to replay the thing again, but the more I listened to this lecture. The more I realized why Nietzsche was so infatuated with Dionysus who one of the main characters of this play. Sorry that I have not mentioned this before, but The Bacchae is a Greek tragedy written by the great playwright Euripides around 405 BC.

In short the play is about vengeance brought upon a family who disbelieves Dionysus's mother actually gave birth to him from the great god Zeus. Dionysus is a god unlike any other, completely opposite from Apollo; his worshippers are filled with uncontrollable rage and are unstable. Dionysus represents the god of wine and irrationality. He is a jealous god and demands tribute, the god loves to show off his power and is vengeful. While Apollo represents structure, control, rationality and perfection.

Nietzsche took both these gods from the Greek myths and compared them to the society of his day. He felt the persona of Dionysus had more to offer man of his day and hopefully in the future. He felt that society was decadent in building up its structure in the form of Apollo. There was room for madness, irrationality, passion. Man was decadent in this age, man wanted perfection, but how can man be perfect?

This lecture does not centre too much on Nietzsche’s philosophy, but on Euripides idea of Dionysus. Obviously the most striking part of the play is a horrible tragic scene towards the end of the play, but I will not spoil that for you. It is incredibly gory. The lecture unravels the reasons why Dionysus was needed at in the play, but it seems this play The Bacchae has set a standard of its own. Many theatres play homage to the great play and the audience does as well, without even knowing anything about it. Why and how?

Not only was the Bacchae influencing plays to come, it influenced culture and art. There have been Vases that tell the story of the play and this lecture mentions the story of the vases.

Major Scene in The Bacchae

The god of Wine

If you can get hold of the course “Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition”. Lecture 14 is worth listening to. The lecture is around 40 mins long and has 80 courses ranging from Beowulf, Tolstoy and Proust.

A very hefty course indeed.

A new time....or is time running out? Fin de Siecle.

2011-07-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

Not every good quality lecture, course or documentary needs to be paid for. This one is called Radio Modern Europe. Anyone looking to study into the history of Europe will not waste their time with those podcasts.

The podcasts are actually directed at their students from Bethel university, but they have noticed a large number of downloads from other listeners not based at the faculty. The reason is because these podcasts have good quality and content.

One era I am interested in was the Fin de Siecle era; this was the period around 1900. Where there was a large array of high culture statements from within music, art and literature. Rapid changes were taking place and it seems the new century would hopefully wipe away the decadence, but might bring fear and discontent along with it. This would lead to something most horrible awaiting the Europeans as they began to examine and question their own culture after colonialism, the impact of industralization and nationalism.

I wanted to find out a bit more on the Fin de Siecle period after listening to "lecture 33.Decadence & Malaise—circa 1900" from the course called Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World by Robert Bucholz. It seems the period was taken from the French perspective of what was to come.

One thing to note about this period was The Dreyfus Affair, which was caused by anti-semitic problems that played out in France. Alfred Dreyfus was accused of selling military secrets to France's hated enemy the Germans.

This led to Dreyfus being stripped of his military title and sent to devils island, however behind the scenes there was growing suspicion that Dreyfus was being blamed because he was a Jew and major French intellectuals began to complain and point fingers at the military and church institutions, one of the accusers was Émile Zola. After two years of backlash the real culprit was finally caught, but a lot of damage had already been down to some French institutions being the military and religous church establishments. Anti-Semitism was at such a height in France, that the case made up the mind of journalist Theodor Herzl who felt that there should be a Jewish state in order to avoid percussion from anti-Semites.

We also have some novels and books coming out in this period that looked at hysteria, decadence, fear and suspicion of society. These are works from Bram Stolker, Oscar Widle and Henry James in his novel "The turn of the Shrew", which is important for its representation of fear being induced by what is real and what is not.

The podcast mainly discusses how education, art, politics, technological changes and rights for workers and women began to spread, but it’s the style of the podcast that makes the course easily digestible. The host talks as a radio host, we also have a news desk and guests from that particular era discussion what happened and why.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt

I have put this picture of the painting by Gustav Klimt, because in this era the boundaries were constantly being pushed in order to break away from the traditional. However look more closely at the painting and you will see the young woman Adele, not just any women though, she is the new woman of the age. Denied access to educational establishments and rights, she now tries to find learning and knowledge elsewhere. This is the age where women take a stand and here it is immortalised in this painting.

This can be shown in literature, politics and society in general, even if it was to cause upset or resentment.

The show also has a look at how classical music changed e.g Claude Debussy and how art by the impressionists made reflections of society and how the Europeans viewed themselves.

Check the podcast out when you have the chance.

Anarchy in our time

2011-05-31T14:47:00.000-07:00

Been listening to a podcast called “In our time”, which is hosted by Melvyn Bragg. I used to listen to this show on radio 4 quite some years ago in the mornings. Maybe I should start again, because I have just finished listening to a show on anarchism shown on the site here, I certainly enjoyed it. I must state though that “In our Time” does not break you into the subject gently. I have a feeling you might need to know the basics about the subject criteria before you listen in.

I will not go into the findings of the show too deeply because there are is a lot mentioned about the show on the BBC’s podcast archive. Still I was fascinated by the subject content. Here, we go through what many famous thinkers thought about this style of government. That’s if you could even call anarchism a government, because anarchism is basically rule without a ruler.

Anarchism did start off in milder terms where absolutism and despotism was rife and it was easy to see why people rebelled and wanted rule without a government. We had famous names like John Locke stating that there are some laws which anarchists should disobey, although it is noted that John Locke is more of a rational anarchist. “In Our Time” also mentions other famous names like Peter Kropotkin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Godwin and Karl Marx.

Anarchy now seems to have gotten itself a bad name now days since it is usually associated with lawlessness, riots and the all for all mentality. Why has this been the case?

The show briefly runs through great events where types of anarchy have appeared. We have the French revolution plus Spanish and English civil wars. We also have serious arguments for and against anarchy. Some of the questions against anarchy are quite easy to spot by the following questions.

If there is no ruler, then after a while there will be modes of conflicts for who will be the central authority or who is to state whose idea is right or whose is wrong.
The problem of virtue, as there is no overall universal moral law
The problem where Hobbes mentioned why there is a need for a social contract.

The Great Purge

2011-04-22T05:27:00.000-07:00

“What a world! What a world!” That’s how lecture 9 - Stalin and the Great Terror ends as Professor Gary Hamburg finishes up explaining how Stalin caused misery, starvation and tyranny in the soviet union.

Prof Gary Hamburg is no pro-Stalinist that’s for sure as he gives detailed accounts of how Stalin purged many of his party members during collectivization. Stalin saw enemies and traitors everywhere and many show trials were put on for the people to become indoctrinated into Stalinism.

The worst was yet to come after the murder of Sergey Kirov's (Leningrad party leader) in 1934. Sergey was seen as a successor to Stalin, because many in the party viewed Sergey as a less harsh person than Stalin. Obviously Sergey knew he was in trouble and spoke to Stalin stating that he could never replace him as leader. This was not enough to save Sergey and from Sergey's murder, the show trials from 1934 to 1936 were used by Stalin to purge party members as traitors and conspirators.

The Great purge in the Soviet Union has always intrigued me. I have always wondered how on earth 20 million people could perish and be swept away like a grain of sand in a vast desert. It was not Stalin who did all the killings. He had manipulated, placed fear and terrorised others into doing all this work. People believed in Stalin, worked for Stalin and died for Stalin. What was to become the project of Socialism ended up as a form of Stalinism, where we see the famous worship of the cult of personality. A view which Leon Trotsky spoke out to the world, before Leon was also purged even though he was all the way in Mexico.

Prof Gary Hamburg’s lecture runs for 45 minutes and gives us an account of what happened to those who got in Stalin’s way. How Stalin out maneuvered his opponents time and time again, who was purged and why. Even Stalin’s second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva was not spared as she had a disagreement with Stalin over his collectivization policies.

Famously Stalin was to also purge his army general, which later was to become one of his greatest mistakes as war was to loom in the not so distant future. It was almost a baffling joke as Stalin became so paranoid of who his enemies where, that he made friends with someone not only an enemy to communism, but an enemy to Stalin. That person was Hitler, which was not mentioned in this lecture. Eventually the purges went too far and the man partly responsible for the purge Nikolai Yezhov (senior figure in the NKVD), was actually purged himself. Even to be wiped out from the photo shown on this post.

Now you See Yezhov


Now you dont see Yezhov

If you manage to get hold of the course “Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism: A History of 20th-Century Russia” take some time to listen and re-listen to this particular lecture. Depressing as it may sound, we can learn a lot from Russia’s history and have sympathies for those who perished during the great purge.

Job and the Problem of Suffering

2011-04-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

Job's Wife tries to offer him advice

Time to get religious; I have been listening to a course called “Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition”. It has a very interesting lecture on Job and the Problem of Suffering, which is lecture 14. This is a very large and in-depth course on intellectual endeavour through the ages. I have not gone through all the lectures, since there are around 84 lectures that are around 30 minutes each.

This particular lecture is taught by Professor Philip Carey

Well going back to this lecture. I have sometimes wondered why some people worship some God even if terrible things happened to them time and time again. What does it take to have faith in an all-powerful deity even though you cannot see them, feel them or comprehend them? This is the concept behind the story of Job. The story is quite famous and for those who do not know the story they can read it in the bible titled ‘The Book of Job’ found in the Old Testament.

The book of Job raised up deep fundamental questions. What happens when bad things happen to good people? I am quite amazed that a bible or christen text actually has a story that raises questions on God or the nature of God. The story goes that God has been boasting about Job and how Job worships God faithfully, until in the throne of God, someone challenges God to test Job’s faith by causing bad things to happen to Job. Job’s faith will be tested to the limit. What happens is a truly remarkable story.

The lecture breaks down the story in precise detail and goes over the questions the story raises. The lecture brings out Job’s famous sayings such as:

Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised

I will not mention the other sayings; you will have to listen to the lecture to gain more insight. What of the implications of the story? The ultimate implication would be perhaps why did the holocaust happen? Why did God not protect the Jews or other followers? Such questions are not brought up in this lecture, but it does make on think about the nature of evil and how it can weaken faith.

Some have gone on to state that calamity actually strengthens our resolve to survive with the use of knowledge, some mention that evil causes man to have empathy towards others. There are some philosophers who state that there is usually a reason for evil and that it does not have to do with religion or something that is difficult to explain, we could have natural disasters, evil within man and his society, disease and poverty, why does evil need to come from Satan or from a God who might not protect us?

Another good explanation is that God is mysterious; we could never understand God’s motivations or even comprehend the actions of God.

When you have the time, check out the course and have a listen to the lecture. Maybe read The Book of Job or watch some interpretations of story sometime.

I would also like to mention that the use and concept of Dust is very important in the story of Job.

The partially examined life : Leibnitz Monadology

2011-04-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

This blog is on a podcast that seems to be shown late at nights over in the US. The podcast is called “The partially examined life”. It is quite an interesting show and is centred on philosophical topics. So far I believe it has 35 episodes, however the podcast is still going strong, so expect more. The show is hosted by Mark Linsenmayer, Wes Alwan and Seth Paskin.

This particular episode I have been listening to was episode 6, which is on Leibnitz monadology. Not an easy episode to begin with and for sure you will have to listen to that episode for a few times, perhaps numerous times.

Although the show is an hour long, the talks are fairly relaxed and the hosts really seem to know their subject intently. Sometimes they do have guest lecturers helping to describe subjects and they also have a blog of their own.

Gottfried Leibnitz monadology has always been quite interesting to me. This is quite what you call a metaphysical subject. Here the hosts discuss with each other Leibnitz theory. I believe they discuss other theories of Leibnitz, but the monadology is the main discussion point here.

The monadology in a nutshell looks at what is the smallest simplest particle that could ever be perceived. If such a particle can never be divided any more then what we have something that could be known as a substance that makes up the universe. We then relate the substance to the idea of god.

This episode covers what Leibnitz thought what exactly a monad is. How the monad came into being, the monads relation to god and how our perception can help determine monads.

I am sure I have missed loads of stuff here on the podcast, but hey! Here is a link to the this podcast, have a listen yourself. It’s free!

The F Word

2011-04-06T15:43:00.000-07:00

My blog for today is on a lecture from a company called “The Modern Scholar”. I do not know if their site is up at the moment because I wanted to paste a link, but the site was down. It is a shame because this course called Feminism and the Future of Women is very informative.

The course is presented by Prof Estelle B Freedman and it runs up through to 14 lectures. I have only listened to lectures on Feminism and Race in U.S. History, Lecture 10 - Reproduction and Sexuality, and Lecture 11 - Violence.

Feminism and Race in U.S History was quite an eye opener as the audio lecture focused on how the American civil war not only gave African Americans the chance to get their voices heard, but how southern women began to push for rights as well. We get a chance to hear how the two movements came together to support each other at one moment, and eventually split apart in order to get more rights for their own cause. The two movements continually formed and reformed again during the civil rights movement of the sixties. I hope to go more into this fascinating lecture in more detail in another blog.

Lecture 10, which looks at Reproduction and Sexuality is quite a deep topic and this lecture will be my main focus for this blog today. The other lecture on violence is an eye opener and has represented a sad history for women who faced persecution, restriction of movement; restriction of rights and one of the most famous feminist accusations on how gender stereotypes have been forced upon women throughout the ages. Although later on during the seventies, there have been some feminist philosophers who complained that woman happily accepted these roles. Feminist of the modern age now feel women must define their own roles.

Well back to this lecture on reproduction and sexuality. It seems we are posed with a question as to why birth rates have declined in industrial nations. How does this link to the past and to the idea sexuality when basically birth rates were high?

My first thought on this would be that freedom of choice has empowered women to pursue their goals, although there is a price to pay. Still technology can always lend a helping hand to those who wish to have children at a much later age, but this can lead to ethical issues.

This lecture will try to answer the question of declining birth rates and look into how feminists protected women’s sexuality time and time again. We end up with a conclusion that sexuality and reproduction has become separated due to many factors, but surprisingly sexuality has become more commercialised and now many women play up to the roles of sexuality to men, but is this a bad thing? Considering how the lecture mentions how contraception’s were supressed and banned throughout the US around the 19^th century.

Ida B Wells

The lecture mentions a few figure heads helping to empower women in an age of stereotypes and restrictions on. We have Ida B. Wells helping to remove the stereotypes enforced on black women to state that they were sexually impure in accordance to white women and thus were open to rape and prostitution. Such stereotypes are perhaps still circulating today.

With feminists fighting another struggle to protect women’s sexuality in the modern age, what are their chances due to the high sexual nature of advertising and mass communication?

The Romantic Era

2011-04-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I had been listening to some lectures from a course called 'European Thought and Culture in the 19th Century'. It is taught by Professor Lloyd Kramer and my main blog for today will be on lecture 09 - Literary Culture of Romanticism. Romanticism is a vast cultural and literary movement, so it is highly unlikely that my blog will do it any justice with just one topic. I am hoping to revisit this subject in more detail later, but I feel compelled to write something about it now from what I have learnt on this wonderful course.

So then, what are the romantics? And why did they form? What did they have to say? I think a good start would be that romanticism formed as a reaction against the notion that rationality was the best and noble trait humans could aspire to. This was portrayed in the age of Enlightenment.

The Romantics who were usually novelists, artists, political activists and musicians wanted to persuade the establishment the following ideas.

Where there is order, there is disorder and that there was nothing wrong with it.
Where there is reason, in life there is also beauty in the irrational.
Where nature can be contained and controlled, there is nature all around us and it astounds us with its wonder.
Where there is urban sprawl and the order of the city, there is peace, wonder and tranquillity in open spaces, far places. We can learn much from tribes far away. Perhaps city life is not all that great; maybe we were much happier living in the wild.

The list could go on and on and I know for sure I have missed many important distinctions about romantic era. Prof Lloyd also went through the meaning of romanticism and why historians actually look to the works of art and literature to understand the culture of the age past. One thing the romanticists where good at is producing major works of art, literature and music.

Just look at some of the pictures below.

As you can see the painting called 'Wanderer above the Sea of Fog' by Caspar David Friedrich. Shows us how astounding nature can be. This painting shows how a young man has reached a top part of a mountain and looks down at the mist. This is how the romantics look at nature, how vast, open and enormous. The man has not conquered the mountain; he is just there to take in its sites. Nature cannot be controlled; it is disorder and goes where it pleases. Surprisingly, this picture is used to represent a cover of one of Fredrick Nietzsche’s book. He used to go on many long walks. I would not be surprised if many of his theories were formed on one of his long walks.

Let’s look at another romantic era painting.

Here we have The Forest of Countess Mordvinova by Ivan Shishkin. Yet again, it is another painting of nature, but this time in a forest. Just look how vast the forest is and how it fills the painting. The painting is practically dark and the forest dwarfs the figure wandering the area. If we place ourselves as the man in the painting, you can just imagine how happy and free he feels walking amongst the trees.

We also had many great books produced in the romantic era. William Wordsworth who did many great sonnets and had wrote over five hundred of them. William Blake producing many poems, art and other works and we had Mary Wollstonecraft a famous feminist who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

The lecture centred on three famous artists in this period. Friedrich Schelling was the German idealist who developed many philosophies on nature, art and linking rationality to the external idea of spirit.

Next we looked at Madame de Staël who was the exiled romantic writer that expressed her political ideas, she was to link German romanticism with French romanticism.

Last but not least we moved on to Lord Byron an English poet who had many lovers. He tried to live and express his idea through romanticism. His young death also was the expression of the romantic period.

Return to Sophie's World....Fear and Trembling

2011-04-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

It is time for reflection, philosophising and absurdity. Yes! that’s right, it is total irrationality. I have come to episode 28 on the novel Sophie’s world and this particular chapter reflects on the ideas of Soren Kierkegaard. Who was a famous Dutch philosopher around the mid-19th century living in Demark.

Things have taken a strange turn in the novel because Alberto (the philosopher) is teaching Sophie about the history of philosophy, but for some reason odd people keep turning up at Alberto's door. They have been sent by some metaphysical person called Albert Knag, who likes playing tricks on the two.

This time Alice in Wonderland turns up to offer Sophie potions to drink. Sophie is hesitant at first, but eventually drinks the potions. She begins to see the world differently and notices things, which she could not have possibly noticed before.

This then in turn leads on to a good explanation on how Kierkegaard saw the world. In a nutshell Kierkegaard was unhappy about how Christianity was being practiced in Denmark. He felt that Christianity was being associated too closely to reason and rationality. All this came about because of a major philosopher Hegel wanted to merge Christianity with reason. Hegel felt rationality is the way forward and can be used to push civilization to the perfect ideal. Everything could be proved, even god!

Kierkegaard was also at odds with the romantics, at odds with the idea of conformity, of rationality and of group action and group identity. Kierkegaard wanted to go back to the individual. He wanted people to see how important faith is to the person. Still, there was a major problem. How could Kierkegaard explain something as irrational and absurd as faith? This was a difficult task, and although he was at odds with Hegel, Kierkegaard did pick up some of Hegel’s traits. That is Kierkegaard wrote books (via pseudo names) to get people’s attention.

Kierkegaard explained the importance of religion in many famous books such as Fear and Trembling, either/or and Stages of a life's way. The main idea's Kierkegaard wanted to push forward is that one cannot be born into a religion and say that they are perhaps Christian because it is a state religion, it requires more than just conformity and identity.

Religious practice requires faith beyond reason and it requires the practitioner to try and understand the dilemma faith has placed upon them. This is so that they can understand their relationship with god would require something so absurd that the practitioner would need a leap of faith to get where they need to go.

So it seems reason has little place in religion. We just cannot keep going to church on Sunday, sing hymns and go home without a thoughts notice of what we have done. We cannot preach to others on doing rituals. We need to reflect personally how absurd and powerful, that religious doctrines has placed on us and on us alone.

Such ideas led to the birth of existentialism, which looks our choices and the angst it can sometimes lead to.

Shall one dare to take the leap of faith to understand god or does one sit calmly in the seat of rationality?

Kierkegaard also looked at the stages of life in accordance to how one views the world in emotions. These would be as follows

The aesthetic life: Those who were not immoral, but amoral where they seek pleasure in order to experience life. Yet they would not seek pleasure out of malice, but only because they find it makes life more interesting.

The ethical life: Those who seek to be ethical, but using rationality to be fair and just within the social order.

The religious life: Those who throw themselves into their faith even if the doctrines require irrationality. Their faith would place extraordinary demands upon them, asking them to purge themselves of sin.

Kierkegaard viewed the religious life as the highest of ideal, but there is a warning that such a life would be demanding. This is because it would lead to the individual in anxiety of the choices they would have to make. Only because they fully realised what faith actually requires of them.

Kierkegaard lived according to the religious principal and become persecuted because he disassociated himself from state religion and then criticised it.

I felt the chapter wrapped up Kierkegaard's philosophy quite nicely. Though some parts of the chapter I did not fully understand. Why?

Well it seems the more I try to understand Kierkegaard’s philosophy, the more I am in doubt of how difficult it is to explain what seems irrational. The curse of trying to explain the irrational might have landed on this particular chapter in Sophie’s world. Yes, I can understand the chapter on Karl Marx, I can understand the chapter on Charles Darwin and on Hegel (oddly enough), but Kierkegaard takes quite some understanding. I guess in a nutshell, one cannot become too comfortable in their faith.

To be is just not enough, one must also do and become, but the leap of faith forces doubt on our choices.

There is more to come from our famous Danish philosopher as I have other lectures and books on him.

Soran Kierkegaard

Philosophical Sermons

2011-03-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I decided to trawl through some lectures located in my philosophy folder when I came across this gem. The course is called Modern Philosophy and it is taught by Dr Ronald H. Nash. He has taught many courses and you can find the course here. The course is free from the Reformed Theological Seminary group and is worth checking out, but there are some problems with the course.

I must admit the lectures are unlike any other that I have heard before from the countless philosophical courses I have picked up from other sources, e.g. The Teaching Company, Knowledge Products, Modern scholar and so on. I was really surprised that there are sermons out there that delve into philosophy, although to be fair a lot of philosophy had derived from spiritual teaching. I at first listened to a sermon on Friedrich Nietzsche, which is lecture 18 and it’s almost an hour long. Heck! There are two lectures on him.

The philosopher Ronald H. Nash does know his subject and he knows how to explain difficult philosophical ideas, especially GW Hegel’s idea on the philosophy of history and how that can lead to the idea of a perfect state. Many people out there know that if there was a difficult topic then Hegel’s would stand out as one of them.

Well going back to Friedrich Nietzsche, the reason I listened to this lecture was because I knew first-hand how Nietzsche despised religion to the point where he called religion a slave morality. This was because worshippers were told how to be moral without putting much thought into their own true nature as Friedrich would have mentioned this. Well Andrew explained Nietzsche’s ideas simply and gave me a new view on the problem of mortality.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

There were some little problems I encountered listening to the sermon. I mean Nietzsche was no friend of religion, even if you tried to sugar coat Nietzsche’s ideas. So it was not long before the sermon took note of when Nietzsche went mad and how this could have reflected on his ideas. Personally I would have not tried to critique Nietzsche’s ideas in order to put a positive note on my own theories or beliefs. We could say Nietzsche’s ideas were a warning to Christianity not to be so complacent.

Going away from lecture 18, I spent some time listening to lecture 2, which is called “Postmodernity and Deconstruction”. This time Ronald really dug his claws into the ideas of postmodernity. There are many problems with postmodernism and this relates to the view that there is no inherent absolute truth. Perhaps everything is relative, and we all know where this leads. It leads to the idea of what works for me is right and what works for you is right. This is a big problem for moral issues, because as the lecturer correctly points out, there are some things that just cannot be defended.

Playing devil’s advocate, I feel postmodernity’s attack on modernity wanted to break down structures. I would even go so far to say that postmodernity is at times not fully accepting of itself. So you will not easily find postmodernists agreeing on one principle. It just wants to break down rationality and build it back up with things alien to rationality. This leads to a paradox where there is no easy escape.

You can also find postmodernity in architecture, religion, art (difficult to express), media, literature and philosophy. It is quite a big culture movement and not just a theory or idea. So the ghost of postmodernity cannot be easily defeated.

Art defining Art - Pollock's no 5

I enjoyed Ronald’s lecture and I have not listened to his other lectures on Kierkegaard, Existentialism, Evangelicalism and so on. I hope to get to those in due time. Still I do wish that he did not point out his adventures where he had argued with certain people. It does leave a sour taste in the mouth. I especially get a little annoyed with the constant laughing from the crowd as Ronald injects humour into his sermons. Sometimes things are funny and sometimes it seems the crowd is being disrespectful to those Ronald disagrees with.

The fall of the Roman Empire

2011-03-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

When I am not trawling through philosophy books or audio files, you can find me digging through some history topics. This particular blog is not on a book or audio, but actually on an educational TV show. Here we shall delve into the fall of the Roman Empire.

Eugen Weber

I have got to admit the Roman Empire has baffled me. How did they do it? How did such an Empire expand and last for so long as it did. I was in such anticipation when it came to the episode 14: The fall of Rome, which is shown on the Annenberg Media site. The episode comes from a course called “The Western Tradition” hosted by the late Eugen Weber. The TV show was shown back in 1989. You can see this episode here.

As I had noted earlier I was in such anticipation when I started to watch the episode and I am glad to say I was not disappointed. I still feel a lot was missed out of that particular episode, but to be fair you can only pack so much information within 30 minutes. What was missing in length was made up for by the episodes content. You will need to pay quite close attention to this episode, because Eugen will often slip in his critique of why certain things happened during the fall of Rome. So it is a good note that Eugen does not just only report on the events of western history, he examines it as well.

Fall of Rome

When Rome fell, it was not pleasant. It was inevitable that the barbarian hordes be it the Goths, Vandals or Huns swept through Rome, which is probably what many would say why Rome fell in the first place, but there was other contributing factors. The fall or Rome was made worse due to corrupt despotic rulers, a chaotic tax system, disease and pestilence ravaging the city and mass migration. This is only just a small part of why Rome fell, which is covered in great detail in this particular episode.

I have many courses and lectures on the might of Rome and its gradual decline, but this episode is a good start for anyone looking into the history of Rome. You actually might be surprised by its findings.

The most shared Diary in history....Ann Frank

2011-03-25T15:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I decided to go see a play at the theatre. The play was called “The diary of Ann Frank” and it was showing at The Broadway Theatre. I had seen the film before (the one made in 1954), so I sort of knew what I was in for, but I have not been to the theatre for such a long time.

Just watching the billboard and poster up on the theatre made me wanted to watch the play. Well I must say I was not disappointed. I watched the play around 2:00 pm amongst a large group of school kids, so I thought “Oh no, it’s a bit of bad luck, they are all going to misbehave and mess up my enjoyment”, but after a while though, the children were all drawn to the play because the actors there were astounding.

I often wondered how those actors could zone out and be in a world of their own while I watched them intently. It’s like they did even notice I was there. They were all so professional.

The play has plenty of hidden messages and meanings, so pay attention. Not only are you reliving what Ann Frank had lived through, but you are watching the adaption of the play and hidden messages seeping through, which causes you to think deeply after watching the play.

One message that stuck in my mind was when Ann Frank had accidently spilt milk on Mrs Van Dann coat. Of course Mrs Van is livid and an argument ensues. Ann Frank runs to her room in tears only for her father to console her, but then he warns Ann that all people make mistakes, but the difference between the good and the bad people is that the good people learn from them.

Now although at first this is a message for Ann Frank, do you not wonder who else Ann’s father is referring too? Makes you think doesn’t it.

The claustrophobia of the Jewish family and their guests hiding out above a factory causes tensions to arise time and time again. You can feel your emotions become swayed as you see anger and frustration burst forth from one person to the next, but above all, I just cannot help thinking that any family be it Jewish or not, would behave excatly the same. Come to think of it, not much is mentioned about how Jewish the family are, you just do not notice it, except for one major scene. Even though the propaganda of those times played up on how different the Jews were from everyone else.

Another thing I would like to mention is that some characters actually seem to play up to you, rather than just act alone. Ann Frank on the stage is a mischievous girl no matter what way you look at it, she cannot help herself and not only does she flirt with Peter Wessel (the 16 year old son of Mr and Mrs Van), but she also flirts with you time and time again. This then makes my poor heart sink in despair as I realise what is to come, but I do not want to spoil the play for you. Please go see the play for yourself.

A Polite discussion on Political Correctness

2011-03-22T17:36:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I downloaded an mp3 file from a site called Philosophy talks, which is a radio show dedicated to philosophical subjects. The show is hosted over in Chicago and has links to Stanford University. The file I downloaded was called Existentialism and after listening to the show, I was hooked. I then proceeded to buy all 200 episodes of the shows past programs. I rate the show highly and it covers philosophical topics in depth. You can listen to reports, phone-ins and a guest lecturer on the show on various subjects such as money, terrorism, relativism, luck and so on.

Well the episode I listened to today was on political correctness. The show’s hosts Ken Talyor and John Perry broke down the subject and always starts off pondering what political correctness is. After firing a few questions at each other, they then ask a reporter to go about looking for students to find out what political correctness means to them. After the report is done, a guest lecturer or specialist on the subject advises the hosts about the topic. Next we have a phone in session where the public will phone in and ask questions or give their opinions.

The thing I found out about the subject political correctness is that it’s not so easy to define to begin with and a lot of the public seem to hate being told what to do or what to say. I will not spoil the show for you, but there are a few points that I agree with, which Ken Taylor pointed out. I feel political correctness has been used as an excuse to cover up intolerable behaviour. For instance, if something told a member of the public to get lost because they were of different colour and used a racist word, then we can argue that this is racism apart from being politically incorrect.

If someone came up to a young lady out of the blue and kept asking her to show them her assets (you figure it out), then it’s not only politically incorrect, its sexual discrimination. We need to note that discrimination and sexual discrimination has been around far longer than the notion of political correctness and these are far bigger issues, which can be a whole lot more complex, there is little excuse for a racist or bigot to state that they are not allowed to say certain things because that it is politically incorrect.

Still the problem with politically correctness is that people may abide by the rules, but still feel the same way they did about others before, the problem of discrimination is just hidden and on top of that we have arguments of censor of free expression.

My final conclusion is that in the end, no one is fully stopping someone from saying something, but in the end if someone goes out of their way to offend without cause of respect, then they must reap what they sow, hence they are to be shown what they said, who they said it too and why. The worse the derogatory comment, the harder it is for the discriminator to hide, which all bigots love to do is hide behind their true intent.

I recommend you to listen to some of philosophy talks shows. You will not be disappointed. I hope to cover more of the past episodes of the show.

If it works, its Pragmatism

2011-03-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

Listened to a few more lectures today, not as much as I would have liked because I had to pop into work today. The course I would like to mention from my collection is quite a tough one and it is called “Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida” taught by Professor Lawrence Cahoone, Ph.D. of Stony Brook University.

The particular lecture is Lecture number 17 Rise of 20th-Century Philosophy—Pragmatism. I think this particular course gets down to the knitty gritty of a most difficult and abstract subject, that being philosophy. I loved how he lectured on Hegel’s philosophy, which is on the idea and how history makes an impact on society. I always find Hegel very difficult to understand. Still this lecture on Pragmatism is rather challenging.

Lawrence gives us an introduction to the three great movements of philosophy starting from Pragmatism, Phenomenology and then Existentialism. We then look into why such philosophical movements were labelled as radical and moving away from the traditional area of philosophizing. Most of the lecture is on Charles Sanders Peirce and it looks at his discoveries and arguments against the idea that we can know all that there is to know about anything. Peirce was critical with many of the foundations of philosophy and basically wanted to start from another angle.

Pragmatism started over in the states and some of its major functions rested upon the importance of testing statements for truth claims in accordance to how they are accepted by others in society. Ideas, belief and statements are only useful if they work. Pragmatists will not waste too much time on the metaphysical realm and would rather want explanations on ideas that have value to us. Our experience of things that are useful to our everyday lives is what pragmatists wanted to pursue.

Apart from Charles Sanders Pierce, there were other contributions to pragmatism from philosophers being William James, John Dewy and later on W.V Quine. I must remind you this lecture can be quite challenging and Pragmatism compared itself to many other philosophies and ideas. So this is one lecture you will be listening to more than once.

National Unification, but at what cost?

2011-03-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

I have just been listening to some of the lectures from The Teaching Company. If there was any a good reason for starting up a collection of lectures on history, philosophy and intellectual history, then this company would be the best reason.

The course I have been listening today, well yesterday due to the blog being posted so late at night is called “Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World”. The course is taught by Professor Robert Bucholz and throughout the course he keeps you interested from the word go. My favourite lecture from this course is lecture 41 “The Holocaust”. The way he spends his time revealing in detail the nature of the holocaust is sheer brilliance in which he quotes “The epitome and calamity of evil”. Still that is a blog for another day.

I spent most of my time listening to lecture 29 which is called “Nationalism—1848–71”. Here we continue off on the bloody struggles for the unification of Italy and German Unification. There were other countries rising up in nationalism, but on this lecture these were the two which is focused on.

Here we have Italy being fed up of being bossed around by Austria who have taken up some of the Italian lands. Italy does a deal with Napoleon the III (who ruled France at the time) in order to try and kick Austria out for good and work towards unification. This works under the leadership of Victor Emmanuel, but this is not the end of the story as the lecture continues.

Next we then look at the struggle for German unification. Here we see Prussia and Austria bid for who is the strongest to lead for the unification of Germany, but clearly Prussia has a strong industry, population, efficient government and a brilliant statesman who is this?

None other than Otto Von Bismarck

Explore in depth as the lecture explains in detail how Otto Von Bismark outwitted and outmanoeuvred his enemies time and time again in the name of German Unification, which led to Wilhelm the First becoming titled Emperor or Kaiser of Germany.

Learn how France deteriorated into a bickering government after a war which leaves France bitter, downtrodden and hungry for revenge.

Europe from 1871 would never be the same again as the balance of power pushed countries into fear and distrust. No longer could Britain spend its time in glorious Isolation, no longer could France look for lands to conquer and Germany becaming the growing threat to the balance of power.

There are so many big questions. I kept thinking about National unification, but at what cost? Could Europe adjust in time as power shifts from one country to another? Is war politics by other means? Did Otto Von Bismarck go too far?

Many of us could not care for what happened during 1848 – 1871, but for sure this was another step towards the Great war. If you are interested, try and purchase this course and listen to the lecture.

Internet and Democracy debate

2011-03-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

Just been watching an interesting debate at FORA.tv. The debate was on how the internet affects democracy in the hands of its users. This being the people or the masses.

Lets look at the for and against on the topic of how the internet affect democracy.

For

1. We have those who use the internet themselves and set up facilities to encourage people to use the internet as freedom of speech. Here they feel that this is the main idea of a democracy where people can get to use their voice.

2. We have those feel that the so called experts of the old communication medium, being the newspapers, radio and TV make mistakes and so this leads to people looking for other opinions on the internet.

3. We have those who feel that it is too hard for the ordinary public to express themselves on TV, radio and older sources of communication. They feel that you would have to be rich, famous or exceptional to be heard and thus the internet is a great source of expression and creativity.

Against

1. We have those who feel that the internet is getting over satiated with information that after a while the quality of the information goes down.

2. We have those who feel that the internet can not be fully trusted because it is in the hands of those who produce information that cannot be viably trusted.

3. We have those who feel that the internet is a dangerous weapon against democracy, because it allows the power of mass media and communication in the hands of the uneducated.

Who are those against?

Farad Monjoh and Andrew Keen

Who are those for?

Jimmy Whales and Micha Sifry

My View on the debate

I have not fully finishing watching the debate, but I am leaning on the side of the Internet being no threat against democracy, but that does not mean that there are no dangers. Why?

It is true that the Internet is much content that cannnot be easily viable, but then this can also be the fault of the researcher or user who does not look for more than one source of information. There are also those within our society that seek to use the Internet to spread rumors and lies, but then this can be done with other forms of media. Still, the Internet can allow such false information to spread rapidly.

But what of the dangers of those who seek to control the Internet?

Well for instance, what if our so called experts decide to dismantle the internet because they feel it is a tool that is too dangerous for those who do not understand the notion of freedom or the responsibility of producing correct information?

Well my blog here would go! Does it mean I have a set agenda to destroy democracy? No! That is not my agenda, my main agenda is to share what I have learnt. I could be wrong in what I know or I could be right, but if I have no channel to express myself, then I would never be heard. There will be no debate and no one would learn anything.

There are plenty of countries out there that will curtail peoples freedom in the name of that the Internet is too dangerous a tool and it will cause chaos in society, but then is this in the name of democracy? Somehow I do not think so.

I feel democracy itself has allowed the Internet to appear, if this was not the case then the Internet would have never been born in the first place. Democracy is more than a form of government, it asks for inventiveness, creativity, expression and opinion for the people and by the people. Democracy is rule by the mob and cannot easily be protected by the elites who feel they know best. The internet can be dangerous for not just one form of government, but for many forms.

Still who is to say that democracy is not any more dangerous for those who live by this form of government?

At the end of the day, the internet or any form of government are just tools that are meant to better our lives, but what really counts is the agenda of the individual or the masses who use the tools.

You can watch the debate here

New to collection and current project

2011-03-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

Found a great site today, although I ve been mainly looking into US politics the site is very informative. The site is called FORA.tv and I believe it has many other videos. Check it out when you have the chance.

I have also started listening to an audio book called Sophie's World. If you ever want to get into a beginner's guide into philosophy, then this is the book to get hold of. It basically is about a 14 year old girl getting postcards, which seems to be meant for someone else. Eventually the girl ends up doing a philosophy course that starts from the Greek period up to the big bang theory. The way the book describes the history of philosophy gets one thinking and even though it might seem for children, adults can enjoy the book as well.

I am now on chapter 7 of the book, which looks at Socrates. A man who knew that he did not know anything and was against the idea that philosophy is all about knowing things. He was in love with ideas and wisdom and he loved to question people using his famous Socratic method. Eventually being the gadfly that he was, led to his death by drinking poison. He was convicted of corrupting the youth and failing to acknowledge the gods.

My Collection

2011-03-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

Before I look at my current project. I would just like to mention my collection. I guess its all the Internets fault, but the web is such a treasure trove of information. I could not resist the temptation of downloading, purchasing, reading and storing books and data.

My main source of entertainment when it comes to philosophy is listening to lectures. I do have books, but most times I just like to sit back, close my eyes and listen to lectures. There are several of audio lectures on the web and my favourite one related to my interests is The Teaching Company. The company has a vast field of lectures covering many fields on philosophy, history, politics and so on. Feel free to check out The Teaching Company.

There are more audio lecture sites, in fact many of them. My next favourite site is The Modern Scholar. The lectures are in depth, but the range is not so vast. Sometimes I find the lecturer talking too fast, but some lectures provide some tests at the end.

Next on the list is a very old site and the audio lectures are very hard to come by, but do not be fooled. The narrators here will keep you interested in the content of the course. This site is called Knowledge products. I listened to my first lecture here on existentialism and have never looked back. I am now hooked!!

I have collected the rest of my lectures from several sites and a good one worth mentioning is Learn Out Aloud. Most of the audio books/lectures are free and worth downloading to listen to. Another way to get at lectures is via itunes. This is because many universities place free lectures and books on their sites and Itunes can get access to them in one stroke. Make sure to download Itunes and look for your favourite subject be it postmodernism to pragmatism. Here is a list I am using, which I use as a reference if I find a topic too hard. Visit wikipedia often as a reference, even if sources do not seem reliable, it is a good start to break down harder topics.

Moving away for audio books, lets look at video. Please be aware that downloading video can eat up your drive, so its worth investing in a external hard drive. I have four external drives ranging from 500 GB to 1 TB of info mainly on books and courses.

Your best access to documentaries and videos on intellectual topics would be Youtube, but there are others floating around. I recently discovered Annenberg Learner and most of their content is free, although some will only allow viewing from the states.

Lets move to PDF books. My collection on PDF ranges on the following topics that I am interested in being "History of Philosophy, ethics, philosophy of the mind, Epistemology, sociology and so on". The size of the book collection is vast in GBs. Reading from the computer screen is not usually recommend, so printing out the book is a good option, still you can get away from this by using Text to speech software, this is so your eyes do not take the strain. Neospeech is by far one of the best text to speech voice, which is in the generation of SAPI 5, problem is Neospeech can be expensive, but if you look into Ivona Text to speech then they are almost just as good and much cheaper. Use Balabolka to read the PDF text which is free to save eye strain.

My last collection is actually not on the computer or Hard drives, but on the shelf and yes, you ve guessed it. I have books in plain old hard or paper back lying around. Perhaps the best way to read, there is only one problem. Books take up space and when you consider that a HD can hold thousands of books compared to what my room can hold. There is only one winner and I am thinking about looking for PDF versions of my hardbacks.

I have only mentioned a very small part of educational material you can find on the web. There are much more and if you come across some, feel free to share the links with others.

My blogging begins

2011-03-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

Well this is my first blog. I have been meaning to start off a blog for ages and have never really gotten around to it. Now things are different, because since I have helped my friend start off her blog, I thought I should at least make a blog of my own.

I have been wondering what this blog should be all about. Perhaps it will be about me? my hobbies? my beliefs? I think in the end I have decided I shall blog about what I do most and that is about philosophy. This is because I do quite a lot of reading on the subject and since philosophy is such a vast field, I will never really run out of blogs. Personally I think I shall blog about the books I read as perhaps if it was a review. I do have a lot of audio books, lectures, books, documentries and so on. So I will be blogging about those.

I feel my main worry though is putting the time and energy into creating a blog each day or maybe a few times a week. The main thing though is at least my journey begins.