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Wes Cecil
United States
Registrace 27. 08. 2012
wescecil.com
A Cultural History of the United States: Part I What is an American?
An attempt to understand the nature of American culture and how it functions internally and the influence it projects on the world.
For questions leave a comment below or go to www.wescecil.com.
For questions leave a comment below or go to www.wescecil.com.
zhlédnutí: 1 569
Video
Cormac McCarthy: America's Mythopoetic Prophet
zhlédnutí 4,5KPřed měsícem
A reflection on McCarthy's terrifying vision and how it has been received and perceived in American culture and what that tells us about the American worldview.
Cultural Appropriation: Reflections on a Problematic Concept
zhlédnutí 2,2KPřed 2 měsíci
A brief reflection on how we frame and understand the concepts of culture, identity, ownership and art.
The Modern Trivium: Conclusion
zhlédnutí 1,9KPřed 2 měsíci
The final part of my reflections on what the trivium could look like in a modern context. I add elements from the Rennaissance and from Daoism to round out the more narrow scope of the Classical Trivium.
Modern Trivium Part IV: Rhetoric
zhlédnutí 2,3KPřed 3 měsíci
This lecture explores the lost art of expressing ourselves orally and why we might want to cultivate this skill.
Basics of Logic: Trivium Part III
zhlédnutí 2,6KPřed 3 měsíci
This is a quick overview of some of the most common logical fallacies and why logic is such an important subject to understand. Here is a helpful list with examples. www.grammarly.com/blog/logical-fallacies/
The Modern Trivium II: Grammar
zhlédnutí 2,4KPřed 3 měsíci
The second lecture in the series explores the basics of Grammar as studied by the ancient Greek and Romans. *I said Mencius is hilarious but he is mostly witty and sardonic. I meant Chuang-Tzu.
The Modern Trivium: A Guide to Self- Education
zhlédnutí 4KPřed 3 měsíci
An introduction to the idea of a modern version of the classical trivium as a means of re-educating ourselves based on classical principles drawn from Greece, Rome, the Renaissance and Classical China.
The Death of the Neoliberal Order
zhlédnutí 3,2KPřed 3 měsíci
An exploration of how the death of the Neoliberal world order has exposed the difficulties we face when our values are thrown into question. A follow on to my lecture on Populism.
The 'New' Populism: A Global and Historical Perspective
zhlédnutí 5KPřed 5 měsíci
A brief reflection on Populism in an attempt to understand the forces at work in the reemergence of populist political rhetoric and movements.
The Unparalleled Influence of Plato and the Symposium
zhlédnutí 6KPřed 6 měsíci
An introduction to the Symposium that explores the unbelievable influence of Platonic thought on the Western tradition. You can read, take notes, and get ai generated references for the Symposium and other works at dialectic.so/ feel free to join us. For those of you who read and take notes on the symposium, we'll hold a class on December 13th at 6pm France time.
Reflections on Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
zhlédnutí 1,6KPřed 6 měsíci
Some of the philosophical and psychological underpinnings of T.S. Eliot's famous and moving poem.
The Analects in Five Passages
zhlédnutí 3KPřed 6 měsíci
An introduction to the Analects of Confucius focusing on five passages: 1.3, 3.4, 6.8, 9.4 and 12.16. If you would like to continue reading and join a conversation on the Analects, head over to bookconnect.io and take notes on the Analects. For those who participate, we'll hold a class on November 28th to explore the work as a community - the way Confucius did 2,500 years ago (except he didn't ...
Free Will vs. Determinism: How Not to Think Philosophically
zhlédnutí 3,8KPřed 7 měsíci
A brief overview of my suspicions concerning the general framing of the free will vs. determinism debate.
Miles Davis: A Consideration of His Musical Greatness
zhlédnutí 2KPřed 8 měsíci
A long delayed lecture covering the remarkable fecundity of Miles Davis and the powerful influence he had on other musicians and music in general. Some albums mentioned in the lecture more or less chronologically: Miles Davis Allstars Birth of Cool Cookin With Miles Miles Ahead Porgy and Bess Sketches of Spain Milestones Kind of Blue Esp Miles Smiles In a Silent Way Bitches Brew Sorcerer Dark M...
Beyond Fiction: A Comparison of Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, and Our Present Reality
zhlédnutí 12KPřed 8 měsíci
Beyond Fiction: A Comparison of Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, and Our Present Reality
Popular Culture Part VIII: Social Media
zhlédnutí 3,9KPřed 9 měsíci
Popular Culture Part VIII: Social Media
Popular Culture Part VI: Film Industry
zhlédnutí 2,4KPřed 9 měsíci
Popular Culture Part VI: Film Industry
Popular Culture: Past, Present, and Future
zhlédnutí 4,1KPřed 11 měsíci
Popular Culture: Past, Present, and Future
A Philosophical Reflection on Artificial Intelligence
zhlédnutí 6KPřed rokem
A Philosophical Reflection on Artificial Intelligence
A Philosophical Approach to Buidling a Home: Alternative Methods
zhlédnutí 1,5KPřed rokem
A Philosophical Approach to Buidling a Home: Alternative Methods
The Philosophy of Building a House 2: The Owner Builder
zhlédnutí 1,3KPřed rokem
The Philosophy of Building a House 2: The Owner Builder
A Philosophical Approach to Building a House: How to Build a House that Reflects Your Values
zhlédnutí 4,3KPřed rokem
A Philosophical Approach to Building a House: How to Build a House that Reflects Your Values
Very excited for this series
QUESTION #1 where is Vermont on your map? I could ask more....
Stolen land. Slavery. Oppression. Capitalism fascism..
American is abiding by the Constitution.
What about Americans who don’t follow the constitution? Their citizenship isn’t normally revoked, they just face legal repercussions.
I like his interpretation! It sounds very logical, but how did he understand what Nietzsche thought and meant when he wrote about Zarathustra? What if he meant something else?
Как можно было назвать женщину коровой?? Что за мудрость такая? Не вижу ничего умного или философского... За что им так восхищаются?
Thanks yet again! American Nations by Colin Woodard draws a bit of a parallel. He looks at US as more just states, but distinct "nations" or mindsets. Great read and he has some lectures on YT. Factual note on your thumbnail... although Maine didn't become a state until 1820, its was part of Massachusetts since the 1650s.
Voice is breaking up on my chromebook
Schopenhauer is by far my favorite philosopher!
An American is a slaveholding invader who mass murdered Natives...now they still don't care about how much they hurt them. It's still ongoing. And everyone without Native blood is guilty of that.
I'm curious about the similarities between the modern east and west coasts. I would speculate that it's because the tech folks which dominate the west coast were originally east coast engineers who migrated for cheap real estate (if memory serves. I may be wrong there). There may also just be a common culture around large cities, especially considering after WWII there were more concerted nation-wide infrastructure development projects. That money primarily linked cities together, thus allowing them to develop into a more similar amalgam of "America", but again, speculating. If that's true, a similar effect should be noticeable when the transcontinental railroad was completed. As transportation became more efficient, that would have a homogenizing effect.
I've just noticed, Rhode Island is almost a city state, except there's a 2nd city, and a few villages, and a forest.
Hi Wes. Thanks for adding a Q&A section to your upcoming videos. My question relates to your video on McCarthy. In a NYT interview McCarthy remarked that ‘there’s no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.’ What are your thoughts on this quote and how it relates to McCarthy’s mythopoetic writing of the human condition? Is this quote a pushback against totalitarian ideologies such as facism, or, as you rightly point out in your critique of the reception of McCarthy, will most readers of this quote draw the worst conclusions from it?
Ironically over the last 20-odd years I've been coming to associate myself more as a Californian then an American, despite being politically moderate. 40-50 years ago American culture was pretty homogeneous, but nowadays it seems as though other parts of the country are embracing values that, while not foreign, are certainly anachronistic. It feels as though the emulsion has broke in the pot and we are clustering back into the individual ingredients.
I’d argue that we’re more homogenous than ever, but we just have so much access to info about minute differences between different regions that every little difference feels huge because every little difference is highlighted, discussed, analyzed, and maybe debated. Though we’re also far less susceptible to unifying propaganda since the end of the cold war because we lost our common enemy and then began losing faith in the concept of a “common enemy”
@@Syzygy_Bliss 40 years ago Americans all read the same papers, watched the same TV, same movies, same music. Today with the internet you can listen to music from a tiny Turkish band with only 100 fans. You can read a blog out of Kenya and watch a movie out of Korea, and get your news out of Germany. There is just nothing that universally binds us as Americans anymore. You can't have a "watercooler moment" when none of us consume the same media. But everything local will always affect you on an immediate level regardless of cultural influences ("all politics is local"). If your state bans abortion, and you need an abortion, then there is no denying the realities of your locale. I can't tell you how many times I've seen craziness back east, turned to my wife and said, "thank god we live in California." A phrase that used to be "thank god we live in America" 40 years ago. It is very hard to accept Floridians banning books as being fellow Americans. Nothing could be further from the case. We Californians have our own problems, but few that I'd consider violations of fundamental human rights.
softer mic sound this episode
I find it a bit strange that you posit there isn't much seriously engaging work on studying past or contemporary US cultural hegemony or US culture(s) more broadly (especially while living in France). Baudrillard's take on Disneyland in "Simulacra and Simultion" comes to the forefront of my mind, but also COUNTLESS others. Fisher's "Capitalist Realism," some of Naomi Klein's more pop-political philosophy work, even the chaotic and terrible accelerationism of Nick Land and the CCRU. There's also Marcuse's "One-Dimensional Man," any of Foucault's work on disciplinary society, Gramsci's work on hegemony more generally (which requires some extrapolations, but still), and even more round-about ways of addressing US culture via philosophy that DOES account for Native Americans AND our only uniquely "US" philosophical movement of Pragmatism called "Native Pragmatism." I really do hope you take this question and line of inquiry you have put forth seriously, because so far you have posited nothing new, rigorous, or unique (not that this matters so much in and of itself). I look forward to seeing you add something to the rich and vast theoretical spaces you are talking about that I personally feel are a bit to the contrary, in that I think it's actually more flooded than anything else. Stoked to follow this new series!
I can't believe I left out Weber's work, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," too. Oops. Then, Graeber's cultural anthopologies, the Transcendentalists, and innumerable other sociologists in the vein of Weber as well.
And any of W.E.B Du Bois's work also slots in well and covers some of what you've mentioned. I'm finding it hard to not continue putting forth more and more work that covers the things you're addressing, because I took maybe too seriously your claim that you don't think a lot of this has been covered, and I genuinely feel the exact opposite - for better or worse.ha
Barbara Ehrenreich's work on the "Professional Managerial Class" and Christopher Lasch's work on the "Culture of Narcissism" also come to mind. More conservatively, there is also Philip Rieff's work on the "Triumph of the Therapeutic."
And anything Ivan Illich wrote about schooling.
I can't believe I forgot about Wendell Berry as well. Really touches on everything you mentioned more broadly here.
an american is someone who listens to rupert murdoch (fox news), and votes for reagan.... lol sorry to joke about this wes, I love your channel, I'm researching murdoch's and reagan's influence on propaganda/financial regulation laws a lot lately, I feel such an intense urge to mock anyone who engages with these corrupt forces, sorry, needed to mock thse demographics based on your title... btw really wish you would talk about the bretton woods/global financial crisis situations in depth sometime - these two events have been more influential on modern culture than almost any other imo... imagine systems and situations that create such powerful bureaucratic limitations on our global species, affecting the lives in billions currently and tens of billions more in the future... your audience deserves to understand these key points more imo - also the concept of journalism in the modern world and how that died when reagan's administration legalised "opinion" journalism - such key ideas to the modern human condition here I think many thx to you wes for your ongoing teachings 🙌
Drop some book recommendations or sources. I for one am intrigued by the topic.
So just to be clear with all of this, you're not so much saying that ansin same duine Have an observable and distinct culture, but that we don't have a strong cultural identity? Because there are clear things you can describe about American cultúir, things that are either American or regional. The are distinct architectural styles, there are accents and rebondi slang, there are shared beliefs and ideals, both regional and countrywide. I'm from Michigan, and we have a strong identity as Michiganders in a lot of ways, we share a collective frustration that the coasts perpetually forget that we exist. There are times when it feels like more Canadians know and care about Michigan than people in DC or New York... Anyway, just asking for clarification.
24:15 Whooo! Michigan gets a mention!
You sound like a young Michael Sugrue. I can listen to classical thought all day. Thank You !
Amazing lecture! Thank you so much! It inspired me, I am moved and I am touched with you as a lecture!
I learned a lot. Master thyself. 2 for 6 gyros at arby's.
Thank you for this wonderful lecture, so inspiring
Funny....it seems that you did not get it. It was a pretty flat. Was it an ad hominen critique?
But closer to home, can Israelis put themselves in the shoes of Palestinians or think from their standpoint? 😂
Well he knew all about supply chains😂
Unfortunately there is no interpretation and no understanding in this video
@26 minutes really shows the anglo american philosophy fallacy of believing that spiritual states and experiences dont exist in the world, as though your spiritual sensations dont exist in the world. People speak in tongues, experience beatitudes,nirvana, trances, hypnosis..that does exist, despite the difficulty in communicating it, in comparison to the appearance of a "camel". Seems silly 😂,
We no longer call it darwinism. Darwin laid the foundation but some of what he wrote we now know is wrong. Evolution is still backed by a mountain of evidence. Most people that push back against it are indeed religious fanatics.
I always hear this poem is largely about Prufrock's fear of making a marriage proposal, and I guess that sort of makes sense, but still I wonder why everyone feels so certain about that reading?
So just because one takes the Faustic pact and agrees to burn in Hell, that fact gives them dominion over the world and all Creation? I die for this. You understand? Stop me. Somebody stop me!
Yeah, cool. I'm a bad influence on people... And Sondra, too, right...? Right, Ronald MacDonald? Sondra, too?? :))
George Riley Scott
No. They were great, all of my colleagues. They studied hard and did not demand anything. Jordan for example started a business and he was happy and content. Great bunch of guys, and ladies.
Ah okay!! Ok! There's 5-6 people on my Facebook list of friends. Long gone away, yet their birthdays still come up...
I don't like Pop Lit and speculative Pop Science. I am fond of Hofstadter because that's a serious manuscript. So is Penrose. Many others aren't. Who pushes-up influencers these days?? :)
😀😀😀what ancient greek are you say don't lie so much because ancient greek never existed the greek language was created too later by Byzantine church .after divided from Roman empire 😀😀 if the ancient greeks existed then why modern Greeks didn't accepte to called themselves greek until 1832 but called themselves romaikos and engout lie
ON NE PEUT PAS QUALIFIER '' D ' EGOISTE. '' UN TYPE QUI FAIT CADEAU D 'UN SI BON LIVRE A SES LECTEURS . IL REND LA VUE AUX AVEUGLES ......
Je n ' ai qu' un but .... Ne pas en avoir .
Maybe i havent read enough nietzsche but to me he just seems like a more mainstreamable stirner
There is a mention of the "world is good, and the world is for us." I think this precisely inverts Zarathushtra's doctrine, which is the world is good, and we are here to ensure it's continued goodness and preservation. It is an ecological message with a strong apocalyptic sense, human beings are made by Ahura Mazda to guard the goodness of creation and preserve it against harm.
Professor Cecil seems so wrong about the supposed moral clarity in Ukraine - that clarity was only possible for people who knew nothing about the history of Nato expansion (in service of the US arms industry)
11:28
Scientism means “check your guesses.” That’s all it means.
Just tell us what he wrote not your opinions. These Americans man.
Passe ao largo, nao ha porque perder seu tempo aqui. Trata-se da vular arrogancia americana se metendo onde nao pode nem deve...
Peterson is the most irritable, petulant thinker I've ever encountered
I appreciate this so much i regularly come back to listen over and over again. its like the add on effect of your favourite music that brings you to a happy place and you stand still in the moment just absorbing your environment. very grateful bro
What a beautiful lecture! Do you have a lecture or a passage or an article where he talks more about the influence of Zoroastrianism on Islam ?
Emanuel Kant, a philosopher of worldwide renown, was born in Konigsberg, East Prussia, on April 22, 1724, and died there on February 12, 1804, in the 80th year of his age. Kant's parents were poor but respectable, his father being a saddler and a strap maker. At the age of 18, he entered the University of Konigsberg as a student of theology, but he soon gave up that profession and apples himself to the studies very diligently to the study of mathematics and the physical sciences. After supporting himself in a number of years as a private teacher at Konigsberg, Kant was made a professor in the university and lectured there until his death. Although Kant was very fond of reading books of travel, he was never more than 40 miles of his town. He was very temperament in his habits, patience, and persistent in his work, and was much admired by his students and acquaintances. The object of a teacher he always declared was always to induce the habit of self- reflection in his pupils. While lecturing, it was custom to fix his eye on some student and judge by the face and eye that whether he understood or not. It is said on one occasion that the student he had been most accustomed thus, and he had lost a button from his coat, and that on this account, the philosopher was so disconcerted that he could not proceed with the lecture. Kant was the author of a large number of works, the most famous of his Critique of Pure Reason, his Critique of Practical Reason, and his Critique of Judgment. In his political views, Kant may be counted as one of the foremost of liberty and progress. In respect to religion, his supreme idea was that of duty and obligation, leaving little play to the room of feelings. "Whomever will tell me, " he was accustomed to say, "of good action undone, him I will thank to the last hour of my life." And in a short time before his death, he said to his friends: if I was sure of being called away this night, I could raise my hand to heaven and say God be praised." I still have a difficult time reading him. His mind flutters quickly with his unusual way of writing. Thank you, Professor Wes Cecil, for me listening to this lecture again. You make lectures fun.