History of Philosophy Audio Archive (William Engels | Podcaster @ https://Patreon.com/HemlockPatreon)

Another Roderick lecture from his series on 20th century philosophy "Self Under Siege"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itGtf3ZSkyQ

Syndicated for educational purposes according to fair use.

“The impoverished families of the long-term unemployed strained to the point of dysfunction, communities deprived of viable economies, interrupted educations, lost skills: these and many more results of capitalism’s crisis will put difficult demands on governments for years."

-Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work

Richard Wolff is an economist and political theorist associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the New Left. In this discussion, Wolff provides an unauthorized history of capitalism, discusses how corporate damages to society (or 'externalities' in the vernacular of the economics profession) are transferred to the population, how capitalist ideology drives zero-sum competition, and suggests practical policies that could lead to a more equitable distribution to wealth.

---

The original video can be found here, my thanks to the ACLU of Southern California for providing and maintaining this recording, which first aired on February 2015.

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. 

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

Discourse on freedom in Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit"

Original video available here, audio tweaks and trims were made to make the audio cleaner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MsNyR-epBM

Syndicated for educational purposes in accordance with fair use.

-//-

Original YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ5m5O-l8sU

Original Channel Page

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Credit for the copy below as well as the source videos goes to the great YouTube channel Philosophy Overdose. The lectures were first delivered in 1965.

Isaiah Berlin gives a series of 6 lectures on Romanticism and some of its sources. For Berlin, the Romantics set in motion a vast, unparalleled revolution in humanity’s view of itself. They destroyed the traditional notions of objective truth and validity in ethics with incalculable, all-pervasive results. As he said of the Romantics elsewhere: “The world has never been the same since, and our politics and morals have been deeply transformed by them. Certainly this has been the most radical, and indeed dramatic, not to say terrifying, change in men’s outlook in modern times.” In these brilliant lectures Berlin surveys the myriad attempts to define Romanticism, distills its essence, traces its developments from its first stirrings to its apotheosis, and shows how its lasting legacy permeates our own outlook. Combining the freshness and immediacy of the spoken word with Berlin’s inimitable eloquence and wit, the lectures range over a cast of the greatest thinkers and artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Kant, Rousseau, Diderot, Schiller, Schlegel, Novalis, Goethe, Blake, Byron, and Beethoven. Berlin argues that the ideas and attitudes held by these and other figures helped to shape twentieth-century nationalism, existentialism, democracy, totalitarianism, and our ideas about heroic individuals, individual self-fulfillment, and the exalted place of art. This is the record of an intellectual bravura performance–of one of the century’s most influential philosophers dissecting and assessing a movement that changed the course of history. These Mellon lectures were delivered in Washington in 1965.

-//-

Philosophy Overdose:

https://www.youtube.com/@Philosophy_Overdose

YouTube Source Material:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhP9EhPApKE_9uxkmfSIt2JJK6oKbXmd-&si=6livdDSyZL9-vzhk

How can the economy be reorganized to serve human needs and preserve the environment while maintaining growth and technological advancement?

What future technologies promise a better future?

Jeremy Rifkin is a path-breaking and heretical economist with a vision of a future in which the economy is re-conceived from the ground-up to ensure that everyone has what they need in order to flourish.

-//-

Credit for the episode art:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VaporwaveAesthetics/comments/5lf1qz/hokusai_vaporwave/

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

-//-

Original Video:

https://youtu.be/uMMJb3AxA0s

Original Channel (UChicago Divinity School)

https://www.youtube.com/@uchicagodivinityschool2166

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Thomas Aquinas is the smartest man who ever lived - with the sole exception of Jesus Christ.

-Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College

St. Thomas Aquinas is known for producing history’s most complete system of Christian philosophy. In the late thirteenth century, this quiet, reflective Dominican scholar combined the work of Aristotle with Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and pagan thought to reconcile reason and faith. He believed we can know that God exists but not what God is like. Thomas concluded that mortal happiness is uncertain but immortal happiness is the ultimate end of life; beatitude is to pass beyond death to "see the face of God." His thought continues to exert a powerful influence on Catholic philosophy today. 

-Kenneth L. Schmitz, author of this recording's script. (1922-2017)

Enjoy.

-//-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_L._Schmitz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kreeft

https://archive.org/details/thegiantsofphilosophy

Do you ever feel guilty? You probably should.

Especially if you're an American.

Crusades 3 of 3, and discussion of Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (AKA "Saladin").

Go subscribe to the Austin School on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool/videos

Fair use, educational purpose, non-profit.

“Some studies actually showed that that Russian drinkers lived longer than non-drinkers. [Michelle Parsons] suggested an explanation for the apparent vodka paradox: for what it is worth, alcohol may help people adapt to realities that otherwise make them want to curl up and die. Parsons, who called her book "Dying Unneeded", argued that Russians were dying early because they had nothing and no one to live for.”

-Masha Gessen, The Future is History

Masha Gessen is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a scholar of Russian domestic politics, especially in regard to Vladimir Putin. In this discussion, she describes why and how a resurgent cultural right-wing in Russia helmed by Putin has singled out and criminalized the queer community in Russia and pushed standards of toleration back into Russia's illiberal past. She once described herself, accurately, it would seem, as "the only openly gay person in Russia."

---

The original video can be found here, my thanks to Davidson College for providing and maintaining this recording which first aired in February 2018.

The keynote itself is untitled, and so the title "Putin and the Political Uses of Homophobia" is my attribution.

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. 

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

Check out my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Where did the Occupy movement come from? What was it like to be on the ground in Zuccotti Park in New York when the police charged through the encampment? What prospects for resistance exist as we move closer and closer to a new form of fascist power in the United States?

Tune in to Professor Roy (originally aired August 2018) and find out.

Original Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXQWJpI_6lw

https://apnews.com/article/noam-chomsky-hospitalized-stroke-recovery-brazil-4fb6782abf6a7b6d0bbb30cefa05cede

I learned yesterday that Noam Chomsky has had a massive stroke, one which has paralyzed the right side of his body and impaired his speech, from which he is now recovering.

Coverage of this medical episode should be minimal, in order to give an opportunity for the family to traverse the recovery process in peace, as these scientific collaborators and friends of Chomsky describe here:

https://youtu.be/KWKQIqzotLQ

I hope that he recovers, but I also know that such a recovery is deeply unlikely, if not impossible.

My strong wishes for recovery and privacy are with his family; I could not stop myself however, from reacting to the sudden and sad news with a profound sense of loss.

This is what I had to say, brief and insufficient, about the man who gave first a scared child, and later a young scholar, so much truth during a time of so many lies.

--

My gratitude to the Orion String Quartet for uploading this lovely performance of Beethoven's 13th String Quartet to IMSLP. The music is the fifth movement, the Cavatina.

https://imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No.13,_Op.130_(Beethoven,_Ludwig_van)

End the killing now.

Description from Media Sanctuary:

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

The Sanctuary for Independent Media

https://www.youtube.com/@mediasanctuary

Original YouTube: https://youtu.be/ly6lfhOxTe0?si=t6Uk-TzJLdIyF69S

Published December 8 2023

In this 2015 talk, philosopher Wendy Brown, author of "Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution" and "Regulating Aversion" gives a fascinating overview and analysis of the phenomenon of cultural decay under neoliberalism and offers a fascinating perspective on the early days of the US-Iraq War, especially the "leadership" of a certain Ian Bremmer, who as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority managed to destroy both the Iraqi state bureaucracy AND the standing Iraqi military, leading to the creation of, you guessed it, the 2004 Iraq Insurgency and of course Al-Qaeda in Iraq, later to become a little something called ISIS.

Original video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlLPxNdYYWo

Enjoy.

Dr. Cornel West, a leading philosopher and activist was invited to give the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh this year (2024). His series, entitled "A Jazz-soaked Philosophy for our Catastrophic Times: From Socrates to Coltrane" is an attempt to explore issues at the intersection of art, race, politics, and philosophy.

This is Lecture One of Six, titled a "Philosophical Prelude".

The original video link can be found here.

The YT page for the University of Edinburgh is here.

---

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

If you are able, donations to support the project, which is a labor of love for me, ⁠⁠are available through Spotify. ⁠⁠Anything helps and is felt.

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

Come join my Patreon! It's free!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

The late David Graeber was an anthropologist who often ventured into uncharted waters in the social sciences, exploring pirates, bullshit jobs, and the history of debt and currency. In this talk, he breaks down the moral psychology of debt, the history of currency, and why we all feel like we are "owed our due."

Enjoy.

I've committed a grave sin - coining a new term - and that terms is soterioactive. The soterioactive is all forms of human activity that serve primarily and expediently to liberate, deliver, or emancipate human beings from a condition of ignorance, vice, or hate. In this talk, I lay out what that looks like in the realms of public discourse, art/aesthetics, and in history.

Enjoy.

A HoPAA-exclusive preview of my new history podcast "Hemlock" - available now on Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/hemlockpatreon

Please come on over to my Patreon to get the first two episodes of my War on Terror series. We're exploring mass surveillance, CIA coverups, petroleum corporations in the Middle East, and the rise of punk music following 9/11.

Hope to see you there. Thank you for being a subscriber.

In May 1991 ethnobotanist and psychedelic researcher Terence McKenna recorded a two-day workshop at the Esalen Institute focused on the origins of European alchemy and its connections to religious and mystical practice.

Over the course of four hours, McKenna describes how alchemy originated in the Arab Empire before spreading to Western Europe, and explores the meaning of mythical objects such as the Philosopher Stone through the lens of esotericism and psychology.

McKenna draws on sources from Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Western Esotericism, and the Renaissance culture of Greek philosophy in order to tell a compelling history of ideas hidden from the mainstream tradition of Western Philosophy.

Some of the notable figures in the story include Renaissance philosophers and scientists such as Gemisthos Plethon, Marcilio Ficino, and Giordano Bruno. McKenna tells the stories of alchemists such as John Dee, Edward Kelly, Paracelsus, and Michael Maier.

The texts mentioned are as follows:

-The Rosicrucian Enlightenment by Frances Yates

-Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates

-Enneads by Plotinus

-The Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

-The Hermetic Museum by A. E. Waite

-The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Gustave Flaubert

-The Solitudes by John Crowley

-Psychology and Alchemy by Carl Jung

-The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler

"Anomie" is a term from the foundational French sociologist Emile Durkheim. It refers to the rage and chaos created in individuals and the networks they interact with when social disconnection and personal alienation reach dangerous levels. In this talk, Hedges turns his lens towards our cultural patterns of alienation, loneliness, resentment, frustration, and despair. He attempts to place the cause of mass shootings, ethnonationalist violence, and crimes of despair and self-harm within a sociological context responsive to our times.

The original video is here:

https://youtu.be/HV0cS1TGve4?si=VM8IEWYI3LdTfV-L

My thanks to the Sanctuary for Independent Media for hosting the presentation and uploading the material.

https://www.youtube.com/@mediasanctuary

Enjoy.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Talk Originally Titled “Deconstructing Racism and Sexism in the Envisagement of Western Civilization”

The use of the phrase “all men are created equal” was probably not a deliberate attempt to make a statement about women. It was just that women were beyond consideration as worthy of inclusion. They were politically invisible. Though practical needs gave women a certain authority in the home, on the farm, or in occupations like midwifery, they were simply overlooked in any consideration of political rights, any notions of civic equality.-Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, 1980⁠https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_State-//-

Original YouTube:

https://youtu.be/lk4ncpkstAw

Original Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool

“Totalitarian states use propaganda to orchestrate historical amnesia, a state-induced stupidity. The object is to make sure the populace does not remember what it means to be free. And once a population does not remember what it means to be free, it does not react when freedom is stripped from it.”

-Chris Hedges, The Wages of Revolt, 2015

Original YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXE6T1ySNRM

The Sanctuary for Independent Media:

https://www.youtube.com/@mediasanctuary

Description, per @mediasanctuary:

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

"Bohr was the recipient of the Atoms for Peace Prize. None of us knew what the prize was for, but everyone knew that this was the right man to give it to."

- J. Robert Oppenheimer, May 14th, 1964.

In this talk, the father of the atom bomb explores the perils of the nuclear arms race, the weaponization of science, the tragedy of confrontational Cold War politics, and the loss of his friend and inspiration, Niels Bohr, who died just two years before.

---

Original video found here, I've reduced the background noise, cut applause and distracting sounds, and minimized harmonic interference, although it was poorly mic'd and nonetheless has a few artifacts remaining.

My gratitude to the UCLA Communication Archive for preserving this wonderful piece of history.

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

Crusades 2 of 3.

Go subscribe to the Austin School on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool/videos

Syndicated according to fair use in accordance with nonprofit and educational purposes.

Third lecture

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

This is an eight lecture series, delivered in 2010 at UC Berkeley by the philosophy professor and overall great human being Hubert "Bert" Dreyfus as part of a Great Books course.

Enjoy.

"The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters."

-Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 1929.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Continuation of 135a

He had no way to flee or right his destiny-

our never-ending, all embracing net, I cast it

wide for the royal haul, I coil him round and round

in the wealth, the robes of doom, and then I strike him

once, twice, and at each stroke he cries in agony-

he buckles at the knees and crashes here!

...

So he goes down, and the life is bursting out of him

great sprays of blood, and the murderous shower

wounds me, dyes me black and I, I revel

like the Earth when the spring rains come down,

the blessed gifts of god, and the new green spear

splits the sheath and rips to birth in glory!

...

It is right, and more than right. He flooded

the vessel of our proud house with misery,

with the vintage of the curse and now

he drains the dregs. My lord is home at last.

-Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, 1401-1423, trans R. Fagles.

---

Original YouTube playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiyEzRZtxXGU

Thumbnail Photo:

The Mask of Agamemnon

Original writing:

williamengels.substack.com

Enjoy.

(00:00:00): Intro

(00:00:52): Milton and Power

(00:45:31): The Infant Cry of God

(01:33:38): Credible Employment

(02:24:03): Poetry and Virginity

(03:15:35): Poetry and Marriage

(04:02:57): Lycidas

(04:55:10): Lycidas Part II

(05:48:09): Areopagitica

(06:35:08): Paradise Lost Book I

(07:26:50): God and Mammon

(08:17:49): Miltonic Smile

(09:03:49): The Blind Prophet

(09:51:35): Paradise Lost Book III

-//-

A study of Milton's poetry, with some attention to his literary sources, his contemporaries, his controversial prose, and his decisive influence on the course of English poetry.

Description courtesy of Yale University, presented Fall 2007, uploaded November 2008. I opted to split this otherwise 19 hour episode into two parts so Spotify can handle it. See 135b.

-//-

Original YouTube Playlist (Milton with John Rogers): ⁠https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2103FD9F9D0615B7

Original Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@YaleCourses⁠

John Rogers, Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University, retired.

https://english.yale.edu/people/professors-emeritus/john-rogers⁠

"When someone asks you if you would like for your daughter to be honored by the god, always make sure you ask "Which god, exactly?" before replying.

-Roy, in this talk, with a sick laugh, paraphrased.

-//-

Original YouTube (Part 1):

https://youtu.be/wHRJyjvqeYo?si=6rZPXS4G5tja6nxu

Original YouTube (Part 2):

https://youtu.be/uraDUVCRsNc?si=bNOu-n05uT1uS8vB

All rights reserved to the Austin School YouTube Channel, please don't sue me, I'm on your side:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool

An interview between the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who specialize(d) in Ancient Greek philosophy and tragedy and Bryan Magee. Aired originally in 1987. Discusses in particular Aristotelian metaphysics and epistemology, describes the intellectual quarrel between Plato and Aristotle, and describes Aristotle's epistemic method as presented in the Posterior Analytics.

YouTube Source

PhilosophyOverdose YouTube Channel

As always, please consider subscribing to my source (Philosophy Overdose). They curate and maintain an excellent collection of philosophy videos.

This podcast, as all HoPAA podcasts, is distributed ad-free, for nonprofit and educational purposes, and syndicates its material in accordance with Fair Use.

By popular demand, Rick Roderick is back on the History of Philosophy Audio Archive. This is his complete series, Philosophy and Human Values.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

00:00:00 Intro

00:00:52 Socrates and the Life of Inquiry

00:47:13 Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics

01:28:45 Kant and the Path to Enlightenment

02:12:47 Mill on Liberty and Utilitarianism

02:56:53 Hegel and Modern Life

03:37:48 Nietzsche on Knowledge and Belief

04:22:21 Kierkegaard and the Modern Spirit

05:08:51 Philosophy and the Postmodern Condition

-//-

Ladies and Gentlemen, comrades and compadres, narcs and Feds I proudly present: the only Michael Parenti lecture in existence with good quality audio.

The gentlemen requires no introduction, but the book on imperialism in the Roman Republic he mentioned in the "E. Badian" quote is none other than Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic, which was less than simple to find.

Repuloaded to fix some minor audio bugs/content.

The original video can be found here, my thanks to AfroMarxist on YouTube for making this presentation available.

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. 

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

This year (2024) Dr. Cornel West was invited to give the annual Gifford Lecture Series at the University of Edinburgh. He shook things up - rather than outlining a theory or justifying a method for doing philosophy, he traced a new approach rooted in the language of jazz, blues, and the black freedom struggle in America.

(00:00:00) Philosophic Prelude

(00:49:55) Metaphilosophic Andante

(01:43:07) Folly Presto

(02:33:36) History Adagio

(03:26:47) American Allegro Molto Vivace

(04:25:41) A Love Supreme (A Way Through)

I've published these lectures before on this podcast, but have now remastered them and combined them into one super-episode. I really hope you enjoy this special presentation.

-//-

Original YouTube Source:

https://youtu.be/cAXjezpNKIU?si=McXhN_cSraLEOu0J

500 subscribers is a surprise and a delight. I started this thing just for myself and a small group of interested friends, and I'm really happy to see that 500 other fellow travelers are finding something to enjoy in all of this.

As a thank-you, I performed a reading, in my own voice and in English translation, of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1945 work Existentialism is a Humanism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism_Is_a_Humanism

This is probably the single best philosophical introduction to Existentialism on the market - the best literary introduction is likely Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, which is absolutely wild, by the way.

This text was very influential for me, and pushed me in my first year of college away from the Analytic tradition and towards Continental philosophy (Heidegger, Husserl, Foucault, Zizek, etc) which in hindsight I'm going to go ahead and say was a great move; no regrets. I don't agree with everything Sartre says in this, but if I only posted stuff I completely agreed with I'd be reduced to posting algebra or something.

If you're keeping score at home, this is the text/translation I used:

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm

The photo is Sartre and the philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir being in love and rebellion all that fun mid-century stuff that we can barely even imagine anymore.

https://history.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf5351/files/european-intellectuals.png

Anyway, thanks to all the subscribers for taking a shot on a new thing - I'm gonna keep this going and post more regularly. Keep your eyes peeled for wrapping the Greek Tragedy series, new content from Roy Casagranda, Noam Chomsky, and James Baldwin/Franz Fanon.

I've received a few wonderful messages from subscribers. If you want to make my day (or chew me out) you can reach me at this email, feel free to send anything:

williamengels@substack.com

Enjoy.

The soul, which is created quick to love, responds to everything that pleases, just as soon as beauty wakens it to act.

-Dante, Purgatorio, Canto 18

Come join my Patreon!

⁠https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon⁠

-//-

Original Youtube:

⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOxpl-cIPJg&t=191s

Come join my Patreon!

⁠https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon⁠

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:00:52) - Part 7: Form From Chaos

(00:41:36) - Part 8: Creativity & Chaos

(01:26:21) - Part 9: Chaos & Imagination (1/2)

(02:08:08) - Part 10: Chaos & Imagination (2/2)

-//-

In this talk, Jonathan Lear reviews one of my favorite philosophers, the British virtue ethicist and founder of the Neoareatic movement Alasdair MacIntyre, whose 2016 book Ethics In the Conflicts of Modernity has been hugely influential in my own thinking about how we relate, socially and individually, to the questions about justice, beauty, goodness, and truth that run through our lives.

Professor Lear is a practicing clinical psychoanalyst, moral philosopher, and First Nations scholar and advocate whose work on the Crow Nation, "Radical Hope" I strongly recommend.

---

The original video can be found here, my thanks to the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame for providing and maintaining this recording which was first recorded July 25-27, 2019.

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. They are free, as in libre, and free as in “beer”.

These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. 

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, performed by Gregor Quendel) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

Same source as previous

Crusades 1 of 3

Check out the Austin's School's videos on YouTube. They're all really good.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool/videos

Syndicated according to fair use and in accordance with non-profit and educational objectives.

Presentation by Robert C. Solomon

Existentialism began not in philosophy but primarily in literature - Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and Kafka's Metamorphosis along with Hesse's Steppenwolf were the clearest and earliest expositions of existentialist themes and ideas. In this presentation, Solomon walks us through Dostoevsky's The Idiot, selections from Kafka, and finally to Hermann Hesse's "Magic Theater" in Steppenwolf.

Enjoy.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

According to Max Planck, ‘Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.’ And he continued: ‘Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

-Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary

-//-

The Master and His Emissary - https://a.co/d/2gDbuCW

The Matter with Things - https://a.co/d/2jJVXZg

Original Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REB7GOxX5Mk

Dr. McGilchrist's YouTube Page - https://www.youtube.com/@DrIainMcGilchrist

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Austin School professor Roy Casagranda lectures on the origins and combat of World War 1. Professor Casagranda brings an idiosyncratic and unvarnished perspective on the Great War, which ended not with a peace, as everyone had hoped, but what French general Ferdinand Foch prophetically called in 1919 a 'Twenty Year Armistice'.

It would turn out that Foch was wrong, but only by only a few months...

The original YouTube video can be found here.

The Austin School, which has many great lectures from a variety of presenters is found here, please consider subscribing.

---

Dulce et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till in the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,– My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Composed October 1917,

published posthumously 1920.

---

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

If you are able, donations to support the project, which is a labor of love for me, ⁠⁠are available through Spotify. ⁠⁠Anything helps and is felt.

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

A DMT priest, an evolutionary biologist, and a chaos mathematician walk into a hot-tub in California...

(00:00:00) - Host Intro

(00:00:43) - Cast of Characters

(00:51:12) - The Evolutionary Mind

(02:00:17) - Superintelligent AI

-//-

My Patreon! Buy the ticket, take the ride!

https://patreon.com/hemlockpatreon

Descriptions courtesy Sheldrake.org

https://www.sheldrake.org/audios/the-sheldrake-mckenna-abraham-trialogues

Part 1 - Cast of Characters

An introduction to the first series of public trialogues held at Esalen, California in 1989. Morphic Resonance, the novelty wave, chaos mathematics, and their roles in the paradigm shift. The vision of nature as alive, and a new understanding of the soul of the world. The three masks - evolutionary creativity, the cosmic imagination and chaos. Insights into the nature of time. The practical application of chaos theory to the problems of the world. The human soul as a reflection of the world soul.

Part 2 - The Evolutionary Mind

1998, UC Santa Cruz. What could have been the cause for the breakthrough in the evolution of human consciousness around 50,000 years ago? Collective memories of predation and how they may shape our minds today. The role of the imagination in our evolution. Physiological evolution and the idea of divine brain surgery. The psilocybin hypothesis. The transformation of human nature through connection with higher levels of consciousness in the universe. The universal information field and cosmic evolution.

Part 3 - Superintelligent AI

1998, UC Santa Cruz. A discussion on the evolution of consciousness as it relates to machines. Symbolic logic, nanotechnology and the possibility of a synthetic super-intelligence. Artificial Intelligence as a part of ourselves that could shape our evolution. Virtual computers as the source of the AI. Partnership or conflict between human and machine? How much control do we have in the evolution of machine intelligence? Challenges to the premises of the AI argument. Quantum computers, machine-time and the possibilities of the World Wide Web.

Enjoy

Come join my Patreon! https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

“The [music of the] Blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.” 
-Cornel West, Democracy Matters, 2004

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Original YouTube:

https://youtu.be/k5ydesBadno 

Published March 2022 by The New School:

https://www.youtube.com/@thenewschool 

Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist and philosopher.

He has written two recent books, The Master and His Emissary, and The Matter with Things (2 Volumes) on the mechanism and consequences of the divided brain theory.

This talk, an address given at the Darwin Medical College of Cambridge University, is an overview of right hemisphere versus left hemisphere cognition, and attempts to explain how the linear, logical, abstracting, intolerant, rigid, grasping tendencies embodied in left-hemispheric cognition have won out over the holistic, fluid, explorative, and uncertainty-tolerant right-hemisphere, propelling much of our social and political chaos in the process.

Please visit https://www.youtube.com/@DrIainMcGilchrist to subscribe to his channel.

The video itself, uploaded February 2024, can be found here.

---

This podcast, like all HoPAA work is distributed ad-free, and uses materials available on the web in an educational and curatorial manner in accordance with nonprofit operations, and in this manner meets the conditions for Fair Use.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Original YouTube:

https://youtu.be/fO0OkdUuvDk

Dr. Sugrue explores themes in Dostoevsky, makes the comparison between Nietzsche's self-legislating Übermensch and the Raskolnikov character in "Crime and Punishment."

Link to YouTube Video:

https://youtu.be/ACpLJQCt3uE?si=2IK5pUNLFuNdb307

Syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes according to Fair Use.

Renowned Berkeley philosopher breaks down Kierkegaard in his 2010 iTunes U class on Existentialism in Literature and Film.

Part 1 of 4.

Professor G. Sadler breaks down the world of Epicureans and situates Epicureanism in its historical context while reviewing the major doctrines of the school.

Please support Professor Sadler's Patreon and his Youtube page if you enjoy his work.

YouTube Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9kL2FMMDZA

Dr. Sadler's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sadler

Syndicated for non-profit and educational purposes, in accordance with Fair Use.

Single lecture overview of China's first and most influential philosopher.

Relativity from a philosophical perspective.

We did it - 100 episodes!

Celebrate with 12 hours of Plato!

My Patreon page:

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:00:51) - The Domain of the Dialogues

(01:31:20) - The Examined Life

(02:16:42) - Tragedy in the Philosophic Age of the Greeks

(03:00:16) - Republic I

(03:46:46) - Republic II

(04:30:45) - Republic III

(05:16:40) - The Laws and Cephalus

(06:01:33) - Protagoras: The Many and the One

(06:46:51) - Gorgias: The Temptation to Speak

(07:32:24) - Parmenides: The Most True

(08:07:10) - Sophist and Statesman

(09:01:35) - Phaedrus: Hymn to Love

(09:46:23) - Symposium: Pride of Love

(10:33:03) - Platonic Achievement

(11:17:59) - Living Voice

Enjoy!

-//-

Short lecture on the central concept of authenticity in existentialism in general, Heidegger in particular.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

World-renowned professor of linguistics and lifelong political dissident Noam Chomsky addressed The New School in September 2015 about the threats facing the civilized world as we neared the third decade of the 21st century.

His predictions and analyses are more prescient now than they were even then.

Enjoy.

-//-

Original video (The New School):

https://youtu.be/w_X5czMVKT8?si=AiN_Vbu1hgJ_HRAn&t=433

Come join my Patreon!

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In this Professor Roy presentation we get to hear about how international sanctions killed half a million Iraqi children, how Saddam Hussein was first backed, then baited, and then finally killed off by US foreign policy, and the true reasons we invaded Iraq in 2003 and kicked off what Chris Hedges called “the greatest strategic blunder in the nation's history” and what Noam Chomsky calls “the greatest crime of the 21st century”. 

-//-

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8BGpohOupQ

Posted December 2018

ATHENA:

Nothing that strikes a note of brutal conquest. Only peace-

blessings, rising up from the earth and the heaving sea,

and down the vaulting sky let the wind-gods breathe

a wash of sunlight streaming through the land,

and the yield of soil and grazing cattle flood

our city's life with power and never flag

with time. Make the seed of men live on,

the more they worship you the more they thrive.

I love them as a gardener loves his plants,

these upright men, this breed fought free of grief.

All that is yours to give.

And I,

in the trials of war where fighters burn for fame,

will never endure the overthrow of Athens -

all will praise her, victor city, pride of man.

The Eumenides, 913-926, trans. Robert Fagles

---

The wonderful Michael Davis did no fewer than five lectures on the final play in the Oresteia, the Eumenides (one of my all-time favorites) so I went ahead and slammed them into one giga-episode rather than just lazily uploading each one.

Please remember to check out and subscribe to his page, which seems to have been recorded and A/V'd by some very skilled student volunteers.

https://www.youtube.com/@thephilosophyoftragedy6720

Please enjoy yourself.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Don't forget the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world.

-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

00:00:00 Intro

00:00:51 Part 1: The Grand Wealth Redistribution Scheme

01:57:01 Part 2: From Poland to Reagan

03:54:18 Part 3: The Promotion of Unfettered Greed

05:38:33 Part 4: Radiation and Madness

-//-

Original YouTube Page - https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool

Original YouTube Video (Part 1) -https://youtu.be/8Dnp7lOObjU?si=ju8L-KH9Vzu7Bcwg

This talk describes the ethics and aesthetics of unsentimentality as practiced by some of the late twentieth-century’s most notable women artists and intellectuals. We will consider what it would mean to have an ethics without empathy even in the face of extreme suffering.

Deborah Nelson's Franke Forum talk is titled “An Unsentimental Education: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil." Deborah Nelson is Chair and Professor in the Department of English Language & Literature and the College. Her book: Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, and Weil won the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize for Best Book of 2017 and the Gordan Laing Prize in 2019 for the most distinguished contribution to the University of Chicago Press by a faculty member.

The above is reproduced from the YouTube video description.

The original video can be found here, my thanks to the University of Chicago, my alma mater, for providing and maintaining this recording which was first recorded in November 2017.

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. They are free, as in libre, and free as in “beer”.

These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. If I provide links to books, they are affiliate links, all others are not. 

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, performed by Gregor Quendel) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

How would a Marxist economy function without a state that backs property rights? How could a corporation operate without a board of directors? How could wealth be redistributed in an orderly, rational, and humane way?

These questions and more answered in Professor Richard Wolff's seminar on the fundamentals of practical Marxist economics.

Enjoy.

-//-

Original video:

https://youtu.be/T9Whccunka4?si=BJSo2f64p5TTPDUv

Come join my Patreon! https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still.

-Albert Camus, The Stranger, trans. Stuart Gilbert, 1942.

All chapter titles and source material credited to the phenomenal YouTube channel Philosophy Overdose. The episode art is a still from Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece The Seventh Seal, 1957.

00:00 Socrates & Plato on Knowledge 

10:18 Aristotle on Knowledge 

12:41 Inner Self & External World

33:30 Heidegger & Kierkegaard 

36:42 Kierkegaard & the Infinite

38:43 Kierkegaard: The Temporal & Eternal 

48:01 How Do We Encounter Reality? 

52:43 Merleau-Ponty & the Intentional Arc 

54:22 Meaning in Life - From Heidegger to Dostoyevsky 

58:13 Getting in Contact with Reality 

1:01:14 Sartre's Being & Nothingness 

1:05:15 Human Nature - From Ancient Times to Pascal 

1:12:55 Human Nature - From Kierkegaard to Sartre 

1:20:22 Darwin & Human Nature 

1:28:11 Artificial Intelligence 

1:40:06 Nietzsche & the Death of God

-//-

Original YouTube Video

https://youtu.be/iAxu6pg7JU0?si=Xkuws5V0h-b6HEYq

Original Channel

https://www.youtube.com/@Philosophy_Overdose

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

“On the other hand, if an experience arouses curiosity, strengthens initiative, and sets up desires and purposes that are sufficiently intense to carry a person over dead places in the future, continuity works in a very different way. Every experience is a moving force.”

-John Dewey, Experience and Education, 1938

-//-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_psychosis

“If the experience of the Third Reich teaches us anything, it is that a love of great music, great art and great literature does not provide people with any kind of moral or political immunization against violence, atrocity, or subservience to dictatorship.”

-Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, 2003

Original YouTube:

https://youtu.be/FAHUyHDTphQ

Provided by the Departments of History and Art History at the University of Otago, October 2017:

https://www.youtube.com/@OtagoHumanities

How did the Nazis conceive of war? In this lecture, Professor Evans—a world authority on Nazi Germany—argues that Hitler's belief that war was necessary for the fitness and survival of the German race led him to promote the indoctrination of German society at every level with a will to wage war and the preparedness to do so. Perpetual conflict was the aim, and the idea that World War II would have ended had the Nazis won is an illusion; it would have been followed by other conflicts, principally with America. In this way, defeat was built in to the Nazi war effort from the beginning.

On May 4th, 2016 journalist and political activist Naomi Klein delivered the Edward Said Lecture at the London Review of Books.

She addressed the hierarchies implicit in who survives and who dies in a warming world, the role that transnational capitalism has played in subverting democracy, and the potential vectors for resistance that are available for averting an ecocidal collapse. Her aim in this talk is to describe "the role that systems that rank the value of human beings...have played in deepening that crisis."

The original video can be found here, my gratitude to the London Review of Books for their hosting of the Edward Said Lectures.

---

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

On March 22, 2005, Martha Nussbaum visited the John Adams Institute to talk about Upheavals of Thought - The Intelligence of Emotions.

For everybody who thinks that philosophy is a stuffy dull science, practiced by unworldly absent-minded professors: Martha Nussbaum isn’t an abstract scientist who occupies herself with the universe and metaphysics. She is in touch with daily life.

The underlying assumption of her ideas is based on human emotions. According to Nussbaum emotions are no irritating uncontrollable upheavals, which we have to master at all cost, but sensible reactions to everything that really matters to us.

For that reason Nussbaum is considered (as) a typical female philosopher, also because she has an open eye for commonplace things, and knows to empathize with all kind of people.

The above was reproduced from a video description.

---

The original video can be found here, my thanks to the John Adams Institute for American Culture in the Netherlands for providing and maintaining this recording, made in 2005.

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. They are free, as in libre, and free as in “beer”.

These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. 

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, performed by Gregor Quendel) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

Veteran war correspondent and journalist Chris Hedges describes the cultural patterns of the COVID era, and elucidates the work of Fritz Stern, a German cultural critic who witnessed the rise of Nazi ideology. Stern's book, The Politics of Cultural Despair, is the foundation of the talk, and Hedge's book America: The Farewell Tour which I have read and recommend, expands on everything in the talk.

---

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

The audio is edited for clarity, silences are truncated, etc. The original video is found here, and the channel MediaSanctuary, is one of my absolute favorites so please subscribe to them.

If you are able, donations to support the project, which is a labor of love for me, are available through Spotify. Anything helps and is felt.

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠found here⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture. This is another of the great perversions by which the devil uses our philosophies to turn our whole nature inside out, and eviscerate all our capacities for good, turning them against ourselves.

-Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, 1948

The Rainer Maria Rilke text that Merton references is Letter Seven from "Letters to a Young Poet"

https://genius.com/Rainer-maria-rilke-letter-seven-annotated

Later Merton cites Rilke's "Book of Hours"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Hours

-//-

Original Reference (Titled “Rilke and his search for God”) - https://merton.bellarmine.edu/s/Merton/page/AVnovices

Publication Date - February 2nd, 1966

Thomas Merton - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton

Discussion of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Content Warnings: violence, racism, and all the other things that go along with the Holocaust. Viewer discretion is advised.

Artwork: White Crucifixion (1938) by Marc Chagall

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/59426/white-crucifixion

--

Video Source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbg9JD3Drgc

If you enjoyed this or any other of Roy's lectures, please go and subscribe to his YouTube channel and support his work.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool

This episode, like all HoPAA episodes, is distributed ad-free, for educational and non-profit purposes. We are curating outstanding lectures on subjects in the history of philosophy, art, and science, and use resources available for free on the Web and syndicate those resources according to Fair Use.

"I am suing the cigarette company - I have been smoking nothing but Pall Malls since I was 11. Right there on the package it says 'this stuff will kill you' - and I'm still alive, god damn it!"

-Kurt Vonnegut, 81 years, old, Case Western Reserve University, 2004.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

“All conservative ideologies justify existing inequities as the natural order of things, inevitable outcomes of human nature. If the very rich are naturally so much more capable than the rest of us, why must they be provided with so many artificial privileges under the law, so many bailouts, subsidies and other special considerations - at our expense? Their "naturally superior talents" include unprincipled and illegal subterfuge such as price-fixing, stock manipulation, insider training, fraud, tax evasion, the legal enforcement of unfair competition, ecological spoliation, harmful products and unsafe work conditions. One might expect naturally superior people not to act in such rapacious and venal ways. Differences in talent and capacity as might exist between individuals do not excuse the crimes and injustices that are endemic to the corporate business system.”

― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds, 1997

-//-

Original YouTube (1988)

https://youtu.be/4vKfejeruhk

Original Channel (AfroMarxist)

https://www.youtube.com/@AfroMarxist

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

-Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, 2003

The Arab Spring was not just an Arab revolution - it was a wave of revolutionary activity that touched Brazil, Myanmar, the United States (Occupy) and Southeast Asia.

It began in Tunisia, when a vegetable vendor who had been insulted and abused by police seeking bribes decided he had had enough and made the decision to self-immolate.

In this lecture, Professor Roy provides both historical background and personal eyewitness testimony to the nature of the Arab Spring.

The original video can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL0nswvZRwo

The original channel can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@ACCTVStudios

My thanks to Austin Community College TV for making this recording available.

Enjoy.

3/4

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

When we are the victims of illusion, we do not feel it to be an illusion but a reality. It is the same perhaps with evil. Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty…. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

-Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 1947

Presented by Sr. Ann Astell at the University of Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.

-//-

Original Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X3vuOiFYKc

Publication Date - August 25th, 2014

Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture - https://www.youtube.com/@ndethics

Simone Weil - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Weil

What happens when an unstoppable force (Arab Nationalism) meets an immovable object (US Economic Dependency on Saudi Oil)?

Will we achieve independence from foreign oil as Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump have all unfailingly promised in the past?

Tune in to Dr. Roy's lecture this holiday season and find out!

Happy "Independence" Day, dear listeners, enjoy my cartoonish and amateurish album art: what it lacks in style it more than makes up for in substance.

Peace.

-//-

YouTube Original

https://youtu.be/_JrWYc4pavE?si=pIdIOJmLhdBlFwCx

In this 2014 lecture, famed philosopher of mind John Searle, originator of the "Chinese Room" critique of machine intelligence discusses competing theories that attempt to explain the emergence from/relation of consciousness and matter.

Searle focuses especially on refuting ideas put forward by Nick Bostrom and other AI theorists which suggest that AI can have a consciousness of its own, and that furthermore we should be worried about Terminator scenarios where machines come to life - Searle thinks this is nonsense, at least in the sense that we don't have to worry about machines being "motivated" to do something, since machines possess only the 'syntax' and not the 'semantics' required to make the sort of meaning upon which a mental phenomenon like motivation, intentionality, etc, depend.

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The original video can be found here, my thanks to Philosophy Overdose for providing and maintaining this recording which was created in 2014 as part of the Patten lecture series.

As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. 

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

Economist and political scientist Yanis Varoufakis breaks down his concept of 'technofeudalism' or the successor paradigm to neoliberalism. This address, at the National Press Club of Australia, aired March 13th 2024. Varoufakis' recent book, Technofeudalism, describes these developments in greater detail.

The original video is found here.

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As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

If you are able, donations to support the project, which is a labor of love for me, ⁠are available through Spotify. ⁠Anything helps and is felt.

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

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Professor Thomas C. Brickhouse:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_C._Brickhouse

In 1993 Rick Roderick. professor of philosophy at Duke University and elsewhere delivered a capstone eight-part series reviewing philosophers who posed the deepest and most contemporary challenges to our conventional (Western) concept of "the self". They were:

Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud ("The Masters of Suspicion"), Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard.

(00:00:00) The Masters of Suspicion (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud)

(00:48:46) Heidegger and the Rejection of Humanism

(01:34:01) Sartre and the Roads to Freedom

(02:14:13) Marcuse and One-Dimensional Man

(02:59:48) Habermas and the Fragile Dignity of Humanity

(03:47:35) Foucault and the Disappearance of the Human

(04:33:34) Derrida and the Ends of Man

(05:18:01) Fatal Strategies: Baudrillard

In this super-episode I've combined all eight episodes into one with chapters for easy navigation. The Marcuse episode was previously syndicated as the second half of the "Herbert Marcuse Double Episode" but it's well worth a second listen.

Enjoy.

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Original information found here:

https://rickroderick.org/300-guide-the-self-under-siege-1993/

In this talk Professor Roy breaks down:

1. Where ISIS really comes from
2. How the Syrian Civil War began
3. Which countries benefited and which suffered following the Arab Spring revolution
4. How the US supported Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, Kurdistan, and Syria
5. The origins of al-Qaeda and the relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

I found this presentation extremely effective and politically relevant, and I hope you did as well.

As always, please go over to YouTube and give the man some love.

YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool

YouTube Original Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBeFTcK9U5s

This material is taken from publicly available sources and is syndicated/curated for educational and nonprofit objectives in accordance with Fair Use

Enjoy.

In this episode, Michael Davis discusses the first work in Aeschylus' trilogy, the Agamemnon. Short story short: Agamemnon wants to go do the Trojan War because his brother Menelaus got cucked by Paris, who ran off with his wife Helen back to Troy. Unfortunately the God Poseidon is on the side of the Trojans and so when Agamemnon is getting ready to launch his fleet the sea becomes stormy and impassable.

To counteract this, Agamemnon decides that he will sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods so that the storm will be quelled, so he has her bound and sacrificed like a sheep.

10 years later, Agamemnon returns home triumphant. His wife, Clytemnestra however, is pretty unhappy about the fact that her husband slaughtered their daughter and has had a decade to plot her revenge...

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The link to the entire playlist is here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiyEzRZtxXGU

My original writing &c is here:

williamengels.substack.com

The cover photo is Herbert Gustave Schmalz "Iphigenia"

Enjoy.

Come join my Patreon!

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In this conversation with environmental ethicist Guillermo Zapata we discuss the role of indigenous philosophy in shaping our approach to environmental problems, the most pressing threats emerging from climate change, and how we can resist the encroachment of corporate and political interests that are contrary to rational and urgent action of climate change and the Sixth Mass Extinction.

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Citations

1. Indigenous philosophy and Rousseau/Enlightenment: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269264-the-dawn-of-everything
2. French philosopher who conceived technology as an organism: Jacques Ellul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul#On_technique
3. Dutch microplastics study: https://phys.org/news/2022-03-scientists-microplastics-blood.html
4. All rainwater is poison: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069
5. The Green Scare 1990s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Scare
6. Sheldon Wolin concept “Inverted Totalitarianism” is developed in his book “Democracy Incorporated." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Wolin#Fate_of_democracy 

Guest Reading Recommendations:

1. Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17465709-braiding-sweetgrass
2. Right Story, Wrong Story - Tyson Yunkaporta: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199122606-right-story-wrong-story
3. Sand Talk - Tyson Yunkaporta: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45449501-sand-talk
4. How to Do Nothing - Jenny Odell https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42771901-how-to-do-nothing
5. Indigenizing Philosophy through Land - Brian Burkhart: https://msupress.org/9781611863307/indigenizing-philosophy-through-the-land/

Julian Assange is one of the few heroes to have lived and worked in my lifetime. It is clear that he will never receive a fair trial, never exercise his right to face his accusers, or be treated humanely during the series of ordeals that have comprised his exile, capture, and torture under conditions of solitary confinement.

We must demand amnesty for Julian Assange - without journalists like him, we will be wrapped in darkness and lies.

Original video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HX7A2aCrBU

Original article:

https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/27/chris-hedges-the-crucifixion-of-julian-assange-2/

Image by Mr. Fish, cartoonist.

https://clowncrack.com/

Cosmic and evolutionary history introduced.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

How did South Africa come under the control of the Dutch and the British? When and how was racial apartheid implemented and justified? Professor Roy breaks it down for us.

Enjoy!

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Dr. Cornel West, a leading philosopher and activist was invited to give the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh this year (2024). His series, entitled "A Jazz-soaked Philosophy for our Catastrophic Times: From Socrates to Coltrane" is an attempt to explore issues at the intersection of art, race, politics, and philosophy.

Dr. West continues his discussion from the first lecture, this time touching on the necessity/strictures of 'metaphilosophy' - the framework that defines the boundaries and reasons of all the inquiries that occur within it.

The original video can be found here.

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As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads.

If you are able, donations to support the project, which is a labor of love for me, ⁠⁠⁠are available through Spotify. ⁠⁠⁠Anything helps and is felt.

Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack.

The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me.

Enjoy.

Professor Sugrue's introductory lecture on why Schopenhauer was so grumpy and what exactly MS means when he says that Schoppy described 'the metaphysics from hell.'

Syndicated for non-profit and educational purposes and in accordance with Fair Use.

Sourced from YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-Ij9EvjFeU

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

-//-

Original Sugrue Video:

https://youtu.be/mU7hdGKOGyk

Original Skinner Video:

https://youtu.be/CKGuzJ6GwHM

Enjoy.

Buy Astika's book while you still can!

https://a.co/d/bggZEtW

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

“He no longer cared to live in a house, and he rose once more into the air, this time on the breath of a breeze so sheer and transparent not even the gods felt it. This is the wind that further frees even the free. As his soul rose on that wind, it seemed to expand and flow out in all directions at once. Rising steadily upward, he passed through the arched windows of that celestial mansion and began a journey that would penetrate even the most distant, the most veiled mysteries of heaven. He slipped stealthfully across secret skies, across worlds and all their skies, growing deeper and wider as he did so, traveling beyond the starry reach of any sky, of any universe, to a place where no one could follow. There, lost in the divine and infinite distances of nothingness itself, he too disappeared, his last breath released, like a luminous song, into the void of a transcendent eternity.”
-Astika Royal Mason, A Dream Immortal, 2023

References:

“From Here to Enlightenment” - HH the Dalai Lama

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12505636-from-here-to-enlightenment

Ardor - Roberto Calasso

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/134839029-ardor-by-roberto-calasso

The Mirror of Simple Souls - Marguerite Porete

https://youtu.be/HvivvGZydFA

Agni in Hinduism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni

Rig Veda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda

(00:00:00) Introduction

(00:01:23) The Thresholds of Mythology

(00:56:06) The Inward Journey

(01:44:15) Confrontation of East and West In Religion

(02:33:56) Imagery of Rebirth in Yoga

(03:27:28) The World Soul

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Come join my Patreon!

⁠https://www.patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

Recorded in 1969.

Enjoy

This is a personal post, I hope you enjoy.

"Our joy today is equal to the pain that made it"

-Aeschylus, Agamemnon.

Come to my Patreon for more.

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Come join my Patreon!

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(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:00:50) - Part 4: Fractal History

(00:54:51 ) - Part 5: Creativity and the Imagination (1/2)

(01:40:24) - Part 6: Creativity and the Imagination (2/2)

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Part 4 - Fractal History at the Edge of the Millennium

The fractal idea of history, and millennia as the plateaus of history. These bifurcation periods as opportunities to influence the creation of the future. What kind of future or change are we trying to create? The need for the enhancement and spread of clarity. Psychic pets and their role in breaking the spell of rationalism. Psychedelics, the World Wide Web and psychic pets as forms of boundary dissolution. The need for change in the educational system. The problem of the rejection of mathematics.

Part 5 - Creativity and the Imagination (1/2)

The crisis in science: collision between the permanent and evolutionary views of the nature of reality. The universe as an evolving system of habits. Did natural law exist before the Big Bang? Cosmic creativity, imagination and the womb of chaos. Chaotic sudden perturbations. The Omega Point. The ego's response to chaos. The cosmic attractor in the evolutionary process.

Part 6 - Creativity and the Imagination (2/2)

How is human imagination related to the creative principle of nature? The nature of the Gaian mind. Human history as a Gaian dream. The Divine Imagination as the source of all creativity. How can we extract the message of the Gaian mind? How could the imaginations of the solar system, galaxy and cosmos be related to each other? Dark matter and the cosmic unconscious. The nature of the Logos. The personal apocalypse. The journey of language to the Divine Imagination. Natural law, ordinary reality and chaos.

Come join my Patreon!

https://patreon.com/HemlockPatreon

In order to do philosophy at all we have to find ways to discuss difficult topics in a way that allows other people to approach and understand us. Conversation is an infinite game - how can we establish ground rules for communication that allow players to keep coming back and keep the ball of dialogue in the air?

Marshall Rosenberg is the author of the book Nonviolent Communication and served for many years as a diplomat, negotiator, and peacemaker in dangerous international contexts.

Note: This episode contains a graphic description of torture.

Come join my Patreon!

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In this 1993 talk Michael Parenti explores the techniques that imperial powers such as the United States use in order to reduce "Third World" countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Iran, and so forth to dependency and economic vulnerability.

Come join my Patreon!

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“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.” 

-Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947

(00:00:00) - Intro & Host Promo

(00:00:40) - The Stranger, Part 1

(00:30:36) - The Stranger, Part 2

(01:00:33) - The Myth of Sisyphus

(01:29:22) - The Plague & The Fall

(01:58:45) - The Fall, Part 2

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Robert C. Solomon (1942-2007)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Solomon

Happy Father's Day everyone, for your listening enjoyment I hereby present Roy Casagranda's Crusades series, Episodes 1-4, remastered (as best I can) for audio clarity and quality.

Below are the timestamps for the different sections - if you've already heard the previous three then feel free to skip to the recently released Episode 4.

Episode 2 - 1.30.45 (35 Years of Chaos)

Episode 3 - 2.49.37 (Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub)

Episode 4 - 4.43.36 (Salah ad-Din Part II)

As always, please make your way over to Roy's YouTube page and give him a subscribe.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool

Enjoy.

Plato's hymn to Love expounded by one of the philosopher's greatest living interpreters, Dr. Michael Sugrue.