Thanks again for the support and comments! We will be diversifying our content, and we are seeing some requests on intro to philosophers? What might be some good ones you might be interested in?
Generally speaking, when learning about new philosophers it helps me to know who their influences were. Specifically I'd like to hear you give an introduction to German idealism. Thank you again for your time, love the channel.
I really hope you could do an analysis on how stoicism is portrayed in youtube, and how it's being used as an argument for selfishness and disengagement.
I'd think that most philosophers said something very close to that at least once in their lives. Surely pretty much all of them had to deal with somebody putting something in their mouth at one point even during their livetimes haha
Can you dismantle their Kierkegaard video? Someone used to have a comment that went sentence by sentence and disproved about 95% of the video, but it got deleted. I’d love to see it memorialized in all of history
I really think they messed up kierkegaard. Especially his concept of god and religion. After reading fear and tremble i must say what they told to be his ideas have actually nothing to do with his major works AT ALL. Thats a shame people usually prefer watching short videos over reading real books and dont have a slightest idea of what they think to know and understand
I remember that comment, he dubunked every claim in the video and exposed it for the blatant dishonesty it was. I didnt know it got deleted, that's really hilarious and sad at the same time. School of Life trying to cover their tracks.
The school of life turns all philosophy into self-help books, while in my experience all philosophy after the greeks is never about simple rules to make your life better/easier/happier but to expand your horizon of problems, finding new struggles. Insert zizek quote about self help books.
I mean philosophy is self-help just depends on what kind of help you're taking is it help to find motivation or is it help to find chaos but in the end all philosophy except for some German ones I'm pretty sure teach about ego deaths in order to understand purpose so it's "self help" as long as you don't go insane.
the vibe No- philosophy is the search for truth. It is an ongoing discussion and practice, that also concerns itself with non-human topics (fx ecology, animals, nature and so on). Self help is someone claiming to have found the truth and then telling you how to live.
The point that Eastern philosophy and thought is diluted when it is seen through this fairytale/ othering lens was so salient and important. Thank you for making it. I see it happen so often, but hadn't articulated it to myself until I watched this.
I watched school of life in high school. It got me interested in philosophy, which I guess is good, but I had some pretty inaccurate ideas of what various philosophers believed until I read some of it myself in college
I've known people who would turn up their noses at Americanized asian restaurants but bought in with total sincerity to so-called Eastern philosophical nostrums, oblivious to the way their "eastern wisdom" was commodified and carefully packaged for Western consumers. Your video helped me articulate the heart of this inconsistency much more deeply than I could on my own. Thanks!
18:14 In the video centred around misquotes, there's a misquote. The one from Marx is also paraphrased. I assume the first is an honest mistake, and the latter fact was omitted such out of expediency, but it's an ironic point nonetheless. 😁 Getting these points wrong is the nature of any translation or references I've come across in primary texts from bygone eras. To call this an error by western consumers is giving them overdue credit. It's a fault beholden to human beings throughout history.
@@willek1335 but.. you see with HIS paraphrasing he wasn’t really changing the message, however not only was this „eastern wisdom“ made up of warped qoutes and misrepresentations of the original text, but sometimes they are just qoutes that these people never even said.
'Opium' analogy is wrong, religion is a genuine scientific attempt to quest for the mystery of creation, much like the earth moving around the sun or the sun moving around the earth controversy, leading to genuine scientific discovery.
Thank you for this video. I find the same thing with Hindu philosophy, people see it as a monolithic idea instead of a philosophical tradition, let’s say, with many different and contradictory ideas, just like Western Philosophy. Love the disclaimer at the end of the video. I am a Portuguese citizen with friends in Macao so maybe I’ll drop in and audit a class next time I am on the island. Peace be upon you.
Professors on youtube is my favorite thing now. Loving this channel and content. Love the sourcing and fact checking, careful use of language and solid point making. Absolutely brilliant.
I think we can agree that while the channel Philosophy Tube is using philosophy topics to build her personal profile and weakly scratch the surface (sometimes poorly) at philosophical topics, I think she’s serious enough to not try and poison her audience with bad advice, and I think we could expect updates or improvements over time. By contrast, the school of life gives internally contradictory “advice” or directly bad advice so regularly I can’t help but think of it as purely toxic clickbait material. Some of those school of life relationship videos are really weird and full of impossibly bad advice. I would love it if you covered these truly poisonous channels more as well as the “Do Not Think, only tradition” propaganda sorts like PragerU. Many people could use immunization not only from low quality philosophy that inadvertently misleads, but also immunization from the kind of “philosophy” that leads to harm.
I disagree with your last point. I think focusing on the bad parts of the internet is 1: likely already done by many youtubers and 2: less effective than focusing on the good parts. Instead of showcasing the stupid things PragerU says, make a video about the topic, teach the topic correctly, and perhaps give PragerU as a negative example. So the video is focused on a topic, with good and bad formulations. I prefer this style a lot personally, and think it is much more informative for both people that already know PragerU is crap, so they wouldn't learn much, and people that don't know that PragerU is crap. These second people might get defensive if they like PragerU's content and the video is target like "Even worse crap: PragerU!" and it is just a stream of all their mistakes. Getting people to hear the good arguments BEFORE they know that these are arguments that mean a source of content they like is wrong makes the arguments more likely to be heard. With a "PragerU is bad" video the overall message that sticks after the video is that PragerU is bad, not the individual topics that they where wrong on. By focusing on a topic, people might actually learn about that topic, and then notice themselves that PragerU got that topic wrong.
@@aienbalosaienbalos4186 Its not about reaching people who are already on board with PragerUesque content, it's about teaching people how to spot the flaws in those lines of argument, both for their own immunization to bad ideas, and to properly equip them with the necessary knowledge to challenge those talking points in daily life.
Hey! I recently started watching Abigails' videos and I really like them , so I was just wondering what you mean by "to build her personal profile and weakly scratch the surface (sometimes poorly) at philosophical topics". Don't take this the wrong way; I'm asking because I would hate to wholeheartedly believe something she says (just because I am not experienced enough in philosophy) and keep my view narrow minded :)
@@magdalenakokes I would say that she talks about sociological topics adding references to philosophy. She will discuss social issues rather than philosophical concepts. If you’re ever in doubt that you might be missing something from a source, check out others afterwards and compare!
School of Life is pop-culture philosophy. While its presentation may be rough, or even wrong, it's a part of what got me started into looking into other channels like Dr. Sadlers, Philosophy Overdose, Theory & Philosophy, Cadell Last, Then & Now, and this channel. I think it serves its purpose as an introductory idea into the topic, but any critical examination of any of their videos will, I think, result in such a video.
And it's not that wrong. A lot of eastern philosophy is ancient, mystical, and about detachment. It's not that far off the mark. In fact, this channel links to another channel that basically ends with the same basic views as a pop philosophy video. Its "Daoist Philosophy: Right & Wrong".
@@johnnonamegibbon3580 Watching this video and also the one about Philosophy Tube, I just get the sense that Dr Moeller criticism is missing the point... Both of the videos nit pick about a few things the other channels get wrong, which is fair enough, but then Dr Moeller takes those mistakes to weave a further argument about the motives of those channels that I think is wrong. Or...I think his argument would be different if he watched a few more videos to get what those channels are about. And then I see in the comment sections of these two videos people dunking on Philosophy Tube and School of Life...people seem relieved to finally get to shit on the pop philosophy. Some viewers seem to react as if Philosophy Tube and School of Life's intellectual dishonesty is being exposed...but I don't see it as intellectually dishonest.
@@MSandPD Philosophy tube is sort of a diva to me. But School of life is just ignorant. I also don't sense malice on him. Philosophy is more of one of those internet personalities. Who happens t talk about philosophy? I will say that Moeller has his own views that I find silly. He purposes that identity used to be formed by roles, but now is formed by abstract internet profiles. He says both are valid, but he ignores, pretty hilariously in my opinion, that the original form of identity formation had a biological function. It was natural. To be a better person, husband, wife. His model has no real biological function. It's divorced from real life. lol I always found that funny about him.
It's always amazing how often you can immediately tell a garbled or flat-wrong philosophical or 'spiritual' trope for what it is. (Or rather isn't!) I see 'quotations' etc from traditions I'm largely unfamiliar with on a daily basis. (I know comparatively little beyond Celtic, Norse, and Greek or Graeco-Egyptian Gnostic sources). But somehow I can usually see a made-up 'Zen Master's' or 'Yogi's quote, and instantly know that it has been cobbled together by someone who has never studied Zen or other Buddhist/Hindu literature, and has possibly read a few sentences of Jung, and misunderstood those as well. Possibly because Celtic literature especially suffers similar abuses from affluent and ill-informed space cadets...
On the bit about "Asian Restaurants", I remember living with a guy from India for a couple of years and I can definitely confirm that the sorts of curries he'd make are not exactly like what you'd find on a menu here 😅. He was a fab cook, though. We also had a guy from Greece in our flat for a bit and his food was 👌. I was a very lucky student!
Or grifters. Nice generalizing people involved in a market. The problem is how orientalism sells in the west,not how scummy people capitalize on it. The way forward is improved public education to make people aware of orientalism and to think critically
Thanks for the free quality information on difficult philosophy! Your classes must be great. Though I would like to say that, while I agree with nearly all the points you make in your video, Said's choice of the term "orientalism" for such a ubiquitous phenomenon has always bothered me. This is because I think we can observe similar projections between cultures from East to West, North to South, South to North and any imaginable direction. I'm aware Said was not simply talking about stereotyping but also about the stereotypes being "interiorised" by those stereotyped, but that, too, happens in "the West" as well. Take for instance the Canadian-English TV coproduction that is the series Vikings and similar cultural products (e.g. Marvel's "Thor") which, while some of it has some footing on history and mythology, has led to many Scandinavians now all of a sudden identifying themselves with "Viking culture" where previously they did not, or maybe that is just my perception from personal acquaintances and "Nordic" people I see on social media. Surely there are many more examples of this phenomenon than just those affecting "Orient." Another one might be the Brothers Grimm's, Andersen's, and other authors' tales being "tamed" by Disney and then sold back to Europe. I would like to hear your opinion and if you think there is something special about the East (apart from its colonial history) that makes it special when it comes to "Orientalism"
I really appreciate this video, as I read Lao Tzu almost daily and have gotten a lot from it. It’s odd to me that people would seek to attribute these phrases to Lao Tzu, especially since he is likely a legendary figure and would have disregarded the authority an attribution would have imparted to any given saying. Heck the neo-doaisms are just as interesting to contemplate on their own, no need to parade them as original. Edit: and yes, eastern texts are actually quite difficult when you take them seriously...the popular comfort of the “idea” of daoism is quaint at best and counter productive at worst
@@ingridsantos7815 I don't understand how as to one man's fault translates to "Capitalism bad!" that is like saying "since Hitler drank water which allowed him to live longer...water is bad!"
Everything is fair game in the trivialisation stakes. This all reminds of the Seinfeld episode where George's mother learns that Ms Chang is not Chinese and discounts immediately all the sage advice given over the phone.
Looking at their videos on Camus or Marx (or indeed anything else from them) would be interesting to me. I know it's tiresome, but it does help since many of these videos go un-critiqued and yet get millions of views. Your effort is much appreciated.
Boy wait till you find out about Sun Tzu. Western studies of Eastern philosophy is Orientalism at it's finest, what people think Eastern philosophy should be about rather than what it actually is about. No one wants to go through the tiring task of learning classical Chinese and reading the original texts, everyone wants fortune cookies.
Kudos to how the channel actually reads the comments and incorporates the viewers' suggestions in their next works. The warning at the start and end of the video really shows how your content is different from others. Keep it up! I like Prof Moeller's way of synthesizing works from different works and disciplines while analyzing a topic.
What do you think of it? I’ve heard some of the episodes and I like it, though I’m not an expert on philosophy and I’ve been generally using it as a starting point to then reach out to the original material and read it.
What you mentioned about the west's depiction of the east influencing their culture in a way that it was more in line with the depiction reminded me of Baudrillard's concept of the precession of simulacra, and I feel like your general ideas on identity and profilicity also fit well with his philosophy. Is a video about Baudrillard something that might come in the future?
The School of Life always got videos with wicked animation tho. That's their strength. Plus, the British narration sounds very credible. Content-wise it'll appeal to the general public. Self help, more like. From a professional philosopher's point of view though, it is lacking.
I’ve heard their animation is so cool because they constantly hire new animators, treat the animators terribly and then hire new animators who are fresh out of the academy
@@PunishedFelix kurzegesagt videos are shit. every kurzegesagt video has the same narrator so i'm not sure what you mean by that reference. many of their videos seem informed by a single popsci or self-help book and a large heaping of confusion and incompetence. though this is the case for the majority of supposedly educational or intellectual content on youtube, and as far as i can tell almost every single channel that features animations or some studio-ish setting is irredeemable trash. especially the amateur history ones. don't even know why i bother with youtube outside of the absurd humour of it all. just read books. vulgarised infotainment is worse than apathy or even anti-intellectualism because it kicks out intellectualism and assumes its image. every social-climbing braindead weasel thinks themself worthy of pretending to know what they're talking about and pretending to have an opinion beyond vague identification with some ideology or aesthetic.
@@skyworm8006 Could you point towards some of your grievances with Kurzgesagt? I occasionally watch their videos and would like to know if they're often filled with inaccuracies. A quick look at their wikipedia page suggests that they had a much criticised video which was based on a controversial source which they later owned up to and then deleted the video. Obviously I see that you're against all pop pseudo intellectualism, but as someone with a full time job, I appreciate if there's a channel uploading videos I could watch while having lunch or something which serve as quick introduction to topics if they aren't littered with lies and inaccuracies.
great deconstruction of the video, and good points about the general misunderstandings / preconceptions about asian philosophy - the effects of orientalism on both perception by "the west" and on what is produced by "the east" for western consumption were very well explained.
I know a good lecture when I feel like immediately going to read anything referenced in it. Thank you for your insights and clarity and forgiving qualification of feel-good orientalism
@@Demilich23 uhhh. Just sticking to reason and not bandwagoning on hating a dude who introduces interesting topics to people, sorry I have my own opinion ig.
I appreciate your thoughtful deconstruction of School of Life. What I was really missing was an exposition of Laotzu in its historical context that would replace the New Age blandness. You go into more ideological/Marxist criticism, which can feel a bit like retrojection of present day sociopolitical conflict onto a very different world.
5:23 I don’t see a contradiction „When I let go of who I am, I become what I might be“ Becoming what you might be isn’t meant to be something you do actively it’s something that just happens because you let go of who you think you are and don’t intervene. „We spent a great deal of time worrying about we ought to become but we should instead take time to be what we already are at heart.“ Here this becoming is something active so it’s hindering you directly to be what you are at heart. It’s probably just the limitation of language for me that was intuitively very understandable.
Yeah, this is my first video of this channel and this mistake of his and Marx's name dropping really alerts me that this fella may not be the one to reach out to me about Taoist/Eastern philosophy, at least for me As if all the Alan Watts fanning because a sign
This is a very interesting critique by yourself, and by Edward Said before you, of the infantilization and/or romanticization of Eastern thought. I am just now getting into David Graeber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything". In their introductory chapter on the hijacking of Kandiaronk's critique by Lahontan, Rousseau and others, they are making a very similar point: that European Colonials couldn't imagine Native Americans even having a critique of the Colonialists society and people - let alone a relevant and cogent one. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the book.
Why does the "fairy tale" capture the attention of so many people and disarm their critical faculties? Are there other modes that also do this, such as perhaps the dry professor mode?
Likely digestibility. You can easily watch the videos and feel good, or content with them, without needing much critical thought. It's presented in an authentic way, through a large platform so it establishes a sense of authenticity. It's kind of like pop music, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's easy to listen to and caters to a large audience
Just commenting here to say something that might not be your case yet, but my experience is that even very intelligent people fall to this trap. Very slowly, over some years, 3-5 years, but it happens. Don’t get lured into destroying low hanging fruit. I see this happening like this: A channel starts out making critiques of relevant, popular or emerging opinions/ideas. They make their case until that issue is completely explored. The socially relevant discussion got them an audience. Now they seek to keep their UA-cam channel, but finding a somewhat similar topic that the audience is also interested, is socially relevant and the UA-camr is equipped to deal with is VERY hard. So the youtuber settles for a topic that is a little less relevant, a little less popular/emerging, likely one where the person on the other side is easier to deal with on an intellectual level. To counteract this, the topic is usually a bit more shocking/sensationalist. There is also of course the shift from ideas to individual people, as those are always easier to critique. Say, on the topic of social justice one can see this happened with channels that started out critiquing relevant ideas of identity politics surging in popularity, like government enforced sexual/racial discrimination on employment for companies. 3-5 years later the topic was now sensationalist content the likes of “watch these SJW arguing that there are no biological differences between men and women/all people of a majority race in a country are racist”. The social relevance is gone, the quality of the opposing arguments is orders of magnitude worse. The shift to a more sensationalist topic moves the content type closer to entertainment, and less about discussing relevant topics, which brings a bigger audience, and rewards the UA-cam in this direction. But this audience is less invested, it is more temporary. Of course the steps are usually tiny, like the change from your previous videos and this one. Just be wary of it. Btw, the result of the channels I have seen is either 1 they eventually are forgotten, when people get bored of their type of sensationalism or 2 they effectively keep switching to the controversial topics of the day, which means they no longer speak about the topics they are experts on, but in everything. They become “gurus” of knowledge in all areas, who are always right about everything. They eventually try to fix the problem of a fleeting audience by cementing a personality cult around them. I don’t know how well this works, only that it is clear that many are trying to do so.
I'm not sure I agree with your analysis here. The three examples I can think of off-hand would be atheist youtube back in the day, the "anti-SJW" lot, and then the "pro-SJW" breadtube backlash. I think the issue is that none of the people involved in these movements were ever "experts" on anything, and the things they started out critiquing - evangelical christians, video-game feminists, youtube rightwingers - *were* low-hanging fruit to start with. And while the atheists and anti-SJWs may have ended up leaning even lower, the development I see happening with breadtube is sort of the opposite of what you described: they started off plucking the low-hanging fruit, and now go for over-ambitious feature-length videos of high theory. The problem is that, because they were never experts, they're now a little out of their depth.
@@jonathanbeesley9103 I'm sorry for the confusion, expert was the wrong word. I am not familiar at all with "breadtube". I am familiar with the atheist UA-cam of back in the day and the anti-sjw lot. When I said expert I didn't mean professionally educated, although I do know a few cases where that might be the case. Remember that people can't be experts on everything and yet we are called upon to decide democratically or comment politically on a range of topics. As such, we educate ourselves as best as we can and research work from different experts from different fields and put it together. This is what I was thinking of when I wrongfully said "being an expert on a topic": being educated in a topic enough to research the work of experts. I think my original phrasing of "the UA-camr being equipped to deal with a topic" was better. You may think of workplace discrimination and christianism as "low hanging fruit" but that is simply a reflection of your opinions. A lot of people believe in both these ideas. Christianism might be in the downturn, but workplace discrimination is not. So I wouldn't classify something that is still socially relevant as low hanging fruit. With low hanging fruit I meant ideas so ridiculous almost no one believes them, like biological equality of the sexes. There are very intelligent people arguing the case of christianity and workplace discrimination and more importantly there are arguments that are not at all easy to deal with. This doesn't mean they are right, only that they aren't easy pickings to make fun of. Yes, there was a lot of crazy creationist/crazy sjw bashing in these movements, but in the beginning there also was thoughtful, relevant discussion of religion in one case and of equality of outcome vs equality of opportunity in the other. A critique of my comment you seem to share: the possibility that most of the examples of the quality loss over time probably were people much more prone to this problem and that Carefree Wandering doesn't need to worry about that, as a result of being a proper expert on the subject and formulating these videos as such, not as personal opinion based on research, might very well be true. I can see that my initial fear does seem unfounded and premature, something I tried to keep guard against with the "this might not be your case yet", implying the problem is inevitable. The problem I didn't see is that this can be seen as insulting. The problem I meant was inevitable was not this desire to keep an audience at all costs or a gradual lost of integrity, I have no idea if Carefree Wandering will do that, I don't wish to comment on their character. I was thinking of the problem of the channel's main topic being exhausted. Much like UA-cam is designed to keep us addicted, it is designed to keep youtubers making easy to consume, shocking content. My warning is a general one to any UA-camr facing a content change decision, not particular to Carefree Wandering because I think they are "morally weaker" or anything like that, I only watched a video or two.
@@aienbalosaienbalos4186 I do certainly see your point. To me the crucial difference, other than being a genuine expert, wouldn't be so much anything like "moral character" as "independent security" in both a social and material sense - many youtubers become dependent on youtube both for their social status and for their material living, which explains much of the "desperation" to me. But yeah, I think an issue discussing these movements in detail would be that they were vast, amorphous things which we would have had quite independent experiences of. My experience of atheist youtube was actually as a teenager who saw themselves as Christian, who entered the big world of internet comment section arguments fighting against them. I felt (and still feel, though I'm naturally less invested, having broadly lost my faith) that they went for the low-hanging fruit *within Christianity*: American fundamentalist evangelicals are not the strongest proponents of the faith. But I guess they do still have a significant presence in the world in the way the flat-earthers and whoever thunderfoot's railing against now don't, so I do see your point. Breadtube is a name for the movement that Philosophytube's a part of, who Carefree wandering first critiqued. I've never actually liked philosophytube, but I've liked some other people in the movement (contrapoints, shaun, three arrows), and it's interesting because they sort of half fit your description and half don't. As I said, they're hardly going for lower and lower fruit, and part of this I imagine is because of the self-awareness induced by their earliest videos being a critique of the latter-day anti-SJWs. But the part about, >they become “gurus” of knowledge in all areas, who are always right about everything. They eventually try to fix the problem of a fleeting audience by cementing a personality cult around them. seemed like it was written with them in mind. I think part of the problem is the sheer ego-trip caused by their thousands of adoring fans.
@@jonathanbeesley9103 Thanks for the reply. Everything you said seems perfectly reasonable to me. I do like contrappoints, I guess I'll have to check breadtube one day then haha
Yeah but school of life has always been shitty misleading bad interpretations of philosophy, purely for the sake of making money. He didn't slowly lose his intellectual rigor, it just never existed in the first place.
I WAS SO EXCITED WHEN I SAW THIS IN MY RECOMMENDATIONS. Great watch. I wish you can make a video where you elaborate on Authenticity. Note to editor: face zoom-ins are distracting.
I have been so skeptical towards "eastern philosophy" and after watching this (great) video, I've come to realize that this might have been because of this weird western capitalist appropriation and subversion of eastern philosophy into what you call it fairytale mode. I used to describe it as very self-helpy , but what I did realize very early was the uncritical way we talk about these ideas. You might even say for me it morphed into one big cooping mechanism for the fallouts of modern life and capitalism.
@@daverussel7156 Daniel Bonevac and Gregory B Sadler are two philosophy professors with UA-cam channels. There are more, but I’d stick with actual philosophers with PhDs for learning. Ultimately, you want to read the books and use UA-cam philosophers for help to understand the text.
These videos are great. Enjoy seeing your critiques of other channels but also looking forward to your original work. Definitely gonna check out your other channel
What is wrong with the school of life is (I assume) that it's a commercial channel. This is the problem with most things when they become about money: they become about money. They are not about other stuff, such as truth. Truth, as well as any other category is subservient to whatever goal your enterprise is pursuing. Whether a quote was made by Lao Tzu, or whether he/she existed at all is second rate to how many views the video had. This is how evolution works. Please do continue with critiques to popular philosophy channels.
and once again cultural logic of attributing a specific set of numbers to some stuff and not to other stuff, with the intend to grow a specific set of numbers via transformation processes is creating a distortion, maybe sometimes a death, all for the growth of one number towards infinity, which is attributed in our hierarchical set of ideas, with control over power things die because power numbers grow, because infinity numbers attributed, because interaction human trap don't misquote me or I'll be there lol
25:18 - Thank you for this video. I've got to say that there were many times while watching it that I started to take notes in order to question or challenge something here in the comments only to find that a minute later you made my point for me as a counterpoint to your own discussion. The very end I think sums it up best: as you say, they picked the wrong title. School of Life has a business model of trying to help us cope with the challenges and psychological pressures that we face in modern society. To that end, the feel-good mode of philosophy is 100% their jam. 🤣
Could you cover some of the things you've learnt that are generally less commonly known about Taoism then? This video has got me curious what are the more subversive parts of Taoism. Thanks
They probably established that "Lao Tzu" was an amalgam of thinkers, then moved on to quoting things from "Lao Tzu," because they felt it was obvious by this point that they were consulting an amalgam work, and they didn't feel the need to establish it yet again.
I understand the framework of colonialism to say that the authentic chinese object (pottery, food, philosophy, etc) is infused with familiarity to make it more "palatable" to the colonizer audience. Speaking as an Indian, I'm hoping you could help me interpret something similar that happens in India where we have what's called "Indian Chinese" food. Where Chinese food in China is typically quite mild, Indian Chinese is loaded with spices and chillis and sauces and all sorts of things and it's quite a different experience. So there's a similarity in that sense, but there doesn't seem to be a colonial motive here (as far as I can parse), it just seems to be capitalist pressure that most consumers won't buy authentic Chinese food and that's what has caused the blending. How is one to understand this phenomenon?
there are many channels presenting themselves as experts on every topic under the sun off the back of two days of googling and watching other people's videos. it used to be magazine articles and now it's youtube. There is a reason that some people begin to associate popularity with junk, things get lost and distorted when they have to appeal to the broad demographic, when they can't be too nerdy or complex, or more time and energy has to be spent on presentation and packaging than content, or have to find a way to appeal to insecurities. The downside is not really that it exists or is popular but that in a world shaped by search algorithms it starts to get very hard to find things that arent that. We all get funneled into the same place. It would be nice to have something like webrings in 2021 where like minded people could share channels that appeal to nerds (in the older meaning of the word).
12:26: "it reminded me of what Marx famously said about the function of religion, that is some sort of opium for the people". The German words were "Opium des Volkes", i.e. "opium of the people", not "opium for the people". A frequently misquoted statement...
@@AutumnSonderness The phrase "opium for the people" implies that another social group came up with the idea of giving the proletariat religion in order to placate them. In other words, it not something they originally wanted. Marx's position is that due to the conditions under which the proletariat works and lives, they actually need religion in order to cope with those conditions. Once conditions improved in the way Marx envisaged, the proletariat would no longer need religion and it would gradually disappear.
Marx is ironically a quasi religious figure at this point. If we're being honest. Humans create religion, it is not something elites use to oppress them inherently. In fact, in the case of Christianity and Daoism, it's radically anti oligarch. Marxism being an example of how even thinkers slowly are made into religious figures by people. An example of "opium" for elites is ideology. Elite intellectuals love ideology (feminism, Marxism, Capitalism) even if they often don't make sense. Or are not supported by data. He quotes Robin Wang a feminist, which is an ideology I personally think is an upperclass luxury ideology and is silly. And then goes on to lecture people about how feel good philosophy isn't real. It made me laugh.
Really fantastic channel with such engaging content. Thank you very much. The layers of perspectives are usually at least one more than I expect. For those who might want an un-Orientalized translation of the text, they might wish to read "The Wisdom of Laotse", translated and introduced by the great Chinese writer, academic and inventor, Dr. Lin Yutang.
"Some opium sometimes is okay..." This is the only part of this video Im taking away from it. Its fine officer the nice philosophy man online said its okay ;D
It had to be said and I'm glad it was professor Moeller who beat me to it. Hopefully this video can reach a similar amount of people as the particular video (and genre of videos, "Daoism and Flow" type videos) it critiques.
One interesting addition in regards to the latter example, western Chinese food, is that it wasn’t always necessarily about catering to western tastes, but immigrants suddenly having to work with a different range of ingredients than they had at home. Sometimes dishes are more obviously designed that way for restaurant customers especially now, and colonialism and orientalism condition the experiences of the creation of diasporatic dishes, but I think it’s interesting! Particularly as diaspora sometimes, even often, depending, get accused of being “inauthentic” members of the culture.
Alain de Botton wrote one of the worst books I have ever read in my life: Religion for Atheists. It was such a shallow book, it actually made me angry. I was expecting more at a time when I was wrestling with how to harmonize religious sentiment with non-belief. Then came The School of Life (TSOL), and I gave de Botton another chance. The early videos I thought were... "good" as popularizations of philosophy. In them, de Botton was implementing one of his goals stated in the book, i.e. the videos were to serve as weekly "sermons" for non-believers. But then... TSOL rapidly devolved into the worst of pop psychology. The ill-adapted individual became the focus. And instead of taking a more philosophical or Stoic approach to life struggles, TSOL catered to and even fomented the illnesses/maladaptations in a very sappy and overly sentimental way. I unsubscribed and never looked back. Thanks to Carefree Wandering for bringing more attention to the farce that is de Botton and TSOL.
I think it's quite different to scrutinize closely the quotes of 19th Century philosophers who we usually have very well documented quotes from, and when we so closely scrutinize all the words of ancient philosophers whose thoughts and attributions are a) questionable from the start b) have few if any absolutely verifiable source texts c) have undergone countless translations and changes in language and d) which are often very poetic to start with, and not specifically based in clear logic (not saying their not logical, just that these ancient philosophers view of logic was quite different from our modern conception of it. So in total I think it's a little over-punctilious to be so critical of people who are presenting, and distilling the ideas of ancient thinkers to a wide audience. The idea that the two quotes brought into focus in this video are completely contradictory I think also is not fully accurate. Taoism itself is about a balance of opposites, and looking into insights that may seem contradictory but in fact are not. For example, to say that one must let go of who one *thinks* they are to find out who they might be, is not contradictory to saying one must understand one's *true self*. Who we think we are most often is not who we truly are. To know truly who we are, we often must let go of who we think we are.
I think dwelling on the "fairy tale" aesthetic of the video undermines your main point, slightly. There is nothing wrong with conveying information in a pleasing way that your audience will enjoy and understand. That is simply edutainment, and it helps draw in an audience and it can weave a more coherent narrative with an easy-to-follow flow. With the big caveat being that edutainment actually should still accurately represent the ideas presented (losing as little as possible and misrepresenting as little as possible in the process of synopsizing and simplifying complex ideas) in a fair and impartial way, as opposed to the agenda-driven and modern trend-chasing styles of channels likes School of Life, Philosophy Tube, and Wisecrack.
Marx is kind of cringe. He said some nice things critiquing capitalism, but his followers made him into a cult. And to him and his followers people are mostly workers. Very materialistic.
I don't want this channel to become a 'reviewer' of pop philosophy on you tube, and I'm sure you don't want that either, but can you touch on the Wisecrack channel? They are a highly commercialized channel that analyzes pop media with several philosophical lenses for a very general audience.
Thanks for the great video defending the authenticity of Taoism. Perhaps I am ignorant, but I have read a dozen Chinese books on Lao Zhi in Chinese, including a few prominent scholars spending decades researching on Lao zhi in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, and I have NOT read a scholar arguing that the Tao Te Ching was written by many different people. 6:34 There was a huge debate back in the 1910s to 1920s to such an issue about the author and the date the text was written. While It is true that a few words were added or altered according to latest discovery of the texts in bamboo dated about 100 years after Lao Zhi, hasnt such discovery in the last few decades pretty much settled the debate once and for all? Or could it be that I am wrong because western sinologists should be more trustworthy since most of the Chinese scholars are somehow blinded by pride and preconceived notions? e.g never questioned if it was written by a single person?
I've watched a few of your videos and as a person with little interest in philosophy, you sir have caught my interest and my attention. However, out of the three "systems" of building identity you've mentioned, (sincerity, authenticity, profilicity) none of them seem capable of letting one into good mental health since they all form anxieties. Which way of building identity would be best and most comfortable? Or should we ignore it altogether? Anyway thank you a lot for your good content.
I've been trying to study Chinese philosophy for a while now, and it's an absolute nightmare trying to sift through all the orientalism and mistranslations. I cannot learn Chinese as the tones are far too difficult for me so could you recommend any good English or German sources on eastern philosophy? Any authors that actually do the material justice?
I'm not an expert but I like Bryan Van Norden and Brook Ziporyn (his Zhuangzi translation in particular). Bryan Van Norden has done books and also has a youtube channel where he posts some of his lectures.
25:00 I'm actually really interested now what you'd say about Philosophy Tube's video on Confucius (the video is here: v=bFeXJkcKYaU ) She very much is not an Eastern Philosophy expert and she says as much. She did a lot of research specifically into Confucius for that video but not Lao Tzu if I recall correctly. And without having read Lao Tzu, she also came to the conclusion you mention, about Confucius affirming the higher class. (At least I think that's what you say others are saying about Confucius in contrast to Lao Tzu. I might be misinterpreting) It seems like Eastern philosophy is somewhat of a specialty for you? So I'd think you have quite a bit to add to that video. - It's also relevant to the other videos you made responding to/analysing her stuff: The video is a lot about performatism (if I recall correctly).
Im not sure I agree that sticking with legend around lao tsu is due to it being 'eastern stuff'. Isnt it more because of how old the text is and that people seem to like attributing texts to a single author. For instance in the western world Homer is perhaps similar in that he might not have been a single author. I imagine that eastern philosophers from the same time as Kant do not have this 'legend' treatment. I do agree that eastern philosophy is very much misrepresented though.
I'm glad I bought a paperback copy of "the" Tao-te-Qing with foreword explaining it's a recompiled mishmash of various mystical poems of unknown authors before anyone telling me how to read it, as such I saw it as what is it: something, but certainly not the definitive thoughts of some sage. Also it is true that translations can skew a lot of things, but sincere translators will add a lot of clarifying notes. Another thing to note, that fake quote about letting go of what you are seems closer to a Buddhist-Taoist view than strictly Taoist, because the way impermanence is intervowen seems closer to Buddhist cosmology, at least in my eyes.
I'd ask the follow-up question, what is wrong about losing the socio-political context of Daoism? In my opinion, the way that normal people present "Eastern philosophy" (or all things Asian, a la Said) motivates an unhealthy attitude or relationship, an unhealthy and unrealistic mindset, wrt Asian culture and so on. Makes people think that Asians must be like wise angelic beings, who have everything right and live in a state of zen, while others just sort of suck. This itself makes you not want to engage with Asia, bc nobody likes feeling out-of-place or feeling like dead weight.
Your insightful the video is really a breathe of fresh air. The school of life has many errors in their information but a smoother voice and presentation but that’s it in many cases. Sure they bring up some good topics and make good videos about less complex subjects I call them. Philosophy for dummies
They'd be more acceptable if they simply branded themselves openly as a self-help channel instead of pretending they're about philosophy and piggybacking on the fame of long dead people who usually had far more insightful things to say. In a sense, they're like Disney with its use (and misuse) of classic fairy tales. Sure people like (some of) their movies, but that doesn't change the fact that they're still profiting (massively!) off of a fabrication.
Dr. Hans is that possible for you to make an introduction to Arthur Schopenhauer philosophy and some reading recommendation for beginners on philosophy ... Thank you ... I love your videos so much , it's make someone who doesn't have any philosophy background like me able to understand the points you trying to share with us ... Thank you so much ...
I'm a little confused by some of the 1st half. Why does it matter that the group who wrote ideas is collectively called Lao Tzu? In mathematics, we shorten the School of Pyrhagoreans down to Pythagoras. Also, why does proto-feminist writings imply feminine writers? That doesn't seen neccessarily true (I don't think it's wrong but that specific statement was in the discussion on the presentation of "who" Lao Tzu was which dawned extremely detailed oriented)
I would like more videos of topical things that are on your mind and how they relate to philosophy. I think the videos have been good at connecting ideas and philosophers to current opinion and events. I like making these connections because it challenges me to collide philosophical ideas and ways of thinking to the everyday norms and struggle.
Funny enough, a similar thing happens in Asia with western products like food, or even people, without the need of a power dynamic. Spanish and Italian people are seen as "passionate" and promiscuous, and the cuisine they get is often an adapted form to satisfy Asian palates.
Sometimes things are difficult to understand. "The greatest carver does the least cutting," can mean the cuts are made concisely or refer to the "uncarved block", for instance. I don't read Chinese or anything, but I like it. Set me straight if it’s plain and simple don't do any cutting.
@@TeaParty1776 ironically neither Marx, nor Engels were endorsers of the USSR model. Despite their differences with the anarchists Marx was more egalitarian and Democratic than given credit for, if not libertarian. In their report "The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association", an explanation and justification of the expulsion of Bakunin's faction from the International, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels comment sarcastically as follows: “What a beautiful model of barrack-room communism! Here you have it all: communal eating, communal sleeping, assessors and offices regulating education, production, consumption, in a word, all social activity, and to crown all, ᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴏᴍᴍɪᴛᴛᴇᴇ, anonymous and unknown to anyone, as the supreme director. This is indeed the purest anti-authoritarianism.”
@@blackflagsnroses6013 Marxism is BASICALLY a systematic attack, from metaphysics to esthetics ,on mans independent, productive mind. It requires mass murder and the destruction of production. There will necessarily be opposition that must be "swept out of the way and made impossible." You define Marxism by non-essentials.
@@blackflagsnroses6013 When you force people to act against their own ideas, there will be opposition. Marxs claim that an alleged historical dialectic will automatically and necessarily cause people to voluntarily and peacably sacrifice themselves to a communist society is bizarrely unrealistic. The enforcement of a totalitarian communism in the historically traditionalist nations of the Soviet Union was the problem. When communism ended in the SU, the people immediately returned to the religious traditionalism that they had hidden for 70 years. Marxism is an impossible dream.
@@gendunchoepel3480 "When you force people to act against their own ideas, there will be opposition." that is dialecticla materialism. ".. You, not me, posted "that is dialecticla materialism. " Notice my " after opposition.
To me this approach is a bit problematic, I would say that calling these eastern ideas "philosophy" to begin with is entirely part of Orientalism as well. Afaiu a lot of Asian native are very critical of this way some westerns appropriate these text and ideas by applying western philosophical methodology to it (for example when a western that got into eastern school of thoughts says something like "Buddhism is not really a religion, it's so much more a philosophy"), because to some extend it entirely strips these ideas of their religious, spiritual and also cultural context like you pointed out. What do you think ?
it is a painting by a French painter (Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres) - so the painting shows a perspective of the Orient from a Westerner's point of view and could therefore be categorised as "orientalist"
Thanks again for the support and comments!
We will be diversifying our content, and we are seeing some requests on intro to philosophers? What might be some good ones you might be interested in?
I think the more controversial or popular ones would make the best videos. People have a lot of misconceptions about ancient philosophers for example.
Generally speaking, when learning about new philosophers it helps me to know who their influences were. Specifically I'd like to hear you give an introduction to German idealism. Thank you again for your time, love the channel.
A video on Aquinas and/or Thomism would be great.
I would like to see you cover Spinoza and Sartre.
Spinoza!! In particular, the ethics, such an amazing read
I like the duality between the clickbait title and the calm, accurate exposition of arguments.
Hahaha... I didn't even noticed the title. I saw a new video from 'carefree wandering' and I clicked. Now looking at the name I chuckled.
WORSE Philosophy Video! (BE AUTHENTIC) (GONE ORIENTALISM) (ALMOST POSTMODERN) (NOT A CLICK BAIT)
Juxtaposition?
What about word salad, seldom taken into account by philosophers. Religion is the opium of the people, is an example.
Its shows me just how outrageous the "philosphy" scene on youtube is when the clickbait title is legit
I really hope you could do an analysis on how stoicism is portrayed in youtube, and how it's being used as an argument for selfishness and disengagement.
Yes absolutely
This would be awesome
Yes! And how people treat it as some kind of macho bourgeoisie philosophy.
An amazing philosophy of life has been commodified by capitalist overlords to keep people docile
Read books and don't look for life answers on UA-cam. This man doesn't look happy nor fulfilled. Watch yourself and from whom you take advice.
"I didn't say that." - Laozi.
Fact! The Great Tao said that through its sock puppet.
I'd think that most philosophers said something very close to that at least once in their lives. Surely pretty much all of them had to deal with somebody putting something in their mouth at one point even during their livetimes haha
Lol
"I really didn't say everything I said." - Yogi Berra
"I never said that. But I wish I had."
-General Patton
As Benjamin Franklin said in "Poor Richard's Almanac," a wise man verifies every quote he finds on the Internet.
I love that book, Ben was really inspiring.
"Never trust youtube" - Sun Tzu
Just dodge the heavy attack casual. - Julius Caesar.
Is that the guy in Hamilton?
"You are the universe, ascend to the next vibration. Watch school of life, they're legit" - Lao Tzu
It's all about the vibes bro.
-Carl Yung
"The universe is dancing with the libido bro." Fraud.
Can you dismantle their Kierkegaard video? Someone used to have a comment that went sentence by sentence and disproved about 95% of the video, but it got deleted. I’d love to see it memorialized in all of history
Please! This would be huge for your profilicity 🤞
That commenter sounds like a hero
I really think they messed up kierkegaard. Especially his concept of god and religion. After reading fear and tremble i must say what they told to be his ideas have actually nothing to do with his major works AT ALL. Thats a shame people usually prefer watching short videos over reading real books and dont have a slightest idea of what they think to know and understand
@@ИванХарламычев Could you tell me some examples. I am curious
I remember that comment, he dubunked every claim in the video and exposed it for the blatant dishonesty it was.
I didnt know it got deleted, that's really hilarious and sad at the same time. School of Life trying to cover their tracks.
The school of life turns all philosophy into self-help books, while in my experience all philosophy after the greeks is never about simple rules to make your life better/easier/happier but to expand your horizon of problems, finding new struggles. Insert zizek quote about self help books.
I mean philosophy is self-help just depends on what kind of help you're taking is it help to find motivation or is it help to find chaos but in the end all philosophy except for some German ones I'm pretty sure teach about ego deaths in order to understand purpose so it's "self help" as long as you don't go insane.
the vibe
No- philosophy is the search for truth. It is an ongoing discussion and practice, that also concerns itself with non-human topics (fx ecology, animals, nature and so on). Self help is someone claiming to have found the truth and then telling you how to live.
Zizek just doesn't want to suffer alone. So he subverts the para-social, pessimist relation to his followers.
I found the school of life are good for general public. they are not targeting for phd in philosophy.
They are open about their mission being targeted at giving practical everyday life advice based on philosophy, not to just teach philosophy as is.
School of Life shows that by having a well spoken, eloquent British accent can make almost anything you say seem intelligent.
American can also make a school of life channel and be equally intelligent.
@@dannysze8183 dude, it's a JOKE
@@diegocarvalho2667 what nationalism does to a mfer
@@dannysze8183 no they can’t
@@GerardoBecerra597 lol. American are very diverse.
The point that Eastern philosophy and thought is diluted when it is seen through this fairytale/ othering lens was so salient and important. Thank you for making it. I see it happen so often, but hadn't articulated it to myself until I watched this.
I watched school of life in high school. It got me interested in philosophy, which I guess is good, but I had some pretty inaccurate ideas of what various philosophers believed until I read some of it myself in college
At least you read the actual source material 👌
@@ScribblebytesWorldwide always read the source material! 😡
Oh! That's good to know, I'm coming from the same path as you 😊
I've known people who would turn up their noses at Americanized asian restaurants but bought in with total sincerity to so-called Eastern philosophical nostrums, oblivious to the way their "eastern wisdom" was commodified and carefully packaged for Western consumers. Your video helped me articulate the heart of this inconsistency much more deeply than I could on my own. Thanks!
18:14
In the video centred around misquotes, there's a misquote. The one from Marx is also paraphrased. I assume the first is an honest mistake, and the latter fact was omitted such out of expediency, but it's an ironic point nonetheless. 😁
Getting these points wrong is the nature of any translation or references I've come across in primary texts from bygone eras. To call this an error by western consumers is giving them overdue credit. It's a fault beholden to human beings throughout history.
@@willek1335 he wasn’t pretending that his paraphrase was the full quote though
Hi @@AeromaticXD
Exactly. There's nothing wrong with paraphrasing when the authority of a point demand brevity.
@@willek1335 but.. you see with HIS paraphrasing he wasn’t really changing the message, however not only was this „eastern wisdom“ made up of warped qoutes and misrepresentations of the original text, but sometimes they are just qoutes that these people never even said.
also, what was the misquote?@@willek1335
"some opium from time to time may not necessarily be the worst thing"
Turns out the police don't agree :/
my ex girlfriend didn't agree either
'Opium' analogy is wrong, religion is a genuine scientific attempt to quest for the mystery of creation, much like the earth moving around the sun or the sun moving around the earth controversy, leading to genuine scientific discovery.
@@sonarbangla8711 it's not scientific though.
@@anonymous_4276 Just follow the barrage of weapons China is making independently of Russia, which will side with China.
Would love introductory videos on philosophers works. Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Deleuze, ... thanks for your videos
Kant!
Deleuze specifically
@@zacn654 agree! but it's quite a big challenge to ask from him so i would get it if he doesnt do it..
Yes please
Plastic Pills, Epoch Philosophy, and Theory and Philosophy had some video on Deleuze which really helpful.
“When I let go of who I is, I become who I ain’t but could be.” - Lao Tzu
It makes you think.
I thunk very solidly.
Thank you for this video. I find the same thing with Hindu philosophy, people see it as a monolithic idea instead of a philosophical tradition, let’s say, with many different and contradictory ideas, just like Western Philosophy. Love the disclaimer at the end of the video. I am a Portuguese citizen with friends in Macao so maybe I’ll drop in and audit a class next time I am on the island. Peace be upon you.
Professors on youtube is my favorite thing now. Loving this channel and content. Love the sourcing and fact checking, careful use of language and solid point making. Absolutely brilliant.
I think we can agree that while the channel Philosophy Tube is using philosophy topics to build her personal profile and weakly scratch the surface (sometimes poorly) at philosophical topics, I think she’s serious enough to not try and poison her audience with bad advice, and I think we could expect updates or improvements over time. By contrast, the school of life gives internally contradictory “advice” or directly bad advice so regularly I can’t help but think of it as purely toxic clickbait material. Some of those school of life relationship videos are really weird and full of impossibly bad advice. I would love it if you covered these truly poisonous channels more as well as the “Do Not Think, only tradition” propaganda sorts like PragerU. Many people could use immunization not only from low quality philosophy that inadvertently misleads, but also immunization from the kind of “philosophy” that leads to harm.
I disagree with your last point. I think focusing on the bad parts of the internet is 1: likely already done by many youtubers and 2: less effective than focusing on the good parts.
Instead of showcasing the stupid things PragerU says, make a video about the topic, teach the topic correctly, and perhaps give PragerU as a negative example. So the video is focused on a topic, with good and bad formulations. I prefer this style a lot personally, and think it is much more informative for both people that already know PragerU is crap, so they wouldn't learn much, and people that don't know that PragerU is crap. These second people might get defensive if they like PragerU's content and the video is target like "Even worse crap: PragerU!" and it is just a stream of all their mistakes. Getting people to hear the good arguments BEFORE they know that these are arguments that mean a source of content they like is wrong makes the arguments more likely to be heard.
With a "PragerU is bad" video the overall message that sticks after the video is that PragerU is bad, not the individual topics that they where wrong on. By focusing on a topic, people might actually learn about that topic, and then notice themselves that PragerU got that topic wrong.
@@aienbalosaienbalos4186 Its not about reaching people who are already on board with PragerUesque content, it's about teaching people how to spot the flaws in those lines of argument, both for their own immunization to bad ideas, and to properly equip them with the necessary knowledge to challenge those talking points in daily life.
Hey! I recently started watching Abigails' videos and I really like them , so I was just wondering what you mean by "to build her personal profile and weakly scratch the surface (sometimes poorly) at philosophical topics". Don't take this the wrong way; I'm asking because I would hate to wholeheartedly believe something she says (just because I am not experienced enough in philosophy) and keep my view narrow minded :)
@@Nofixdahdress the people who aren’t onboard already know the flaws..? If they don’t know the flaws, why aren’t they onboard?
@@magdalenakokes I would say that she talks about sociological topics adding references to philosophy. She will discuss social issues rather than philosophical concepts.
If you’re ever in doubt that you might be missing something from a source, check out others afterwards and compare!
School of Life is pop-culture philosophy. While its presentation may be rough, or even wrong, it's a part of what got me started into looking into other channels like Dr. Sadlers, Philosophy Overdose, Theory & Philosophy, Cadell Last, Then & Now, and this channel. I think it serves its purpose as an introductory idea into the topic, but any critical examination of any of their videos will, I think, result in such a video.
And it's not that wrong. A lot of eastern philosophy is ancient, mystical, and about detachment. It's not that far off the mark.
In fact, this channel links to another channel that basically ends with the same basic views as a pop philosophy video. Its "Daoist Philosophy: Right & Wrong".
@@johnnonamegibbon3580 Watching this video and also the one about Philosophy Tube, I just get the sense that Dr Moeller criticism is missing the point... Both of the videos nit pick about a few things the other channels get wrong, which is fair enough, but then Dr Moeller takes those mistakes to weave a further argument about the motives of those channels that I think is wrong. Or...I think his argument would be different if he watched a few more videos to get what those channels are about. And then I see in the comment sections of these two videos people dunking on Philosophy Tube and School of Life...people seem relieved to finally get to shit on the pop philosophy. Some viewers seem to react as if Philosophy Tube and School of Life's intellectual dishonesty is being exposed...but I don't see it as intellectually dishonest.
@@MSandPD Philosophy tube is sort of a diva to me. But School of life is just ignorant. I also don't sense malice on him. Philosophy is more of one of those internet personalities. Who happens t talk about philosophy?
I will say that Moeller has his own views that I find silly. He purposes that identity used to be formed by roles, but now is formed by abstract internet profiles. He says both are valid, but he ignores, pretty hilariously in my opinion, that the original form of identity formation had a biological function. It was natural. To be a better person, husband, wife. His model has no real biological function. It's divorced from real life. lol I always found that funny about him.
I really appreciate your intro card, I needed to wake up a little bit to my relationship with this platform :)
It's always amazing how often you can immediately tell a garbled or flat-wrong philosophical or 'spiritual' trope for what it is. (Or rather isn't!) I see 'quotations' etc from traditions I'm largely unfamiliar with on a daily basis. (I know comparatively little beyond Celtic, Norse, and Greek or Graeco-Egyptian Gnostic sources). But somehow I can usually see a made-up 'Zen Master's' or 'Yogi's quote, and instantly know that it has been cobbled together by someone who has never studied Zen or other Buddhist/Hindu literature, and has possibly read a few sentences of Jung, and misunderstood those as well. Possibly because Celtic literature especially suffers similar abuses from affluent and ill-informed space cadets...
Hi folk, kindly read (Secrets of Sanatan Dharma) available on Amazon and Kindle by Author sai Prasad panda..
This argument is very important and critically telling. I wonder why exactly the channel has no real numbers of subscribers?
On the bit about "Asian Restaurants", I remember living with a guy from India for a couple of years and I can definitely confirm that the sorts of curries he'd make are not exactly like what you'd find on a menu here 😅. He was a fab cook, though. We also had a guy from Greece in our flat for a bit and his food was 👌. I was a very lucky student!
Wellness capitalists love to invoke orientalist imagery, great presentation!
Or grifters. Nice generalizing people involved in a market.
The problem is how orientalism sells in the west,not how scummy people capitalize on it.
The way forward is improved public education to make people aware of orientalism and to think critically
Yes, the same gos around, vice-versa
@@krunkle5136 you dont disagree with OP like you think you do
@@krunkle5136 they generalize themselves by being so unoriginal
Why you gotta be bringing capitalism into this? The posters of the bs buddhist videos are just idiots.
Thanks for the free quality information on difficult philosophy! Your classes must be great. Though I would like to say that, while I agree with nearly all the points you make in your video, Said's choice of the term "orientalism" for such a ubiquitous phenomenon has always bothered me. This is because I think we can observe similar projections between cultures from East to West, North to South, South to North and any imaginable direction. I'm aware Said was not simply talking about stereotyping but also about the stereotypes being "interiorised" by those stereotyped, but that, too, happens in "the West" as well.
Take for instance the Canadian-English TV coproduction that is the series Vikings and similar cultural products (e.g. Marvel's "Thor") which, while some of it has some footing on history and mythology, has led to many Scandinavians now all of a sudden identifying themselves with "Viking culture" where previously they did not, or maybe that is just my perception from personal acquaintances and "Nordic" people I see on social media. Surely there are many more examples of this phenomenon than just those affecting "Orient."
Another one might be the Brothers Grimm's, Andersen's, and other authors' tales being "tamed" by Disney and then sold back to Europe.
I would like to hear your opinion and if you think there is something special about the East (apart from its colonial history) that makes it special when it comes to "Orientalism"
It is a shame that Stefan Molyneux has already been banned from youtube, because he could have gotten a "Worst philosophy videos!" response.
I really appreciate this video, as I read Lao Tzu almost daily and have gotten a lot from it. It’s odd to me that people would seek to attribute these phrases to Lao Tzu, especially since he is likely a legendary figure and would have disregarded the authority an attribution would have imparted to any given saying. Heck the neo-doaisms are just as interesting to contemplate on their own, no need to parade them as original.
Edit: and yes, eastern texts are actually quite difficult when you take them seriously...the popular comfort of the “idea” of daoism is quaint at best and counter productive at worst
I like Lao Tzu egg rolls.
The School of Life is philosophy as self-help.
It's just bullshit as self help pretending to be philosophy as self help
it's self help pretending to be philosophy
In all fairness 'self-help' and 'bullshit' are synonymous most of the time
At least, self help is a honest label (helps only the grifter). Bad side of capitalism: Turn certain books trash to thrown away
@@ingridsantos7815 I don't understand how as to one man's fault translates to "Capitalism bad!" that is like saying "since Hitler drank water which allowed him to live longer...water is bad!"
I would love to see more Daoist content on the channel! It is rare to have access to a specialist in this format!
Everything is fair game in the trivialisation stakes. This all reminds of the Seinfeld episode where George's mother learns that Ms Chang is not Chinese and discounts immediately all the sage advice given over the phone.
Looking at their videos on Camus or Marx (or indeed anything else from them) would be interesting to me. I know it's tiresome, but it does help since many of these videos go un-critiqued and yet get millions of views. Your effort is much appreciated.
Boy wait till you find out about Sun Tzu. Western studies of Eastern philosophy is Orientalism at it's finest, what people think Eastern philosophy should be about rather than what it actually is about. No one wants to go through the tiring task of learning classical Chinese and reading the original texts, everyone wants fortune cookies.
Kudos to how the channel actually reads the comments and incorporates the viewers' suggestions in their next works. The warning at the start and end of the video really shows how your content is different from others. Keep it up!
I like Prof Moeller's way of synthesizing works from different works and disciplines while analyzing a topic.
Thank you for using your time and effort for exposing fake philosphical channels.
Also somebody really needed to dank on school of life.
I'd love to see something on "philosophize this!" channel.
What do you think of it? I’ve heard some of the episodes and I like it, though I’m not an expert on philosophy and I’ve been generally using it as a starting point to then reach out to the original material and read it.
Really like your channel! Thanks for making these videos. Also love the WARNING. Well done.
What you mentioned about the west's depiction of the east influencing their culture in a way that it was more in line with the depiction reminded me of Baudrillard's concept of the precession of simulacra, and I feel like your general ideas on identity and profilicity also fit well with his philosophy. Is a video about Baudrillard something that might come in the future?
The School of Life always got videos with wicked animation tho.
That's their strength. Plus, the British narration sounds very credible.
Content-wise it'll appeal to the general public. Self help, more like.
From a professional philosopher's point of view though, it is lacking.
From a professional philosopher's viewpoint, I think it's great for introducing people to fascinating subjects and topics, all in all, productive.
The british narration is also on the kurzgesagt videos. Like that one where they talk about overpopulation in africa
I’ve heard their animation is so cool because they constantly hire new animators, treat the animators terribly and then hire new animators who are fresh out of the academy
@@PunishedFelix kurzegesagt videos are shit. every kurzegesagt video has the same narrator so i'm not sure what you mean by that reference.
many of their videos seem informed by a single popsci or self-help book and a large heaping of confusion and incompetence. though this is the case for the majority of supposedly educational or intellectual content on youtube, and as far as i can tell almost every single channel that features animations or some studio-ish setting is irredeemable trash. especially the amateur history ones. don't even know why i bother with youtube outside of the absurd humour of it all. just read books. vulgarised infotainment is worse than apathy or even anti-intellectualism because it kicks out intellectualism and assumes its image. every social-climbing braindead weasel thinks themself worthy of pretending to know what they're talking about and pretending to have an opinion beyond vague identification with some ideology or aesthetic.
@@skyworm8006 Could you point towards some of your grievances with Kurzgesagt? I occasionally watch their videos and would like to know if they're often filled with inaccuracies. A quick look at their wikipedia page suggests that they had a much criticised video which was based on a controversial source which they later owned up to and then deleted the video.
Obviously I see that you're against all pop pseudo intellectualism, but as someone with a full time job, I appreciate if there's a channel uploading videos I could watch while having lunch or something which serve as quick introduction to topics if they aren't littered with lies and inaccuracies.
I very much appreciate being called out on my UA-cam addiction, it’s all too easy to get into a habit of consuming somewhat clickbait-y content.
great deconstruction of the video, and good points about the general misunderstandings / preconceptions about asian philosophy - the effects of orientalism on both perception by "the west" and on what is produced by "the east" for western consumption were very well explained.
I know a good lecture when I feel like immediately going to read anything referenced in it. Thank you for your insights and clarity and forgiving qualification of feel-good orientalism
Alain de Botton is a grifter/cult leader. Not a philosopher.
No one said he was, nor does he claim to be, but go you with applying inapplicable titles to him that doesn't make any sense.
@@adamjensen9195 Ehh, Google search is google search. Besides why y'all care so much?
@@LgtTurtlez who are you shilling for and why
@@Demilich23 uhhh. Just sticking to reason and not bandwagoning on hating a dude who introduces interesting topics to people, sorry I have my own opinion ig.
Where was Alain de Botton referenced in this video?
I appreciate your thoughtful deconstruction of School of Life. What I was really missing was an exposition of Laotzu in its historical context that would replace the New Age blandness. You go into more ideological/Marxist criticism, which can feel a bit like retrojection of present day sociopolitical conflict onto a very different world.
5:23 I don’t see a contradiction
„When I let go of who I am, I become what I might be“
Becoming what you might be isn’t meant to be something you do actively it’s something that just happens because you let go of who you think you are and don’t intervene.
„We spent a great deal of time worrying about we ought to become but we should instead take time to be what we already are at heart.“
Here this becoming is something active so it’s hindering you directly to be what you are at heart.
It’s probably just the limitation of language for me that was intuitively very understandable.
Yeah, this is my first video of this channel and this mistake of his and Marx's name dropping really alerts me that this fella may not be the one to reach out to me about Taoist/Eastern philosophy, at least for me
As if all the Alan Watts fanning because a sign
This is a very interesting critique by yourself, and by Edward Said before you, of the infantilization and/or romanticization of Eastern thought. I am just now getting into David Graeber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything". In their introductory chapter on the hijacking of Kandiaronk's critique by Lahontan, Rousseau and others, they are making a very similar point: that European Colonials couldn't imagine Native Americans even having a critique of the Colonialists society and people - let alone a relevant and cogent one. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the book.
Why does the "fairy tale" capture the attention of so many people and disarm their critical faculties? Are there other modes that also do this, such as perhaps the dry professor mode?
Likely digestibility. You can easily watch the videos and feel good, or content with them, without needing much critical thought. It's presented in an authentic way, through a large platform so it establishes a sense of authenticity.
It's kind of like pop music, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's easy to listen to and caters to a large audience
Oh, is the power of narrative, and the fairy tale one is ancient.
Just commenting here to say something that might not be your case yet, but my experience is that even very intelligent people fall to this trap. Very slowly, over some years, 3-5 years, but it happens.
Don’t get lured into destroying low hanging fruit.
I see this happening like this:
A channel starts out making critiques of relevant, popular or emerging opinions/ideas. They make their case until that issue is completely explored. The socially relevant discussion got them an audience. Now they seek to keep their UA-cam channel, but finding a somewhat similar topic that the audience is also interested, is socially relevant and the UA-camr is equipped to deal with is VERY hard. So the youtuber settles for a topic that is a little less relevant, a little less popular/emerging, likely one where the person on the other side is easier to deal with on an intellectual level. To counteract this, the topic is usually a bit more shocking/sensationalist. There is also of course the shift from ideas to individual people, as those are always easier to critique.
Say, on the topic of social justice one can see this happened with channels that started out critiquing relevant ideas of identity politics surging in popularity, like government enforced sexual/racial discrimination on employment for companies. 3-5 years later the topic was now sensationalist content the likes of “watch these SJW arguing that there are no biological differences between men and women/all people of a majority race in a country are racist”.
The social relevance is gone, the quality of the opposing arguments is orders of magnitude worse.
The shift to a more sensationalist topic moves the content type closer to entertainment, and less about discussing relevant topics, which brings a bigger audience, and rewards the UA-cam in this direction. But this audience is less invested, it is more temporary.
Of course the steps are usually tiny, like the change from your previous videos and this one. Just be wary of it.
Btw, the result of the channels I have seen is either 1 they eventually are forgotten, when people get bored of their type of sensationalism or 2 they effectively keep switching to the controversial topics of the day, which means they no longer speak about the topics they are experts on, but in everything. They become “gurus” of knowledge in all areas, who are always right about everything. They eventually try to fix the problem of a fleeting audience by cementing a personality cult around them. I don’t know how well this works, only that it is clear that many are trying to do so.
I'm not sure I agree with your analysis here. The three examples I can think of off-hand would be atheist youtube back in the day, the "anti-SJW" lot, and then the "pro-SJW" breadtube backlash. I think the issue is that none of the people involved in these movements were ever "experts" on anything, and the things they started out critiquing - evangelical christians, video-game feminists, youtube rightwingers - *were* low-hanging fruit to start with. And while the atheists and anti-SJWs may have ended up leaning even lower, the development I see happening with breadtube is sort of the opposite of what you described: they started off plucking the low-hanging fruit, and now go for over-ambitious feature-length videos of high theory. The problem is that, because they were never experts, they're now a little out of their depth.
@@jonathanbeesley9103 I'm sorry for the confusion, expert was the wrong word.
I am not familiar at all with "breadtube". I am familiar with the atheist UA-cam of back in the day and the anti-sjw lot. When I said expert I didn't mean professionally educated, although I do know a few cases where that might be the case. Remember that people can't be experts on everything and yet we are called upon to decide democratically or comment politically on a range of topics. As such, we educate ourselves as best as we can and research work from different experts from different fields and put it together. This is what I was thinking of when I wrongfully said "being an expert on a topic": being educated in a topic enough to research the work of experts.
I think my original phrasing of "the UA-camr being equipped to deal with a topic" was better.
You may think of workplace discrimination and christianism as "low hanging fruit" but that is simply a reflection of your opinions. A lot of people believe in both these ideas. Christianism might be in the downturn, but workplace discrimination is not. So I wouldn't classify something that is still socially relevant as low hanging fruit. With low hanging fruit I meant ideas so ridiculous almost no one believes them, like biological equality of the sexes.
There are very intelligent people arguing the case of christianity and workplace discrimination and more importantly there are arguments that are not at all easy to deal with. This doesn't mean they are right, only that they aren't easy pickings to make fun of. Yes, there was a lot of crazy creationist/crazy sjw bashing in these movements, but in the beginning there also was thoughtful, relevant discussion of religion in one case and of equality of outcome vs equality of opportunity in the other.
A critique of my comment you seem to share: the possibility that most of the examples of the quality loss over time probably were people much more prone to this problem and that Carefree Wandering doesn't need to worry about that, as a result of being a proper expert on the subject and formulating these videos as such, not as personal opinion based on research, might very well be true. I can see that my initial fear does seem unfounded and premature, something I tried to keep guard against with the "this might not be your case yet", implying the problem is inevitable. The problem I didn't see is that this can be seen as insulting. The problem I meant was inevitable was not this desire to keep an audience at all costs or a gradual lost of integrity, I have no idea if Carefree Wandering will do that, I don't wish to comment on their character. I was thinking of the problem of the channel's main topic being exhausted. Much like UA-cam is designed to keep us addicted, it is designed to keep youtubers making easy to consume, shocking content. My warning is a general one to any UA-camr facing a content change decision, not particular to Carefree Wandering because I think they are "morally weaker" or anything like that, I only watched a video or two.
@@aienbalosaienbalos4186 I do certainly see your point. To me the crucial difference, other than being a genuine expert, wouldn't be so much anything like "moral character" as "independent security" in both a social and material sense - many youtubers become dependent on youtube both for their social status and for their material living, which explains much of the "desperation" to me.
But yeah, I think an issue discussing these movements in detail would be that they were vast, amorphous things which we would have had quite independent experiences of. My experience of atheist youtube was actually as a teenager who saw themselves as Christian, who entered the big world of internet comment section arguments fighting against them. I felt (and still feel, though I'm naturally less invested, having broadly lost my faith) that they went for the low-hanging fruit *within Christianity*: American fundamentalist evangelicals are not the strongest proponents of the faith. But I guess they do still have a significant presence in the world in the way the flat-earthers and whoever thunderfoot's railing against now don't, so I do see your point.
Breadtube is a name for the movement that Philosophytube's a part of, who Carefree wandering first critiqued. I've never actually liked philosophytube, but I've liked some other people in the movement (contrapoints, shaun, three arrows), and it's interesting because they sort of half fit your description and half don't. As I said, they're hardly going for lower and lower fruit, and part of this I imagine is because of the self-awareness induced by their earliest videos being a critique of the latter-day anti-SJWs. But the part about,
>they become “gurus” of knowledge in all areas, who are always right about everything. They eventually try to fix the problem of a fleeting audience by cementing a personality cult around them.
seemed like it was written with them in mind. I think part of the problem is the sheer ego-trip caused by their thousands of adoring fans.
@@jonathanbeesley9103 Thanks for the reply. Everything you said seems perfectly reasonable to me. I do like contrappoints, I guess I'll have to check breadtube one day then haha
Yeah but school of life has always been shitty misleading bad interpretations of philosophy, purely for the sake of making money. He didn't slowly lose his intellectual rigor, it just never existed in the first place.
Just want to say I really like your content and I've subscribed. I intend to read some of your books at some point. Keep up the good work.
I WAS SO EXCITED WHEN I SAW THIS IN MY RECOMMENDATIONS.
Great watch. I wish you can make a video where you elaborate on Authenticity.
Note to editor: face zoom-ins are distracting.
I have been so skeptical towards "eastern philosophy" and after watching this (great) video, I've come to realize that this might have been because of this weird western capitalist appropriation and subversion of eastern philosophy into what you call it fairytale mode. I used to describe it as very self-helpy , but what I did realize very early was the uncritical way we talk about these ideas. You might even say for me it morphed into one big cooping mechanism for the fallouts of modern life and capitalism.
very materialist of you to try to constantly attribute capitalism to something perfectly capable of happening regardless of the system
Thankfully someone finally addresses “school of life”. They also mess up the western philosophy.
What channels can you recommend? Idk anything aside from them
@@daverussel7156 Daniel Bonevac and Gregory B Sadler are two philosophy professors with UA-cam channels. There are more, but I’d stick with actual philosophers with PhDs for learning. Ultimately, you want to read the books and use UA-cam philosophers for help to understand the text.
These videos are great. Enjoy seeing your critiques of other channels but also looking forward to your original work. Definitely gonna check out your other channel
"You learn authenticity by copying the authenticity of others" - LMFAO, I never noticed this paradox. This made me laugh haha
What is wrong with the school of life is (I assume) that it's a commercial channel. This is the problem with most things when they become about money: they become about money. They are not about other stuff, such as truth. Truth, as well as any other category is subservient to whatever goal your enterprise is pursuing. Whether a quote was made by Lao Tzu, or whether he/she existed at all is second rate to how many views the video had. This is how evolution works. Please do continue with critiques to popular philosophy channels.
and once again cultural logic of attributing a specific set of numbers to some stuff and not to other stuff, with the intend to grow a specific set of numbers via transformation processes is creating a distortion, maybe sometimes a death, all for the growth of one number towards infinity, which is attributed in our hierarchical set of ideas, with control over power
things die because power
numbers grow, because infinity
numbers attributed,
because interaction
human trap
don't misquote me or I'll be there
lol
25:18 - Thank you for this video. I've got to say that there were many times while watching it that I started to take notes in order to question or challenge something here in the comments only to find that a minute later you made my point for me as a counterpoint to your own discussion.
The very end I think sums it up best: as you say, they picked the wrong title. School of Life has a business model of trying to help us cope with the challenges and psychological pressures that we face in modern society. To that end, the feel-good mode of philosophy is 100% their jam. 🤣
Could you cover some of the things you've learnt that are generally less commonly known about Taoism then? This video has got me curious what are the more subversive parts of Taoism. Thanks
thanks-please check out: ua-cam.com/channels/rGQmh7lzx5NtDW05Fsj9Qw.html
They probably established that "Lao Tzu" was an amalgam of thinkers, then moved on to quoting things from "Lao Tzu," because they felt it was obvious by this point that they were consulting an amalgam work, and they didn't feel the need to establish it yet again.
"Be yourself, everyone else is already taken." --Immanuel Kant
I understand the framework of colonialism to say that the authentic chinese object (pottery, food, philosophy, etc) is infused with familiarity to make it more "palatable" to the colonizer audience. Speaking as an Indian, I'm hoping you could help me interpret something similar that happens in India where we have what's called "Indian Chinese" food.
Where Chinese food in China is typically quite mild, Indian Chinese is loaded with spices and chillis and sauces and all sorts of things and it's quite a different experience. So there's a similarity in that sense, but there doesn't seem to be a colonial motive here (as far as I can parse), it just seems to be capitalist pressure that most consumers won't buy authentic Chinese food and that's what has caused the blending.
How is one to understand this phenomenon?
there are many channels presenting themselves as experts on every topic under the sun off the back of two days of googling and watching other people's videos. it used to be magazine articles and now it's youtube. There is a reason that some people begin to associate popularity with junk, things get lost and distorted when they have to appeal to the broad demographic, when they can't be too nerdy or complex, or more time and energy has to be spent on presentation and packaging than content, or have to find a way to appeal to insecurities.
The downside is not really that it exists or is popular but that in a world shaped by search algorithms it starts to get very hard to find things that arent that. We all get funneled into the same place. It would be nice to have something like webrings in 2021 where like minded people could share channels that appeal to nerds (in the older meaning of the word).
12:26: "it reminded me of what Marx famously said about the function of religion, that is some sort of opium for the people".
The German words were "Opium des Volkes", i.e. "opium of the people", not "opium for the people". A frequently misquoted statement...
I agree that the genitive case is not trivial here! But what would the reading as „opium of the people“ entail instead of „opium for the people“?
@@AutumnSonderness The phrase "opium for the people" implies that another social group came up with the idea of giving the proletariat religion in order to placate them. In other words, it not something they originally wanted.
Marx's position is that due to the conditions under which the proletariat works and lives, they actually need religion in order to cope with those conditions. Once conditions improved in the way Marx envisaged, the proletariat would no longer need religion and it would gradually disappear.
Marx is ironically a quasi religious figure at this point. If we're being honest.
Humans create religion, it is not something elites use to oppress them inherently. In fact, in the case of Christianity and Daoism, it's radically anti oligarch. Marxism being an example of how even thinkers slowly are made into religious figures by people. An example of "opium" for elites is ideology. Elite intellectuals love ideology (feminism, Marxism, Capitalism) even if they often don't make sense. Or are not supported by data. He quotes Robin Wang a feminist, which is an ideology I personally think is an upperclass luxury ideology and is silly. And then goes on to lecture people about how feel good philosophy isn't real. It made me laugh.
Really fantastic channel with such engaging content. Thank you very much. The layers of perspectives are usually at least one more than I expect. For those who might want an un-Orientalized translation of the text, they might wish to read "The Wisdom of Laotse", translated and introduced by the great Chinese writer, academic and inventor, Dr. Lin Yutang.
"Some opium sometimes is okay..."
This is the only part of this video Im taking away from it. Its fine officer the nice philosophy man online said its okay ;D
I love the warning in the end . Paradoxically it is hard to read due to the choice of colours ;)
I would suggest that the letters would be made white
Thanks for the suggestion! Perhaps we will try using white for text and just keep the "WARNING" in red then. - Fai
It had to be said and I'm glad it was professor Moeller who beat me to it. Hopefully this video can reach a similar amount of people as the particular video (and genre of videos, "Daoism and Flow" type videos) it critiques.
One interesting addition in regards to the latter example, western Chinese food, is that it wasn’t always necessarily about catering to western tastes, but immigrants suddenly having to work with a different range of ingredients than they had at home. Sometimes dishes are more obviously designed that way for restaurant customers especially now, and colonialism and orientalism condition the experiences of the creation of diasporatic dishes, but I think it’s interesting! Particularly as diaspora sometimes, even often, depending, get accused of being “inauthentic” members of the culture.
Alain de Botton wrote one of the worst books I have ever read in my life: Religion for Atheists. It was such a shallow book, it actually made me angry. I was expecting more at a time when I was wrestling with how to harmonize religious sentiment with non-belief.
Then came The School of Life (TSOL), and I gave de Botton another chance. The early videos I thought were... "good" as popularizations of philosophy. In them, de Botton was implementing one of his goals stated in the book, i.e. the videos were to serve as weekly "sermons" for non-believers.
But then... TSOL rapidly devolved into the worst of pop psychology. The ill-adapted individual became the focus. And instead of taking a more philosophical or Stoic approach to life struggles, TSOL catered to and even fomented the illnesses/maladaptations in a very sappy and overly sentimental way.
I unsubscribed and never looked back. Thanks to Carefree Wandering for bringing more attention to the farce that is de Botton and TSOL.
I read his book on architecture tho. Not bad. I'm trying to be fair here.
Alain de Botton is a fucking charlatan.
You can't get a way from religion. It's part of human nature and all intellectuals just create their own secular religions.
@@dheerajb1883 I haven't read enough arch books to make that judgment. Do you have a recommendation, I'd appreciate it. ☺
@@dheerajb1883 I'm on it. 🤓
Merci
I think it's quite different to scrutinize closely the quotes of 19th Century philosophers who we usually have very well documented quotes from, and when we so closely scrutinize all the words of ancient philosophers whose thoughts and attributions are a) questionable from the start b) have few if any absolutely verifiable source texts c) have undergone countless translations and changes in language and d) which are often very poetic to start with, and not specifically based in clear logic (not saying their not logical, just that these ancient philosophers view of logic was quite different from our modern conception of it.
So in total I think it's a little over-punctilious to be so critical of people who are presenting, and distilling the ideas of ancient thinkers to a wide audience. The idea that the two quotes brought into focus in this video are completely contradictory I think also is not fully accurate. Taoism itself is about a balance of opposites, and looking into insights that may seem contradictory but in fact are not. For example, to say that one must let go of who one *thinks* they are to find out who they might be, is not contradictory to saying one must understand one's *true self*. Who we think we are most often is not who we truly are. To know truly who we are, we often must let go of who we think we are.
I’d love for you to do more videos criticizing the school of life and other popular philosophy channels. Thanks for this content
Reminds me of a time I found a great quote from Kant. Only, not a single source of the quote on the entire internet was cited.
I think dwelling on the "fairy tale" aesthetic of the video undermines your main point, slightly. There is nothing wrong with conveying information in a pleasing way that your audience will enjoy and understand. That is simply edutainment, and it helps draw in an audience and it can weave a more coherent narrative with an easy-to-follow flow.
With the big caveat being that edutainment actually should still accurately represent the ideas presented (losing as little as possible and misrepresenting as little as possible in the process of synopsizing and simplifying complex ideas) in a fair and impartial way, as opposed to the agenda-driven and modern trend-chasing styles of channels likes School of Life, Philosophy Tube, and Wisecrack.
Marx, Said, historical (and some class) analysis? We're reaching dangerous levels of based
Keep up the great work
Marx is kind of cringe. He said some nice things critiquing capitalism, but his followers made him into a cult. And to him and his followers people are mostly workers.
Very materialistic.
I don't want this channel to become a 'reviewer' of pop philosophy on you tube, and I'm sure you don't want that either, but can you touch on the Wisecrack channel? They are a highly commercialized channel that analyzes pop media with several philosophical lenses for a very general audience.
Thanks for the great video defending the authenticity of Taoism. Perhaps I am ignorant, but I have read a dozen Chinese books on Lao Zhi in Chinese, including a few prominent scholars spending decades researching on Lao zhi in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, and I have NOT read a scholar arguing that the Tao Te Ching was written by many different people. 6:34 There was a huge debate back in the 1910s to 1920s to such an issue about the author and the date the text was written. While It is true that a few words were added or altered according to latest discovery of the texts in bamboo dated about 100 years after Lao Zhi, hasnt such discovery in the last few decades pretty much settled the debate once and for all? Or could it be that I am wrong because western sinologists should be more trustworthy since most of the Chinese scholars are somehow blinded by pride and preconceived notions? e.g never questioned if it was written by a single person?
I've watched a few of your videos and as a person with little interest in philosophy, you sir have caught my interest and my attention.
However, out of the three "systems" of building identity you've mentioned, (sincerity, authenticity, profilicity) none of them seem capable of letting one into good mental health since they all form anxieties.
Which way of building identity would be best and most comfortable? Or should we ignore it altogether? Anyway thank you a lot for your good content.
When i let go of WHO not WHAT. There is a big diffrence.
I've been trying to study Chinese philosophy for a while now, and it's an absolute nightmare trying to sift through all the orientalism and mistranslations. I cannot learn Chinese as the tones are far too difficult for me so could you recommend any good English or German sources on eastern philosophy? Any authors that actually do the material justice?
I'm not an expert but I like Bryan Van Norden and Brook Ziporyn (his Zhuangzi translation in particular). Bryan Van Norden has done books and also has a youtube channel where he posts some of his lectures.
Alan Watts has many talks about it. But read translations. Internet is full of misinformation.
You're awesome professor... This make me want to come to Macau and take your class 😃
25:00 I'm actually really interested now what you'd say about Philosophy Tube's video on Confucius (the video is here: v=bFeXJkcKYaU )
She very much is not an Eastern Philosophy expert and she says as much. She did a lot of research specifically into Confucius for that video but not Lao Tzu if I recall correctly. And without having read Lao Tzu, she also came to the conclusion you mention, about Confucius affirming the higher class. (At least I think that's what you say others are saying about Confucius in contrast to Lao Tzu. I might be misinterpreting)
It seems like Eastern philosophy is somewhat of a specialty for you? So I'd think you have quite a bit to add to that video. - It's also relevant to the other videos you made responding to/analysing her stuff: The video is a lot about performatism (if I recall correctly).
Im not sure I agree that sticking with legend around lao tsu is due to it being 'eastern stuff'. Isnt it more because of how old the text is and that people seem to like attributing texts to a single author. For instance in the western world Homer is perhaps similar in that he might not have been a single author. I imagine that eastern philosophers from the same time as Kant do not have this 'legend' treatment.
I do agree that eastern philosophy is very much misrepresented though.
that warning in the end made me even more happy to subscribe
I'm glad I bought a paperback copy of "the" Tao-te-Qing with foreword explaining it's a recompiled mishmash of various mystical poems of unknown authors before anyone telling me how to read it, as such I saw it as what is it: something, but certainly not the definitive thoughts of some sage.
Also it is true that translations can skew a lot of things, but sincere translators will add a lot of clarifying notes.
Another thing to note, that fake quote about letting go of what you are seems closer to a Buddhist-Taoist view than strictly Taoist, because the way impermanence is intervowen seems closer to Buddhist cosmology, at least in my eyes.
I'd ask the follow-up question, what is wrong about losing the socio-political context of Daoism? In my opinion, the way that normal people present "Eastern philosophy" (or all things Asian, a la Said) motivates an unhealthy attitude or relationship, an unhealthy and unrealistic mindset, wrt Asian culture and so on. Makes people think that Asians must be like wise angelic beings, who have everything right and live in a state of zen, while others just sort of suck. This itself makes you not want to engage with Asia, bc nobody likes feeling out-of-place or feeling like dead weight.
18:28 You ironically misquote their misquote with "When I let go of what I am", while on screen it says who. Had a chuckle
Isn't the fairytale mode also to do with the age of the texts? People talk about ancient philosophers in more mythologised ways than they would Kant.
"No, it's because they're sexist!" - Dr Hans-Georg Moeller and Robin Wang ironically being religiously ideological themselves
Your insightful the video is really a breathe of fresh air. The school of life has many errors in their information but a smoother voice and presentation but that’s it in many cases. Sure they bring up some good topics and make good videos about less complex subjects I call them. Philosophy for dummies
They'd be more acceptable if they simply branded themselves openly as a self-help channel instead of pretending they're about philosophy and piggybacking on the fame of long dead people who usually had far more insightful things to say. In a sense, they're like Disney with its use (and misuse) of classic fairy tales. Sure people like (some of) their movies, but that doesn't change the fact that they're still profiting (massively!) off of a fabrication.
Dr. Hans is that possible for you to make an introduction to Arthur Schopenhauer philosophy and some reading recommendation for beginners on philosophy ... Thank you ... I love your videos so much , it's make someone who doesn't have any philosophy background like me able to understand the points you trying to share with us ... Thank you so much ...
I'm a little confused by some of the 1st half. Why does it matter that the group who wrote ideas is collectively called Lao Tzu? In mathematics, we shorten the School of Pyrhagoreans down to Pythagoras.
Also, why does proto-feminist writings imply feminine writers? That doesn't seen neccessarily true (I don't think it's wrong but that specific statement was in the discussion on the presentation of "who" Lao Tzu was which dawned extremely detailed oriented)
_School of Life_ is to philosophy as McDonalds is to gastronomy.
I would like more videos of topical things that are on your mind and how they relate to philosophy. I think the videos have been good at connecting ideas and philosophers to current opinion and events. I like making these connections because it challenges me to collide philosophical ideas and ways of thinking to the everyday norms and struggle.
That's why I never watch those big view numbers channels and look for books which are certified to be a good translation from numerous scholars.
Or books with the actualy native speakers as the author, if the book is about a topic from another country
Funny enough, a similar thing happens in Asia with western products like food, or even people, without the need of a power dynamic. Spanish and Italian people are seen as "passionate" and promiscuous, and the cuisine they get is often an adapted form to satisfy Asian palates.
Sometimes things are difficult to understand. "The greatest carver does the least cutting," can mean the cuts are made concisely or refer to the "uncarved block", for instance. I don't read Chinese or anything, but I like it. Set me straight if it’s plain and simple don't do any cutting.
I'd love to hear more on the marxist interpretation of daoism!
That would be useful in a gulag.
@@TeaParty1776 ironically neither Marx, nor Engels were endorsers of the USSR model. Despite their differences with the anarchists Marx was more egalitarian and Democratic than given credit for, if not libertarian.
In their report "The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association", an explanation and justification of the expulsion of Bakunin's faction from the International, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels comment sarcastically as follows:
“What a beautiful model of barrack-room communism! Here you have it all: communal eating, communal sleeping, assessors and offices regulating education, production, consumption, in a word, all social activity, and to crown all, ᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴏᴍᴍɪᴛᴛᴇᴇ, anonymous and unknown to anyone, as the supreme director. This is indeed the purest anti-authoritarianism.”
@@blackflagsnroses6013 Marxism is BASICALLY a systematic attack, from metaphysics to esthetics ,on mans independent, productive mind. It requires mass murder and the destruction of production. There will necessarily be opposition that must be "swept out of the way and made impossible." You define Marxism by non-essentials.
@@blackflagsnroses6013 When you force people to act against their own ideas, there will be opposition. Marxs claim that an alleged historical dialectic will automatically and necessarily cause people to voluntarily and peacably sacrifice themselves to a communist society is bizarrely unrealistic. The enforcement of a totalitarian communism in the historically traditionalist nations of the Soviet Union was the problem. When communism ended in the SU, the people immediately returned to the religious traditionalism that they had hidden for 70 years. Marxism is an impossible dream.
@@gendunchoepel3480 "When you force people to act against their own ideas, there will be opposition." that is dialecticla materialism. "..
You, not me, posted "that is dialecticla materialism. " Notice my " after opposition.
What are some better philosophy channels that present philosophers and their ideas better than philosophy tube and school of life
Philosophy Overdose is my favorite philosophy channel. There's a huge variety of interviews and lectures of philosophers.
Gregory Sadler is good for western. East Asian I'd say Bryan Van Norden.
im also a huge fan of wes cecil. he does require a fairly good education on the history of philsophie (at least in m opinion).
I'm currently writing my Masters thesis on Charles Taylor's idea of the age of authenticity. Cool to see it spoken about on the web.
To me this approach is a bit problematic, I would say that calling these eastern ideas "philosophy" to begin with is entirely part of Orientalism as well. Afaiu a lot of Asian native are very critical of this way some westerns appropriate these text and ideas by applying western philosophical methodology to it (for example when a western that got into eastern school of thoughts says something like "Buddhism is not really a religion, it's so much more a philosophy"), because to some extend it entirely strips these ideas of their religious, spiritual and also cultural context like you pointed out. What do you think ?
Love your channel. Are there other professors who do similar content that you are aware of?
16:19 why is the painting related to hierarchical imperialist framework?
it is a painting by a French painter (Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres) - so the painting shows a perspective of the Orient from a Westerner's point of view and could therefore be categorised as "orientalist"