Very nice video. I applaud especially how you connect Kant to other philosophers who exercized critique, but are often despised by fans of Kant. (As similarly Kant is hated by their respective fans.) One point of criticism I do have is that critiques of dogma, as you said, need not disprove a dogma or replace it necessarily. For this reason, I find it somewhat odd that you mentioned academic philosophy 'giving into wokeness' as a problem. Surely it needs to be dealt with critically, but in the end, the real world practices of universities always go beyond critiques, in that they must undertake actions and practices, which must be based not simply on a critique of dogmas, but also on a well-considered choice for a certain course of action. If universities find good reasons to to undertake policies that might fall under any type of dogma, such as the "woke" one or that of individual liberalism, they should in the end, under the practical need to make decisions, not keep themselves from pursuing them under the excuse of not wanting to affirm any dogma's. I don't think diversity programmes or other policies at universities that might be considered "woke" preclude academia from engaging with the dogma critically. Did I misunderstand what you meant with that comment? If not, is there a reason my perspective is wrong? In any case; thank you for the excellent video.
God, I would love to see you sit down with Peterson. He would come expecting a fight, playing the victim as he always does, and all of his assumptions would get shut down so eloquently. I love the Foucault passage- one of my favorites. Everybody is hypnotized like Peterson into thinking there needs to be this battle where one set of dogmas prevails over another. You linked the modern plight of philosophy back to Kant in a brilliant way here, and I enjoyed it very much!
Like it! it opened new questions for like the difference between Kant and neoKantians. It reminded me that marxists dis not like neokantians, but frankly I still do not get it (I tried with Ilyenkov here, but I failed...). I assume it pass through an interpretation of Kant? Thanks a lot and Cheers.
Who gives a shit about credentials? They are arbitrary in nature. Just be happy to be taught by someone who loves philosophy and can communicate it in understandable and engaging ways
@@davyroger3773 Credentials matter, because it means I am listening to someone who has been properly educated and is not just talking out of their ass. But go off.
@@corpsecandy2076 All that means is that you're too easily influenced by the appearance of knowledge rather than the knowledge itself. You want to know how to tell if somebody knows their shit? It's not by looking at their 3 conveniently framed degrees on the wall. It's by listening to what they actually have to say and weighing it against your own knowledge
@@davyroger3773 I think both are important. You can not always trust your own knowledge vs theirs. That is a way you could fall victim to scammers, radicals and grifters. There should be some proof of experience or others to verify that this person is legitimate. Though trusting wholesale a profile of degrees and connections is also a way idiots and pretenders can go around and under whatever societies current system of verification is. So it is wise to actually listen and never blindly trust credibility either.
This isn't really about the video itself, but I think the chapter feature would be useful given your comment in the description. For example, putting something like this in the desc.: 0:00 Kant's Philosophy 13:44 Why We Need a New Enlightenment
Maybe it's just nerdy me, but I watch Carefree Wandering videos 5 times all the way from start to finish because I always miss nuggets the first 4 times. Nonetheless video chapters are definitely a good idea!
When I read writings before Kant, I often see many attempt to either maintain the status quo (like Aquinas and the Scholastics) or challenge it, hoping to replace it with a new dogmatic status quo (like Hume or Locke). Kant really, for me, sums up what it means to enlighten - not to simply do away with our dogmas and belief structures but to explore them and see what they are made of (and then perhaps make a decision thereafter). This is why it is also quite frustrating when looking at his own beliefs, because he gives such a brilliant critique of the Ontological and Cosmological arguments for God - one may be convinced he is an atheist, but even then... It is tempered by postulates for God and Immortality with his deontological moral theory is based on such reason that even Aquinas would think that would be more than enough. It is quite apt, then, that he should be buried half in a church and half out of it. He seems very gracious towards the rationalists (like Descartes and Leibniz) but believes that he has been woken from his ‘slumber’ by Hume, the empiricist. He does things in such a way as to expose things in religion, empiricism, rationalism and morality but never to utterly abandon them or replace them. Later thinkers like Marx and Nietzsche seem quite fine with doing this process of abandonment of previous ideas for Communism or the Übermensch, but Kant can’t seem to let go (at least if you consider those ideas to be holding him back). I am always quite amazed by reading Kant and I think such nuance is required in an increasingly divided world. When the schism between Communism and Capitalism occurred, it seemed to be very reminiscent of the similar things occurring during 17th Century Crisis after the Protestant Reformation. One could see how Enlightenment and nuance arose from the divisions of religion, and indeed - we need a new critique. Just as the enlightenment thinkers critiqued religion in response to the crisis of the 17th Century, we must critique our own schisms and divisions in order to respond to the crisis in the 20th and 21st century. We must do so as Kant did, with nuance and balance. Not to reject all these ideas but to explore them and see both merits and downfalls.
This is the first time I have actually gotten a clear distinction on things being "transcendent" or "transcendental" after trying to understand it for so long from other texts, thanks to the professor and the channel!
The way you summarized the relative dogmas of the two competing civil religions in America as more or less a cult of Wokeness and a cult of National Security was spot on from my view as an American citizen of the midwest. I closed one of my albums with a song called Stay Safe, Stay Awake. This video just got me to realize that I was actually speaking to both sides of this conflict with its message. I love the American people, so for the sake of our collective future I was urging them to both stay safe AND stay awake. Further, I realized that in writing, the Stay Safe appears on the left (where that message is less popular politically), and Stay Awake appears on the right. That was a beautiful moment to start my day with. Thanks for your excellent work, sir.
Don't know much about philosophy, but I recognized some names that were influenced by Kant's Copernican Turn. When you started to talk about Foucault and how "things are not as self evident as we believed," I too was reminded of the Declaration of Independence. When you connected dogmas and religions to things I recognized, my mind expanded a bit. Still don't know much about philosophy, but I do know that Kant is very very relevant today!
Very insightful video. As a musician who wants to be more philosophically aware this is a helpful goal to keep in mind as I read the works of the philosophers who came before to assist in my attempts to engage in philosophical discourse.
I found this overview fascinating! Discussing Kant without mentioning "epistemology", "a priori", "the thing in itself" or drawing attention to Kant's encounter with Hume really stands out. In my own development, Kant has provoked an "inward turn" whereby Schopenhauer, revisiting the Greeks from a tragic perspective and the works of writers such as Dostoyevski and Kafka (among others) have taken on a greater philosophical role, certainly, than that of academic philosophy.
I hope to see more from this channel. Rarely do I watch videos on youtube over and over and over again just to understand them. Thank you for all you've done so far! Please give us more :)))
After finishing up the introduction to CoPR I faithfully typed your channels name in the search bar followed up with "kant". What I was to find greatly stimulated me. Thank you Dr Hans-Georg Moeller, it was a pleasure to watch.
Timely video in my intellectual development! I haven't had a chance to study Kant, but came across the idea of critique in the sense in your video while studying Nietzsche, Foucault and Heidegger. Saw a nice attempt at a genealogical critique for a very contemporary problem in Koopman's book "How we became our data". I look forward to doing more critiques and reading about them.
These are excellent, every one I've watched so far. Also shoutouts for dropping McLuhan in there cuz I'm almost shocked at how little mention he gets these days
Thank you for some well thought through discussion of some of our contemporary conundrums. I try my best to follow! One thing: Please don’t worry about not pronouncing Kant the German way. You’re over-correcting! :-] That’s precisely the way you should pronounce it!-not because it’s correct in the sense that that’s the way it’s really pronounced in the original language, but because that’s the way it is actually pronounced by native speakers of American English!! (Maybe it’s different in British English, I don’t know.) In 72 years I’ve never heard it pronounced like “can’t” (or the other English word “cant” which sounds exactly the same), and in fact it is actually disorienting to hear it pronounced that way! Thanks for trying though!! Best-
Prof Moeller could your suggest any English language references from where one might study Kant? I’m wary of starting with any nearest book in hand since you mentioned (in another video) the losses in translation such as in equating transcendent and transcendental. I have two other questions if you have the time: 1) Have you come across Kant’s work on physics? There’s supposedly a paper where he mediates a debate between a “Newtonian” school and a “Leibnizian” school on the measurement of forces. Obviously I don’t even have the slightest grasp of what these differing “schools” are but as a physicist I was intrigued as to why one of the world’s most important philosophers published papers involving physics. 2) Have you studied or come across Advaita (non-dualism)?
You can start with reading a few "popular" essays by Kant such as "Answer to the Question What is Enlightenment?" If you have some practice in reading philosophical texts, you can try Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (his own summary of the Critique of Pure Reason) and the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (a sort of short version of the Critique of Practical Reason). Most introductory books on Kant written by academics are good--just check out which style you prefer. The same goes for academic entries on Kant online, like this one:: plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
Wait, that "BLAME!" on the shelf behind him is the manga by Tsutomu Nihei or not? It is pretty funny to think that along lots of books about philosophy there you can find "BLAME" among them :D
I do wonder though if philsophy as critique is sufficient. If all that it can do is dissect the conditions of things, then what remains for us as practically binding beliefs? If the critique leads us to a certain revision, then what standard makes that determination? And isn't that standard itself subject to critique? Does philosophy as critique not fall into infinite regress, or into an implicit dogma, if it cannot secure some principle immune to critique in the former, or discreetly smuggle it in the latter.
Great video! Hope to see more! My youtube philosophers hasn't really made any philosophy content in a good while. There are some good philosophy entertainers out there (especially contrapoints) But I do miss these more dry, lecture like videos. Learn way more from them.
Great vid! Could you plz make a video about the "Dialektik der Aufklärung" that seems to point out (not sure whether I understood it correctly) that nihilism might be the logical consequence of the enlightenment movement (understood as overarching extension of reason). Would be a good part II.
I know that this is a very good discussion of the topic because I simultaneously have a deeper understanding of it and I have many more questions. One question about philosophy vs religion: if Kant's goal was to liberate philosophy from religion, why didn't he follow a path already made available to him by Hume? What justifies the transcendental approach as opposed to simply embracing skepticism?
He was tired of the Wolff/Leibnizian idealism. He wanted certainty like in metaphysics as found in math, the natural sciences, etc. The possibility for synthetic a priori truths seems to be the 'way' out. To discover that synthetic a priori truths were possible was a fantastic leap forward for separating religion from philosophy.
You know you are watching a serious channel when the video is 10 minutes old but there are no comments because people actually watch the video before writing comments. And I'm here to ruin this 😅
Nice. A few small points. [16:07] The irony of all ironies is to see Richard Rorty as a NeoKantian, since Rorty spent most of his time trying to avoid, what he calls, the Plato-Kant Canon, only now to be swallowed up by it!? Rorty's linguistic turn was not an "inquiry" into the conditions of philosophical claims. Although, in Wittgenstein, from whom Rorty was inspired, it is not as clear where philosophical claims begin and end.
I agree critique is extremely important but shouldn't it always be complemented by a proposed alternative? Why should someone listen to you if you can't offer anything better? In something like postmodernism, it seems to me that its endless critique of power structures has brought more apathy and nihilism than any substantial change to the conditions they're so obsessed with. On the other hand, maybe asking the question is more important than answering it? I certainly agree with the point in the video that rushing into a newer form of dogmatism isn't ideal, but at the end of the day don't we need something to work with? This is a difficult question and I'm not really sure where I stand but if P != NP, surely philosophy should spend more effort on fixing problems than finding them?
I never got the "if you can't fix don't point it's flaws" view. If I notice a problem I can't fix, why shouldn't I warn others who might be able to fix it or reduce the harm? Why should it matter whether the same person described the problem and came up with the solution? It's perfectly fine collaboration - sometimes it might even be the only way, if it takes different skill sets to do either. That being said, the video points out that the point of "critique" as such is not showing something is wrong so much so as that it's not self-evident as previously thought. It might be seen in a liberating light maybe. Of course there's always the risk of actually finding flaws and no solutions and building apathy, but I think it's a little one-sided to say postmodernism (as in, the study of the postmodernist "condition" or whatever) brought apathy - there are a lot of other, more structural ways to explain this apathy as well, and I think postmodernism itself helps elucidate part of that. That being said, I agree that it's easy to use the view of "critique" as a way to shield yourself and your work from the world, but there are in fact movements trying to propose structured "solutions" since at least the 19th century which are still alive and being constantly updated trough practice (even if they don't have as much traction right now as I'd like), but it does start blurring the line on what is philosophy I think. There's that famous quote from Marx about changing the world - but he came after Kant.
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Fair enough, I certainly agree that it needn't be the same person who finds flaws as who fixes them. Also, don't get me wrong I like critique too (hence why I'm critiquing it), I think that my point is that it is not sufficient for good philosophy in my opinion. You can only take things apart for so long before they need to be put together again, right?
@@edwinagnew6800 Yeah, makes sense. I guess it's a matter of how much of that responsibility befalls a single person, a movement, philosophy as a whole or some even larger area of human action. But I agree that if at the end of the day all that get's done is critique that's not enough.
@Infernal Moondance I actually work on a "militant" collective which deals with education. I'm in contact with others who work on a lot of different areas, many of which trough organization on their communities and/or workplaces, other with friends/people with compatible principles and goals. A lot of these people also engage in different levels of "critique" and have their actions informed by it (and vice-versa). Also there are many places in which a lot of different forms of action are taking place right now, from south america to the middle east. Some of it may be bigger, some smaller, some closer to the heart of the issues faced, some more superficial, but there are definitely things being done nowadays - I don't think it's fair to say we have nothing but critique (although it may be the case in your region, I obviously can't that : p)
15:20 There's also Durkheim and later Lévi-strauss and Bourdieu that explicitly mention Kantian categories or schemas and study the forms of classification of Native Americans, French peasants or preparatory classes teachers for example
Hello, professor. Thank you for your videos. I especially liked those on Daoism in the Philosophy in Motion channel. I was wondering if you, as a foreign professor living in China, are you allowed to critically analyze Chinese society in general and the Chinese Communist Party in particular. Is that beyond your conditions of possibility or is there any other reason to focus on criticizing western liberal democracies? Once again, thank you for your videos and keep up the good work.
Great video. But I wonder if you could speak more to an important-indeed perhaps crucial-shift from Kant to the Kant-inspired projects of the present: namely, the shift from a conception of critique as a search for *necessary and universal* conditions of possibility to the conception of it as a search for *historically contingent and biologically/socially situated* conditions?
I can agree on the role and importance of critique, BUT I can also agree with another thing that is its limitation: that it's by its nature incapable of affirmation and that perhaps our biggest problem is that we need to some positive, creative ideas to move on. What could they be though?
This is my new favourite channel. This guy is so authentic, I feel like he is my friend. Everyone else is a grifter and a fake, but I feel like this guy is subverting social media with these videos.
Be careful of development of a Parasocial relationship. It is not mentally healthy to see someone you only watch online as a friend. Admiration and learning from someone as an audience is understandable but using such absolute language about anyone you do not actually know is a bit concerning.
This hits the nail on the head “much of today’s philosophy is in service of today’s civil religion [of individualism]”. Criticism of the individual’s right to find some “resource” to exploit is simply sac religious and must be suppressed.
Great stuff, but I don’t agree with this prevailing and generally accepted idea that religion needs dogma to exist. You didn’t say that outright but I felt that was the undercurrent of part of the talk. Kierkegaard would disagree with this idea that faith requires dogma, and would instead argue that faith is a individual act that often supplants dogma, and transcends it. Instead of trying to paint religion with a broad brush, I think we should stop using it as a stand-in word for certain kinds of dogma. Faith is very complex, personal, and philosophically demanding thing. Faith is not the same as blind belief, but is facing the absurdities of the world and what you believe head-on, but choosing to believe anyway. Taking religion as by default useless is really missing a lot. If we stop equating a certain kind of religious person (one that blindly follows without thinking) with religion then we will find a use for philosophy of religion again. Just like how we need to stop equating a certain kind of leftist (the woke stereotypes) with leftism, and a certain kind of right leaning person with right leaning politics. I just don’t like the rhetoric of dismissal, as if we know anything at all fundamentally. We know very little, and we make a series of assumptions and broad brushstrokes to get back something that makes sense in our lives, but its a lie to think that way.
Kant's philosophy and "Post Enlightenment philosophy" rely on logical (right brain) thinking to explain stuff but that can't on it's own explain spirituality but with left brain thinking it can.
I believe that when the founders of the US wrote that all men are created equal, they meant primarily that they were born 'equal in the *rights* they are entitled to'. I don't think that they were trying to address the question whether humans were born 'equal in their various *abilities*', the 'nature vs nurture' debate and so on. This interpretation seems reasonable in view of the context of this sentence and the historical situation in which they were written. This was a statement against hereditary privilege - basically, the idea was that no human has any right to power or privilege just by virtue of having been born to certain parents (a nobleman and especially a [British] king is what they had in mind in their particular case). Instead, the only justification of any human's political power over other humans could be that it is useful to and voluntarily accepted by those other humans. This is a reasonable position regardless of different abilities, nature vs nurture etc. Even if we assume that I am, say, somewhat more intelligent than my neighbour, and even that this difference is somehow innate, that certainly doesn't give me any moral right to enslave him, force him to obey me, etc. He needs to commit a crime, go insane or something like that to forfeit his right to be as free as I am.
@Infernal Moondance I'm not sure which part of my argument you're referring to. Yes, regardless of whether A and B are individuals or groups, even if A is innately more intelligent than B, that does not give A the right to enslave B. Both A and B are entitled to freedom. Among other things, intelligence does not equal altruism and preclude abuse of power.
@Infernal Moondance On the founders - they had different opinions about slavery: many, like Jefferson, were against it in theory in spite of their own practice. The fact is that they didn't make any exception for non-white races in the sentences quoted in the video. And you're wrong in asserting that their main focus was on equality between ethnicities - English, Irish, etc.; neither Americans nor Englishmen were particularly fond of the Irish at the time. Their focus was on equality between aristocrats, including kings, and non-aristocrats. Class, not race was the burning issue of the day. On slavery having been 'beneficial' to the slaves - yeah, in the same way in which obeying a person pointing a gun at your head is 'beneficial' to you. There has never been a 'wild' 'state of nature' for humans to trade for slavery - we've moved on since Hobbes.
Reminds me of Adorno and Horkheimer critique in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. How do you see their critique of the reason becoming irrational in the world today?
It's not just about that. It's also the naive idea that we can be without irrationality - that's a dogma! The 'mathematical' systems that reason creates are totalitarian in a way that they show themselves as facts without feelings, but we know that these systems are, in themselves, pictures of the world. Closed symbolic interpretations that think of themselves as raw truth. What can not be explained is diluted, appropriated, by the system, or completely rejected, ignored by it.
@@EdwardMunz yeah, it's a bit like if you have a hammer and it's the greatest because now you don't have to punch nails so you start hammering windows in order to open them. With rationality I feel like we've come to a point in which we use it anti-rationally (avoiding "irrationally" because things which are not rational are not necessarily contradictory with rationality, which is a distinction I feel we lack).
Please make a video about Spinoza. That would be great. and let me ask ask my questions What do you think about Jonathan Israel's claim about him in the book "Radical Enlightenment"? Do you see any connection between Spinoza's idea and Daoism? What is role of Spinoza in Niklas Luhmann's thought development? I heard from you in a interview that Luhmann frequently cited Spinoza and stoics and it made me curious. It would be nice to hear about it from you. Thanks for your great work.
I think I now know why Jordan Peterson hates Marx and Foucault so much. His whole career has been all about stopping young people, specially young man, from questioning what is considered self-evident. He does not want people questioning their position in a hierarchy, let alone hierarchies, he does not want people questioning our economic system, he advocates for religion as a source of deeper truths, male and female roles are self-evident. No, with his 12 rules for life, only focusing on yourself, he offers you no option but to internalize what seems self-evident until you fit the mold.
Definitely appreciate you're efforts, thank you. I had a hard time processing Chomsky's criticism of Zizek because I felt his function, at least for the last few years, has been as you say a critique of those things taken for granted by the general public- "left and right." Chomsky's stance is that there is no academic value and Zizek is just a good actor emotionally engaging in controversy for profit. Seemed to me he is filling the function of a philosopher and your confirmation is satisfying as I've enjoyed your intellectual take on the topic you've discussed.
Chomsky's 'critique' of Zizek is sad. I wish he tackled the philosophy of Zizek instead of falling right into the common critique which is easilly countered by the pragmatic socio-cultural roots in Zizeks philosophy.
Dear Professor, Maybe I am being too bold but I would like to suggest another take on Contingency vs Necessity. Please give me your Critique on this. Thank you. "There is no difference between contingency and necessity, they are one and the same, namely a continuum. “Nothing is necessary, everything is coincidental.” (Nietzsche) It only appears (artificially) to be necessary or contingent; we as observers create this idea of contingency and necessity as we stop and start the video/movement. Existence is just one big Continuum: for example; the four seasons are neither contingent nor necessary, they just are. One moves imperceptibly into the other and the distinction in season is only an artificial contingency that we invent. The composition of the continuum is constantly varying to infinity and constantly changing. But the continuum moves forward and never backward nor in the same path twice. (See train analogy)." Maurice Guy from Florida USA
Do you recommend any books that explain in more detail the philosophy of civic religion? Also, apart from Zizek, Michaels and Reed any critique based philosophy?
Are Kant's claims that Space, Time and Causality are forms of intuition of the understanding and not something that exist in the world in itself still accepted in modern academia ?
The reason could be that watching UA-cam videos is considered habit-forming. It could be a warning for us to not spend too much time using platforms ☺️
I've come to think that the dualism that Kant defined, reduced the Enlightenment to that of a bargain with an expiration date. "give me one good miracle, and I can explain rest" Post-modernism today, is giving notice of said expiration. What enlightenment will end up looking like in the post-modern era, I can't imagine.
Is it possible that we need to do a critical analysis in this sense, to that practice itself? Why should we ask about the conditions of the objects that appear to us?
@@luxinvictus9018 he has read the communist manifesto and not Das capital or other works. He admitted this in the debate with Zizek. JP is not as well read as people think he is.
I think the new enlightenment should aim for investigating the conditions needed to learn to let go of the urge to ‘create’ knowledge and thus a false sense of security. We still reach beyond our understanding which is perfectly fine but as soon as we learn to let that urge go we may have come one step closer to freedom. The end of dogmatism may be unattainable but we can at least realize the role we play in how knowledge comes to be and when we make it dogmatic. Reality is beyond out grasp, enjoy it (carefree wandering?)
The man who . . . closed the door of philosophy to reason, was Immanuel Kant. . . . Kant’s expressly stated purpose was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. He knew that it could not survive without a mystic base-and what it had to be saved from was reason.
Well, that is a really good video. Thanks for the warning at the end. :) Also, I am genuinely curious to know how many languages do you speak. You are professor at University of Macau. It is safe to presume that you know chinese-mandarim (?). I saw what seems to be some russian books. Not the easiest languages to learn, I must say.
This gives a good outline, however it does illustrate how some terms have been radically mishandled and effected colloquial language, particularly in the last half century.
I'm trying to think through these ideas.. How are critiques of a dogma not themselves other "dogmas?" Aren't they simply truth claims about what conditions/factors/etc result in a particular dogma? Why are these truth claims less dogmatic than the initial dogmas? What evidence is supporting them? Is there some "scale" of dogmatism to measure each truth claim? Would it rely on evidence of some kind? What would constitute evidence? Curious if anyone has any thoughts/reading suggestions on this. Overall this video was very well made and thought-provoking. Thank you!
>What evidence is supporting them? You can't evaluate evidence without thinking about evidence. Evidence is to be interpreted; if you doubt your own capacity, not your competency, to interpret data, you can't say anything about it at all. You could trust the authorities, but it's within the faculties of your mind that you chose to confide in them (even if the underlying rationale is flawed). Epistemology 101.
The problems start when philosophers critique fields they have no real idea about them in professional sense. Does a philosopher who has no training in economics and industry can give a meaningful critique about those field? Would we take a serious critique of a philosopher about medicine? I mean, we can have sort of critique on those field but it will be limited and not much useful
I never really liked Jordan Peterson's ideas in general but I never put much thought into the real reason I didn't like him, but I think I finally understood it when you said that he does not propose to critique the "wokeness culture" but instead he actually propose to substitute it for another thing.
With good vibrations! Das Wichtigste an Kant ist wohl die "Kopernikanische Wende". Und die ist auf Wikipedia wesentlich einfacher und verständlicher dargestellt und erklärt. Ausserdem: Was in aller Welt kann oder könnte Sie daran hindern, einen deutschen Philosophen auf deutsche Art zu benennen?
Great videos! This is the closest thing I can get to my then beloved philosophy 101 class. I am wondering what would Kant say about our "post-truth era"? Would he be excited about the fact that everything is being questioned and about our general mistrust in authorities? Or would he rather be shocked about how irrational and full of dogma most of those anti-science critiques are? Me personally I think we are in dire need of another enlightenment, to educate people how to consume media and spot misinformation.
How do you square this idea with Marx's: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.". Did Marx cease to be a Philosopher in this Kantian sense when he attempted to provoke the 'replacing of one dogma with another'? Does any Philosophy that attempts to use it's critique to cause change cease to be Philosophy? And if so, what does it then become? Sorry if this is a dumb question and I've misunderstood the video.
But is not every endeavor motivated? Is there some argument for the elevation of philosophy over dogma that is not based on a premise that cannot be proven? I think not. What I am saying is that philosophy is itself, ultimately, as unreasonable as religion. I use reason, of course; but I cannot justify my use of it, nor can I justify any of my arguments that use it because all of my premises are ultimately unreasonable.
I’m not sure if it would be in your specialty or interest, but I would love a video on phenomenology and Kant’s influence on Husserl and the later existentialists. I have heard Kant referred to, perhaps controversially, as the first phenomenologist. This is by far my favourite philosophy channel, so regardless, please keep the videos coming! :)
Every time I watch one of these videos I wonder: is the Blame! book in the background the manga by Tsutomu Nihei? Or is it an actual philosophy book that I haven't heard of? If the former I appreciate the joke of including it
Kant was against wage slavery. He said that that which has dignity has no price. Wage slavery robs workers of their dignity by putting a price on their labour and the hours of their lives.
Can you define synthetic distinct from analytic? Literally I've looked in a lot of different places and can't seem to find a single unanimously accepted definition. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
you should keep looking and reading but i understand analytic as explicative: "expresses nothing in the predicate but what has been already actually thought in the concept of the subject' like saying a square has four sides, we know from the subject (square) what the predicate is (it has four sides), and i understand synthetic as amplifying: "we add to the first concept a second one not thought in it" like the sky is blue, we take sky and add blue to it (this is a synthetic a posteriori while stuff like math is synthetic a priori)
@@ryanpruner1853 That doesn't seem to clearly distinguish analytic from synthetic, but rather, definition from empirical towards the end there when you talk about synthetic a priori/a posteriori.
@@virtuosic4883 true, maybe it will help also to consider synthetic judgements can be either a posteriori or a priori, and analytic can only be a priori? if i had to say in just one word for both, analytic is explicative, and synthetic amplifying (for judgements) i am not an authority on this so apologies if it is unhelpful
Can we at least call analytical claims/statements self evident? I will concede that analytical claims/statements are trivial, but we need to at least hold on to this to maintain coherency, right? RIGHT?! Also, I'm assuming analytical claims and analytical statements are the same. If they are not, please let me know. Maybe I'm over valuing coherency? Maybe I only want understanding? Is coherency the same thing as understanding? What does it mean to understand something that is incoherent? Someone please help me out here XD
I can‘t help you with most of your Problems, but for my thesis I look at paraconsitent logic and as a motivation for such a logic the metaphysical Position of dialetheism: which claims that some statements can be true and false at the same time. So in a Sense statements like these would be inconsistent but not incoherent...so these to notions come apart. One example that some take to be true and false at the same time ist the liars paradox „this sentence is false“. So if take that view and these definitions you can atleast understand something inconsistent, but I haven‘t really thought about, and tried to come up with a good definition to tell if something is incoherent 🤷♀️
A modern American might say that 'equal' in the first para of the Declaration of Independence really means 'have the right to equality before the Law'. Another person might add, 'have the right to equality of opportunity'. These were not eighteenth-century concerns, I think.
What do you think?
Great!
I think Kant needs more coffee :)
Very nice video. I applaud especially how you connect Kant to other philosophers who exercized critique, but are often despised by fans of Kant. (As similarly Kant is hated by their respective fans.) One point of criticism I do have is that critiques of dogma, as you said, need not disprove a dogma or replace it necessarily. For this reason, I find it somewhat odd that you mentioned academic philosophy 'giving into wokeness' as a problem. Surely it needs to be dealt with critically, but in the end, the real world practices of universities always go beyond critiques, in that they must undertake actions and practices, which must be based not simply on a critique of dogmas, but also on a well-considered choice for a certain course of action. If universities find good reasons to to undertake policies that might fall under any type of dogma, such as the "woke" one or that of individual liberalism, they should in the end, under the practical need to make decisions, not keep themselves from pursuing them under the excuse of not wanting to affirm any dogma's. I don't think diversity programmes or other policies at universities that might be considered "woke" preclude academia from engaging with the dogma critically. Did I misunderstand what you meant with that comment? If not, is there a reason my perspective is wrong? In any case; thank you for the excellent video.
God, I would love to see you sit down with Peterson. He would come expecting a fight, playing the victim as he always does, and all of his assumptions would get shut down so eloquently. I love the Foucault passage- one of my favorites. Everybody is hypnotized like Peterson into thinking there needs to be this battle where one set of dogmas prevails over another. You linked the modern plight of philosophy back to Kant in a brilliant way here, and I enjoyed it very much!
Like it! it opened new questions for like the difference between Kant and neoKantians. It reminded me that marxists dis not like neokantians, but frankly I still do not get it (I tried with Ilyenkov here, but I failed...). I assume it pass through an interpretation of Kant? Thanks a lot and Cheers.
A SERIOUS philosophy channel being taught by someone with credentials?
YES PLEASE! instant sub.
You should check out Gregory Sadler as well, had a huge series on Hegels phenomenology
Who gives a shit about credentials? They are arbitrary in nature. Just be happy to be taught by someone who loves philosophy and can communicate it in understandable and engaging ways
@@davyroger3773 Credentials matter, because it means I am listening to someone who has been properly educated and is not just talking out of their ass. But go off.
@@corpsecandy2076 All that means is that you're too easily influenced by the appearance of knowledge rather than the knowledge itself.
You want to know how to tell if somebody knows their shit? It's not by looking at their 3 conveniently framed degrees on the wall. It's by listening to what they actually have to say and weighing it against your own knowledge
@@davyroger3773 I think both are important. You can not always trust your own knowledge vs theirs. That is a way you could fall victim to scammers, radicals and grifters. There should be some proof of experience or others to verify that this person is legitimate. Though trusting wholesale a profile of degrees and connections is also a way idiots and pretenders can go around and under whatever societies current system of verification is. So it is wise to actually listen and never blindly trust credibility either.
This isn't really about the video itself, but I think the chapter feature would be useful given your comment in the description.
For example, putting something like this in the desc.:
0:00 Kant's Philosophy
13:44 Why We Need a New Enlightenment
Maybe it's just nerdy me, but I watch Carefree Wandering videos 5 times all the way from start to finish because I always miss nuggets the first 4 times. Nonetheless video chapters are definitely a good idea!
Sure! Thanks for the suggestion.
When I read writings before Kant, I often see many attempt to either maintain the status quo (like Aquinas and the Scholastics) or challenge it, hoping to replace it with a new dogmatic status quo (like Hume or Locke). Kant really, for me, sums up what it means to enlighten - not to simply do away with our dogmas and belief structures but to explore them and see what they are made of (and then perhaps make a decision thereafter).
This is why it is also quite frustrating when looking at his own beliefs, because he gives such a brilliant critique of the Ontological and Cosmological arguments for God - one may be convinced he is an atheist, but even then... It is tempered by postulates for God and Immortality with his deontological moral theory is based on such reason that even Aquinas would think that would be more than enough. It is quite apt, then, that he should be buried half in a church and half out of it. He seems very gracious towards the rationalists (like Descartes and Leibniz) but believes that he has been woken from his ‘slumber’ by Hume, the empiricist. He does things in such a way as to expose things in religion, empiricism, rationalism and morality but never to utterly abandon them or replace them. Later thinkers like Marx and Nietzsche seem quite fine with doing this process of abandonment of previous ideas for Communism or the Übermensch, but Kant can’t seem to let go (at least if you consider those ideas to be holding him back).
I am always quite amazed by reading Kant and I think such nuance is required in an increasingly divided world. When the schism between Communism and Capitalism occurred, it seemed to be very reminiscent of the similar things occurring during 17th Century Crisis after the Protestant Reformation. One could see how Enlightenment and nuance arose from the divisions of religion, and indeed - we need a new critique. Just as the enlightenment thinkers critiqued religion in response to the crisis of the 17th Century, we must critique our own schisms and divisions in order to respond to the crisis in the 20th and 21st century. We must do so as Kant did, with nuance and balance. Not to reject all these ideas but to explore them and see both merits and downfalls.
I think sociology fulfills that role.
Based
This! This comment!
@@DJWESG1 Sociology can't make moral judgements on its own, nor is it apt to analyse the internal logic of a moral system.
@@AR15ORIGINAL its the best thing we have though.
This is the first time I have actually gotten a clear distinction on things being "transcendent" or "transcendental" after trying to understand it for so long from other texts, thanks to the professor and the channel!
Its the difference between electrocution and firing squad.
The way you summarized the relative dogmas of the two competing civil religions in America as more or less a cult of Wokeness and a cult of National Security was spot on from my view as an American citizen of the midwest. I closed one of my albums with a song called Stay Safe, Stay Awake. This video just got me to realize that I was actually speaking to both sides of this conflict with its message. I love the American people, so for the sake of our collective future I was urging them to both stay safe AND stay awake. Further, I realized that in writing, the Stay Safe appears on the left (where that message is less popular politically), and Stay Awake appears on the right. That was a beautiful moment to start my day with. Thanks for your excellent work, sir.
„I have to make sure to pronounce it not in the german way.“
literally 6 seconds later: KANT
ansonsten sehr gutes Video!!! ;)
i noticed that too lol
Loved that :D
We should keep pronunciations authentic. I’m not from the US but I speak English and I say it like “chan’t” with a hard aspirated C
Well, the proper German pronunciation sounds like "cunt", and that's what he wanted to avoid...
@@meahoola sometimes you just can’t ;)
Bravo! It’s not easy explaining Kant in a way which is simple yet not superficial!
Awesome content. Keep this coming
The new critique Kant arrive soon enough! Meaningful categories please! Thumbs up.
Don't know much about philosophy, but I recognized some names that were influenced by Kant's Copernican Turn. When you started to talk about Foucault and how "things are not as self evident as we believed," I too was reminded of the Declaration of Independence. When you connected dogmas and religions to things I recognized, my mind expanded a bit. Still don't know much about philosophy, but I do know that Kant is very very relevant today!
Thats not yours and they keep saying it's mine
Very insightful video. As a musician who wants to be more philosophically aware this is a helpful goal to keep in mind as I read the works of the philosophers who came before to assist in my attempts to engage in philosophical discourse.
it should be against he law to teach philosophy in America.
I found this overview fascinating! Discussing Kant without mentioning "epistemology", "a priori", "the thing in itself" or drawing attention to Kant's encounter with Hume really stands out. In my own development, Kant has provoked an "inward turn" whereby Schopenhauer, revisiting the Greeks from a tragic perspective and the works of writers such as Dostoyevski and Kafka (among others) have taken on a greater philosophical role, certainly, than that of academic philosophy.
I hope to see more from this channel. Rarely do I watch videos on youtube over and over and over again just to understand them. Thank you for all you've done so far! Please give us more :)))
I appreciate the warning at the end of the video.
After finishing up the introduction to CoPR I faithfully typed your channels name in the search bar followed up with "kant". What I was to find greatly stimulated me. Thank you Dr Hans-Georg Moeller, it was a pleasure to watch.
What an extraordinary critique. I feel I understand things a bit more
Timely video in my intellectual development! I haven't had a chance to study Kant, but came across the idea of critique in the sense in your video while studying Nietzsche, Foucault and Heidegger. Saw a nice attempt at a genealogical critique for a very contemporary problem in Koopman's book "How we became our data". I look forward to doing more critiques and reading about them.
Ein sehr aufgeklarte Erklarung! Vielen Dank.
Thank you for that warning label.
Wonderfully informative video! Made it easy to understand! Thank you!
Or at least it made me FEEL like I understood.
Nice username
These are excellent, every one I've watched so far. Also shoutouts for dropping McLuhan in there cuz I'm almost shocked at how little mention he gets these days
I'm even more shocked that Kittler and Flusser don't get any mention whatsoever.
Thank you for some well thought through discussion of some of our contemporary conundrums. I try my best to follow!
One thing: Please don’t worry about not pronouncing Kant the German way. You’re over-correcting! :-] That’s precisely the way you should pronounce it!-not because it’s correct in the sense that that’s the way it’s really pronounced in the original language, but because that’s the way it is actually pronounced by native speakers of American English!! (Maybe it’s different in British English, I don’t know.) In 72 years I’ve never heard it pronounced like “can’t” (or the other English word “cant” which sounds exactly the same), and in fact it is actually disorienting to hear it pronounced that way!
Thanks for trying though!!
Best-
Fantastic stuff! Keep it coming.
Prof Moeller could your suggest any English language references from where one might study Kant? I’m wary of starting with any nearest book in hand since you mentioned (in another video) the losses in translation such as in equating transcendent and transcendental.
I have two other questions if you have the time:
1) Have you come across Kant’s work on physics? There’s supposedly a paper where he mediates a debate between a “Newtonian” school and a “Leibnizian” school on the measurement of forces. Obviously I don’t even have the slightest grasp of what these differing “schools” are but as a physicist I was intrigued as to why one of the world’s most important philosophers published papers involving physics.
2) Have you studied or come across Advaita (non-dualism)?
just replying for the notification in case you get an answer : )
Same as yout ube
You can start with reading a few "popular" essays by Kant such as "Answer to the Question What is Enlightenment?" If you have some practice in reading philosophical texts, you can try Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (his own summary of the Critique of Pure Reason) and the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (a sort of short version of the Critique of Practical Reason). Most introductory books on Kant written by academics are good--just check out which style you prefer. The same goes for academic entries on Kant online, like this one:: plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
@@hans-georgmoeller7027 thanks a lot Prof. Moeller!
Wait, that "BLAME!" on the shelf behind him is the manga by Tsutomu Nihei or not? It is pretty funny to think that along lots of books about philosophy there you can find "BLAME" among them :D
It’s the manga. He also has a lot of American comics on his shelf
I can't find it, but it's pretty cool that he has it. I was already really liking his teaching style :D
I do wonder though if philsophy as critique is sufficient. If all that it can do is dissect the conditions of things, then what remains for us as practically binding beliefs? If the critique leads us to a certain revision, then what standard makes that determination? And isn't that standard itself subject to critique? Does philosophy as critique not fall into infinite regress, or into an implicit dogma, if it cannot secure some principle immune to critique in the former, or discreetly smuggle it in the latter.
Great video. Would love to see some videos on Hegel!
That’s amazing that you share your knowledge here. Thank you.
Great video! Could anyone point me to where Foucault's quote is from at 18:00?
Love your videos BTW; always clear, concise, pleasant to listen to and mostly very informative and intelligently constructed.
Happy to see Adolph Reed Jr. mentioned. A great critical voice.
Great video! Hope to see more! My youtube philosophers hasn't really made any philosophy content in a good while. There are some good philosophy entertainers out there (especially contrapoints) But I do miss these more dry, lecture like videos. Learn way more from them.
Keep making videos! You are great at explaining complex ideas. You also seem very professional
Great vid! Could you plz make a video about the "Dialektik der Aufklärung" that seems to point out (not sure whether I understood it correctly) that nihilism might be the logical consequence of the enlightenment movement (understood as overarching extension of reason). Would be a good part II.
Love it, thx for going into my questions about Slavoj Zizek!
I know that this is a very good discussion of the topic because I simultaneously have a deeper understanding of it and I have many more questions.
One question about philosophy vs religion: if Kant's goal was to liberate philosophy from religion, why didn't he follow a path already made available to him by Hume? What justifies the transcendental approach as opposed to simply embracing skepticism?
He was tired of the Wolff/Leibnizian idealism. He wanted certainty like in metaphysics as found in math, the natural sciences, etc. The possibility for synthetic a priori truths seems to be the 'way' out. To discover that synthetic a priori truths were possible was a fantastic leap forward for separating religion from philosophy.
You know you are watching a serious channel when the video is 10 minutes old but there are no comments because people actually watch the video before writing comments.
And I'm here to ruin this 😅
and the comments are not YAAAS QUEEEEEN/KING wayyy more interested in personality over the material discussed
Nice. A few small points. [16:07] The irony of all ironies is to see Richard Rorty as a NeoKantian, since Rorty spent most of his time trying to avoid, what he calls, the Plato-Kant Canon, only now to be swallowed up by it!? Rorty's linguistic turn was not an "inquiry" into the conditions of philosophical claims. Although, in Wittgenstein, from whom Rorty was inspired, it is not as clear where philosophical claims begin and end.
R is a nihilist, like Kant. Plato is idealist.
I agree critique is extremely important but shouldn't it always be complemented by a proposed alternative? Why should someone listen to you if you can't offer anything better? In something like postmodernism, it seems to me that its endless critique of power structures has brought more apathy and nihilism than any substantial change to the conditions they're so obsessed with.
On the other hand, maybe asking the question is more important than answering it? I certainly agree with the point in the video that rushing into a newer form of dogmatism isn't ideal, but at the end of the day don't we need something to work with?
This is a difficult question and I'm not really sure where I stand but if P != NP, surely philosophy should spend more effort on fixing problems than finding them?
I never got the "if you can't fix don't point it's flaws" view. If I notice a problem I can't fix, why shouldn't I warn others who might be able to fix it or reduce the harm? Why should it matter whether the same person described the problem and came up with the solution? It's perfectly fine collaboration - sometimes it might even be the only way, if it takes different skill sets to do either.
That being said, the video points out that the point of "critique" as such is not showing something is wrong so much so as that it's not self-evident as previously thought. It might be seen in a liberating light maybe. Of course there's always the risk of actually finding flaws and no solutions and building apathy, but I think it's a little one-sided to say postmodernism (as in, the study of the postmodernist "condition" or whatever) brought apathy - there are a lot of other, more structural ways to explain this apathy as well, and I think postmodernism itself helps elucidate part of that.
That being said, I agree that it's easy to use the view of "critique" as a way to shield yourself and your work from the world, but there are in fact movements trying to propose structured "solutions" since at least the 19th century which are still alive and being constantly updated trough practice (even if they don't have as much traction right now as I'd like), but it does start blurring the line on what is philosophy I think. There's that famous quote from Marx about changing the world - but he came after Kant.
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Fair enough, I certainly agree that it needn't be the same person who finds flaws as who fixes them. Also, don't get me wrong I like critique too (hence why I'm critiquing it), I think that my point is that it is not sufficient for good philosophy in my opinion. You can only take things apart for so long before they need to be put together again, right?
@@edwinagnew6800 Yeah, makes sense.
I guess it's a matter of how much of that responsibility befalls a single person, a movement, philosophy as a whole or some even larger area of human action.
But I agree that if at the end of the day all that get's done is critique that's not enough.
@Infernal Moondance I actually work on a "militant" collective which deals with education. I'm in contact with others who work on a lot of different areas, many of which trough organization on their communities and/or workplaces, other with friends/people with compatible principles and goals.
A lot of these people also engage in different levels of "critique" and have their actions informed by it (and vice-versa).
Also there are many places in which a lot of different forms of action are taking place right now, from south america to the middle east.
Some of it may be bigger, some smaller, some closer to the heart of the issues faced, some more superficial, but there are definitely things being done nowadays - I don't think it's fair to say we have nothing but critique (although it may be the case in your region, I obviously can't that : p)
15:20 There's also Durkheim and later Lévi-strauss and Bourdieu that explicitly mention Kantian categories or schemas and study the forms of classification of Native Americans, French peasants or preparatory classes teachers for example
Hello, professor. Thank you for your videos. I especially liked those on Daoism in the Philosophy in Motion channel. I was wondering if you, as a foreign professor living in China, are you allowed to critically analyze Chinese society in general and the Chinese Communist Party in particular. Is that beyond your conditions of possibility or is there any other reason to focus on criticizing western liberal democracies?
Once again, thank you for your videos and keep up the good work.
He works in Hong Kong, so his freedom in that sense is a bit up in the air I suppose
@@autodidacticseaturtle7955 I think that he works on Macau
@@CedricAyres Yes, you are right. I remembered mistakenly.
@@autodidacticseaturtle7955 It's easy to mix them up. After all, HKU is much more famous, lol
Amazing video. Clearly explained and fascinating!
very well explained, you are an excellent professor
Great video. But I wonder if you could speak more to an important-indeed perhaps crucial-shift from Kant to the Kant-inspired projects of the present: namely, the shift from a conception of critique as a search for *necessary and universal* conditions of possibility to the conception of it as a search for *historically contingent and biologically/socially situated* conditions?
I can agree on the role and importance of critique, BUT I can also agree with another thing that is its limitation: that it's by its nature incapable of affirmation and that perhaps our biggest problem is that we need to some positive, creative ideas to move on. What could they be though?
join the Imperial Guards and serve the God Emperor
This is my new favourite channel. This guy is so authentic, I feel like he is my friend.
Everyone else is a grifter and a fake, but I feel like this guy is subverting social media with these videos.
Everyone says that about their fav
Be careful of development of a Parasocial relationship. It is not mentally healthy to see someone you only watch online as a friend. Admiration and learning from someone as an audience is understandable but using such absolute language about anyone you do not actually know is a bit concerning.
@@oryx_85 that was the joke. I understand irony doesn’t come across well on social media, so perhaps I should stop using it.
Cheers though!
@@CarlyonProduction Oh my yes it is. Also these days reactionaries are so close to parody I am finding difficult to tell the difference. Sorry!
This was a very elegant explanation.
This hits the nail on the head “much of today’s philosophy is in service of today’s civil religion [of individualism]”. Criticism of the individual’s right to find some “resource” to exploit is simply sac religious and must be suppressed.
The only thing you can experience is yourself. So group think is transcendent. Individualism is transcendental.
Great stuff, but I don’t agree with this prevailing and generally accepted idea that religion needs dogma to exist. You didn’t say that outright but I felt that was the undercurrent of part of the talk.
Kierkegaard would disagree with this idea that faith requires dogma, and would instead argue that faith is a individual act that often supplants dogma, and transcends it. Instead of trying to paint religion with a broad brush, I think we should stop using it as a stand-in word for certain kinds of dogma. Faith is very complex, personal, and philosophically demanding thing. Faith is not the same as blind belief, but is facing the absurdities of the world and what you believe head-on, but choosing to believe anyway.
Taking religion as by default useless is really missing a lot. If we stop equating a certain kind of religious person (one that blindly follows without thinking) with religion then we will find a use for philosophy of religion again. Just like how we need to stop equating a certain kind of leftist (the woke stereotypes) with leftism, and a certain kind of right leaning person with right leaning politics.
I just don’t like the rhetoric of dismissal, as if we know anything at all fundamentally. We know very little, and we make a series of assumptions and broad brushstrokes to get back something that makes sense in our lives, but its a lie to think that way.
Kant's philosophy and "Post Enlightenment philosophy" rely on logical (right brain) thinking to explain stuff but that can't on it's own explain spirituality but with left brain thinking it can.
I believe that when the founders of the US wrote that all men are created equal, they meant primarily that they were born 'equal in the *rights* they are entitled to'. I don't think that they were trying to address the question whether humans were born 'equal in their various *abilities*', the 'nature vs nurture' debate and so on. This interpretation seems reasonable in view of the context of this sentence and the historical situation in which they were written. This was a statement against hereditary privilege - basically, the idea was that no human has any right to power or privilege just by virtue of having been born to certain parents (a nobleman and especially a [British] king is what they had in mind in their particular case). Instead, the only justification of any human's political power over other humans could be that it is useful to and voluntarily accepted by those other humans. This is a reasonable position regardless of different abilities, nature vs nurture etc. Even if we assume that I am, say, somewhat more intelligent than my neighbour, and even that this difference is somehow innate, that certainly doesn't give me any moral right to enslave him, force him to obey me, etc. He needs to commit a crime, go insane or something like that to forfeit his right to be as free as I am.
@Infernal Moondance I'm not sure which part of my argument you're referring to. Yes, regardless of whether A and B are individuals or groups, even if A is innately more intelligent than B, that does not give A the right to enslave B. Both A and B are entitled to freedom. Among other things, intelligence does not equal altruism and preclude abuse of power.
@Infernal Moondance On the founders - they had different opinions about slavery: many, like Jefferson, were against it in theory in spite of their own practice. The fact is that they didn't make any exception for non-white races in the sentences quoted in the video. And you're wrong in asserting that their main focus was on equality between ethnicities - English, Irish, etc.; neither Americans nor Englishmen were particularly fond of the Irish at the time. Their focus was on equality between aristocrats, including kings, and non-aristocrats. Class, not race was the burning issue of the day. On slavery having been 'beneficial' to the slaves - yeah, in the same way in which obeying a person pointing a gun at your head is 'beneficial' to you. There has never been a 'wild' 'state of nature' for humans to trade for slavery - we've moved on since Hobbes.
Great video!
A discussion between yourself and Jordan Peterson would be great! He's usually pretty open to constructive criticism.
Reminds me of Adorno and Horkheimer critique in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. How do you see their critique of the reason becoming irrational in the world today?
It's not just about that. It's also the naive idea that we can be without irrationality - that's a dogma! The 'mathematical' systems that reason creates are totalitarian in a way that they show themselves as facts without feelings, but we know that these systems are, in themselves, pictures of the world. Closed symbolic interpretations that think of themselves as raw truth. What can not be explained is diluted, appropriated, by the system, or completely rejected, ignored by it.
@@EdwardMunz yeah, it's a bit like if you have a hammer and it's the greatest because now you don't have to punch nails so you start hammering windows in order to open them. With rationality I feel like we've come to a point in which we use it anti-rationally (avoiding "irrationally" because things which are not rational are not necessarily contradictory with rationality, which is a distinction I feel we lack).
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Nice analogy.
@@EdwardMunz The 'mathematical' system can only hit where it is defined and it better destroy everything it hits
Please make a video about Spinoza. That would be great.
and let me ask ask my questions
What do you think about Jonathan Israel's claim about him in the book "Radical Enlightenment"?
Do you see any connection between Spinoza's idea and Daoism?
What is role of Spinoza in Niklas Luhmann's thought development? I heard from you in a interview that Luhmann
frequently cited Spinoza and stoics and it made me curious. It would be nice to hear about it from you.
Thanks for your great work.
You got the blame manga in the background!! Nicee
Excellent lecture!
I think I now know why Jordan Peterson hates Marx and Foucault so much. His whole career has been all about stopping young people, specially young man, from questioning what is considered self-evident. He does not want people questioning their position in a hierarchy, let alone hierarchies, he does not want people questioning our economic system, he advocates for religion as a source of deeper truths, male and female roles are self-evident. No, with his 12 rules for life, only focusing on yourself, he offers you no option but to internalize what seems self-evident until you fit the mold.
He just understands how to advance mainstream centrist agendas with right-wing framing. He's an ideologue, the irony.
Definitely appreciate you're efforts, thank you. I had a hard time processing Chomsky's criticism of Zizek because I felt his function, at least for the last few years, has been as you say a critique of those things taken for granted by the general public- "left and right." Chomsky's stance is that there is no academic value and Zizek is just a good actor emotionally engaging in controversy for profit. Seemed to me he is filling the function of a philosopher and your confirmation is satisfying as I've enjoyed your intellectual take on the topic you've discussed.
Chomsky's 'critique' of Zizek is sad. I wish he tackled the philosophy of Zizek instead of falling right into the common critique which is easilly countered by the pragmatic socio-cultural roots in Zizeks philosophy.
Dear Professor, Maybe I am being too bold but I would like to suggest another take on Contingency vs Necessity. Please give me your Critique on this. Thank you. "There is no difference between contingency and necessity, they are one and the same, namely a continuum. “Nothing is necessary, everything is coincidental.” (Nietzsche) It only appears (artificially) to be necessary or contingent; we as observers create this idea of contingency and necessity as we stop and start the video/movement. Existence is just one big Continuum: for example; the four seasons are neither contingent nor necessary, they just are. One moves imperceptibly into the other and the distinction in season is only an artificial contingency that we invent. The composition of the continuum is constantly varying to infinity and constantly changing. But the continuum moves forward and never backward nor in the same path twice. (See train analogy)." Maurice Guy from Florida USA
Very insightful, thank you professor
Couldn't agree more. How do you view the process of philosophy disseminating into the public consciousness?
Do you recommend any books that explain in more detail the philosophy of civic religion? Also, apart from Zizek, Michaels and Reed any critique based philosophy?
Are Kant's claims that Space, Time and Causality are forms of intuition of the understanding and not something that exist in the world in itself still accepted in modern academia ?
Correct. A holy see and they process the information. Causality is the major issue of the procedure and I kant take them seriously.
Why does the warning that the platform is addictive come at the end of the video?
The reason could be that watching UA-cam videos is considered habit-forming. It could be a warning for us to not spend too much time using platforms ☺️
This was awesome. Now do Hegel please :)
I've come to think that the dualism that Kant defined, reduced the Enlightenment to that of a bargain with an expiration date.
"give me one good miracle, and I can explain rest"
Post-modernism today, is giving notice of said expiration. What enlightenment will end up looking like in the post-modern era, I can't imagine.
Is it possible that we need to do a critical analysis in this sense, to that practice itself? Why should we ask about the conditions of the objects that appear to us?
Consider critiquing public "intelectualls" like Peterson who are ideology at it's purest! ;)
PURE IDEOLOGY and so and so...
Mein Gott!!
everyone has a philosophy and a set of ideologies. and yes, I believe JP is well read, much better proofs and reasoning by his side :)
@@rajatchandra3209 he’s read the Bible, frued, and jung-good for him
@@luxinvictus9018 he has read the communist manifesto and not Das capital or other works. He admitted this in the debate with Zizek. JP is not as well read as people think he is.
We doooo need a new enlightenment.
Very good! Keep it up!
I think the new enlightenment should aim for investigating the conditions needed to learn to let go of the urge to ‘create’ knowledge and thus a false sense of security. We still reach beyond our understanding which is perfectly fine but as soon as we learn to let that urge go we may have come one step closer to freedom. The end of dogmatism may be unattainable but we can at least realize the role we play in how knowledge comes to be and when we make it dogmatic. Reality is beyond out grasp, enjoy it (carefree wandering?)
The man who . . . closed the door of philosophy to reason, was Immanuel Kant. . . .
Kant’s expressly stated purpose was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. He knew that it could not survive without a mystic base-and what it had to be saved from was reason.
Didn't you say in another video that Time, Space and so are not 'concepts?' At 5:20, you seem to be saying that.
Time, space are absolutely concepts. Concepts which have "real" analogies. But concepts nonetheless
Great video, thanks for sharing
Excellent 🙏
Nice video, could you make a similar one on Hegel ?
Well, that is a really good video.
Thanks for the warning at the end. :)
Also, I am genuinely curious to know how many languages do you speak. You are professor at University of Macau. It is safe to presume that you know chinese-mandarim (?). I saw what seems to be some russian books. Not the easiest languages to learn, I must say.
So to unpack this I’m going to have to read all of Kant’s work, right? Got it, starting with the Prologmena!
Almost everything that had been said here is in the introduction of The critique of pure reason.
This gives a good outline, however it does illustrate how some terms have been radically mishandled and effected colloquial language, particularly in the last half century.
Can you cover Wittgenstein ?
I liked the video anyway (as always), but I liked more because you mentioned Adolph Reid Jr...
I'm trying to think through these ideas.. How are critiques of a dogma not themselves other "dogmas?" Aren't they simply truth claims about what conditions/factors/etc result in a particular dogma? Why are these truth claims less dogmatic than the initial dogmas? What evidence is supporting them? Is there some "scale" of dogmatism to measure each truth claim? Would it rely on evidence of some kind? What would constitute evidence? Curious if anyone has any thoughts/reading suggestions on this.
Overall this video was very well made and thought-provoking. Thank you!
>What evidence is supporting them?
You can't evaluate evidence without thinking about evidence. Evidence is to be interpreted; if you doubt your own capacity, not your competency, to interpret data, you can't say anything about it at all. You could trust the authorities, but it's within the faculties of your mind that you chose to confide in them (even if the underlying rationale is flawed). Epistemology 101.
Could you do a video on Dugin, Evola, or the other traditionalists? We fundamentally do not understand them in the west.
Can you do a video about the multiverse theory, and modern rationalism
The Multiverse theory isn't really a Philosophy question, it is a Physics/Astronomy question and he is not a Physicist/Astronomer.
@@lobstered_blue-lobster nah i’d say it’s more philosophy bc people think that multiverses can be obderbed
The problems start when philosophers critique fields they have no real idea about them in professional sense. Does a philosopher who has no training in economics and industry can give a meaningful critique about those field? Would we take a serious critique of a philosopher about medicine?
I mean, we can have sort of critique on those field but it will be limited and not much useful
I never really liked Jordan Peterson's ideas in general but I never put much thought into the real reason I didn't like him, but I think I finally understood it when you said that he does not propose to critique the "wokeness culture" but instead he actually propose to substitute it for another thing.
hi, i'm preparing for MA philosophy exam in june. what would you advice me?
With good vibrations! Das Wichtigste an Kant ist wohl die "Kopernikanische Wende". Und die ist auf Wikipedia wesentlich einfacher und verständlicher dargestellt und erklärt. Ausserdem: Was in aller Welt kann oder könnte Sie daran hindern, einen deutschen Philosophen auf deutsche Art zu benennen?
Great videos! This is the closest thing I can get to my then beloved philosophy 101 class. I am wondering what would Kant say about our "post-truth era"? Would he be excited about the fact that everything is being questioned and about our general mistrust in authorities? Or would he rather be shocked about how irrational and full of dogma most of those anti-science critiques are?
Me personally I think we are in dire need of another enlightenment, to educate people how to consume media and spot misinformation.
How do you square this idea with Marx's: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.". Did Marx cease to be a Philosopher in this Kantian sense when he attempted to provoke the 'replacing of one dogma with another'? Does any Philosophy that attempts to use it's critique to cause change cease to be Philosophy? And if so, what does it then become? Sorry if this is a dumb question and I've misunderstood the video.
But is not every endeavor motivated? Is there some argument for the elevation of philosophy over dogma that is not based on a premise that cannot be proven? I think not. What I am saying is that philosophy is itself, ultimately, as unreasonable as religion. I use reason, of course; but I cannot justify my use of it, nor can I justify any of my arguments that use it because all of my premises are ultimately unreasonable.
I’m not sure if it would be in your specialty or interest, but I would love a video on phenomenology and Kant’s influence on Husserl and the later existentialists. I have heard Kant referred to, perhaps controversially, as the first phenomenologist. This is by far my favourite philosophy channel, so regardless, please keep the videos coming! :)
Would love to see you on ZeroBooks discussing critical theory. Hit them up!
more like "one good book"
So, being aware of inequality and systemic discrimination is bad? Or is wokeness defined differently here?
Every time I watch one of these videos I wonder: is the Blame! book in the background the manga by Tsutomu Nihei? Or is it an actual philosophy book that I haven't heard of?
If the former I appreciate the joke of including it
its the manga im pretty sure
Kant was against wage slavery. He said that that which has dignity has no price. Wage slavery robs workers of their dignity by putting a price on their labour and the hours of their lives.
"Why we Need a New Enlightenment?"
So we can usher ourselves into the newly aportuned-bright-Quantum-paradigm.
Can you define synthetic distinct from analytic?
Literally I've looked in a lot of different places and can't seem to find a single unanimously accepted definition.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
you should keep looking and reading but i understand analytic as explicative: "expresses nothing in the predicate but what has been already actually thought in the concept of the subject' like saying a square has four sides, we know from the subject (square) what the predicate is (it has four sides), and i understand synthetic as amplifying: "we add to the first concept a second one not thought in it" like the sky is blue, we take sky and add blue to it (this is a synthetic a posteriori while stuff like math is synthetic a priori)
@@ryanpruner1853 That doesn't seem to clearly distinguish analytic from synthetic, but rather, definition from empirical towards the end there when you talk about synthetic a priori/a posteriori.
@@virtuosic4883
true, maybe it will help also to consider synthetic judgements can be either a posteriori or a priori, and analytic can only be a priori?
if i had to say in just one word for both, analytic is explicative, and synthetic amplifying (for judgements)
i am not an authority on this so apologies if it is unhelpful
It would be interesting to see you do videos about modern day philosophers, such as Slavoj Zizek, Jordan Peterson or even Noam Chomsky.
It's Peterson a philosopher? I think he's just a psychologist. I say this as a psychologist interested in philosophy.
None of those people are published philosophers.
Zizek has published philosophy, the other two haven’t.
@@kylec2761 true. Chomsky isn't a philosopher either.
Byung chul han
Can we at least call analytical claims/statements self evident?
I will concede that analytical claims/statements are trivial, but we need to at least hold on to this to maintain coherency, right? RIGHT?!
Also, I'm assuming analytical claims and analytical statements are the same. If they are not, please let me know.
Maybe I'm over valuing coherency? Maybe I only want understanding?
Is coherency the same thing as understanding? What does it mean to understand something that is incoherent?
Someone please help me out here XD
I can‘t help you with most of your Problems, but for my thesis I look at paraconsitent logic and as a motivation for such a logic the metaphysical Position of dialetheism: which claims that some statements can be true and false at the same time. So in a Sense statements like these would be inconsistent but not incoherent...so these to notions come apart. One example that some take to be true and false at the same time ist the liars paradox „this sentence is false“. So if take that view and these definitions you can atleast understand something inconsistent, but I haven‘t really thought about, and tried to come up with a good definition to tell if something is incoherent 🤷♀️
A modern American might say that 'equal' in the first para of the Declaration of Independence really means 'have the right to equality before the Law'. Another person might add, 'have the right to equality of opportunity'. These were not eighteenth-century concerns, I think.