Searching for Meaning in a Secular Age
Vložit
- čas přidán 11. 05. 2011
- Host Harry Kreisler welcomes philosophy professors Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly to discuss their book, “All Things Shining.” Drawing on their reading of Western classics, Dreyfus and Kelly analyze how different epochs offered unique answers to the question of what is sacred and what can provide meaning for human existence. They explore the examples of Homer, Jesus, and Melville to highlight differing paradigms of culture practice. Dreyfus and Kelly then trace the transition to the secular age in which nihilism prevails. They conclude by identifying how a sense of meaning emerges from heroism, athletics, and craftsmanship. [5/2011] [Show ID: 21338]
More from: Conversations with History
(www.uctv.tv/cwh)
Explore More Humanities on UCTV
(www.uctv.tv/humanities)
The humanities encourage us to think creatively and explore questions about our world. UCTV explores human culture through literature, history, ethics, philosophy, cinema and religion so we can better understand the human experience.
UCTV is the broadcast and online media platform of the University of California, featuring programming from its ten campuses, three national labs and affiliated research institutions. UCTV explores a broad spectrum of subjects for a general audience, including science, health and medicine, public affairs, humanities, arts and music, business, education, and agriculture. Launched in January 2000, UCTV embraces the core missions of the University of California -- teaching, research, and public service - by providing quality, in-depth television far beyond the campus borders to inquisitive viewers around the world.
(www.uctv.tv)
Hubert..... you are so missed.
Amen.
I am SO happy that the problem of nihilism is being addressed by philosophers today! I can't wait to read this book. I think this is the most important issue that the modern world faces. It is inevitable that many, even most, people will not recognize the severity of this issue because of the fact that you have to truly escape the current epoch and attempt to understand another epoch if one is to understand the modern dilemma.
This is a great introduction to a great book!
This interviewer is almost always good. He reads the material and he has the brains to understand it.
Mhmm /s
10:47 Nietzsche is characterized by Prof. Kelly as “liking” (i.e. preferring) a state of nihilism. Nietzsche claims multiple times across his writings that he is not a nihilist and that the intention of much of his writing is to reveal (and warn of) the nihilistic foundation that underlies certain belief systems of his time. If he was a nihilist, why did he maintain the ideas of re-evaluation of all values or the eternal recurrence of the same?
I caught this too and my understanding too was that Nietzche recognized that all values amount to a mask we wear, but we still must wear a mask in order to have any being or intelligibility at all. I assumed I must have totally misunderstood him.
@Michael Kalish Some of that went over my head, but I agree the "fear of failing to produce significance" is a huge force. We are probably in a society that really exacerbates it but it's probably also something inhered to our herd nervous system. I believe Nietzsche operated too much from his own ideals, but I don't have a good academic background or structured philosophical understanding of his work. I believe he was quite aware that he was not "willing" his own thinking so I was surprised I never feel moods of surrender in all his bombast of life-affirmation. As for your comment on "on going experience," I think it just makes me think of the desperate fear and hope that make us cling to ideas as if they could relieve us of the deep uncertainties in being so stretched out in time, that no single moment can rest completely secure in trusting it's future self will show up. People like Nietzche who detest the parts of us that take comfort in self-enclosed illusions, are in constant fear they too will make that move - and then perhaps forget they did so. Or maybe that is just me. But I think if one touches that core of nihilism (or what Heidegger perhaps means by unsettledness), and instead rejoices, one accepts that life itself is a process of individuation AND conformity, and finds a healthy balance while also never using either side as a means of a static ideal that provides an escape from the unsettledness of the flow.... because when one does that, one always at least faintly has to keep the flame of this artificial static object burning by some form of violence with experience (lots of loose ideas here)
@@sunyata150 I experienced in Nietzsche an ambivalence on this point. At different times he seems to have moved toward and away from nihilism. To me, it seemed as though he never resolved this in any fixed way.
@@Kswanwick2 Nietzsche made a distinction between active nihilism and passive nihilism. Passive was empty and ambivalent. active is constructive and means to revalue.
Very good discussion. The description of the modern dilemma of nihilism vs. sacred is absolutely spot on. And I loved the contrast between the receptive attitude vs the willful attitude. Very wise. Just not so sure I buy the return to poly theism,
What shows up, where you find yourself, the disposition is primary, if something is sacred, then you find yourself in being that sacred. In being the sacred you move in to possibilities that show up as your past approaching you from your future, this defines how you will cope in the now. The moods that you non thematically project from,lack limiting focus, if not sacred. You can't think up the sacred, you have to be it.
Not clear at all what is this sacred and where is coming from and why you need specific skills to disclose it. Very confusing.
51:10 - 53:15- autonomy and subjective will vs. receptivity.
Anyone know what the term is @ 33:00? "the non-ectononomy"?
At 45 minutes the sacred devolves to sports and the notion of "receptivity" seems shallow, as what it is more - ought to be - what is being brought in - TO fruition... not just "skills" but strength - in the classic sense of VIRTUE, with the capacity to act in a valorous way.
The best example for “craftsmanship” is The ability to see through a child’s spirit in order to be good parent or good teacher!, that’s why we need to have Parenting schools for young people who decide to have a child ,to develop the Skill , they need !
Parenting school is called summer camp. Camp counselors make great parents.
@@kyotoben9623 if councelors don't go to "parenting school" doesn't that mean they learn by experience. Wouldn't that mean the best experience is just being a parent. I've heard parents say that by the second kid they are are experts. So the best school would perhaps be some spare kid lying around, foster children... perhaps a family member doesn't want their kids around for the summer. These are all viable options.
I like this intro music better. More leaning towards atmospheric, but less like Tangerine Dream.
Cheers for the upload. Important matters
Toward the end of the video the psychological state of which they speak is known as “flow”.
let me know when that book comes out
Viva craftsmanship!
@KC101X
sec·u·lar
adj
1. Worldly rather than spiritual.
2. Not specifically relating to religion or to a religious body: secular music.
3. Relating to or advocating secularism.
4. Not bound by monastic restrictions, especially not belonging to a religious order. Used of the clergy.
5. Occurring or observed once in an age or century.
6. Lasting from century to century.
n.
1. A member of the secular clergy.
2. A layperson.
Aslo someone that believes that earth is flat , finds this belief meaningful. So what their standards here ?
@Mahoivlich
Rape is a violation of something sacred. You don't see that?
Also seems too much work that is very ambiguous. You nee to know when you should be open and when be closed. How you apply this in a whole culture? It doesn’t seem that to find meaning is so much complex historically.
Why did they get an interviewer from an international relations background for this? He took 30 minutes to get what Sean said.
MinorityMans woah there cowboy bebop
These guys totally nail the only force that will give the future any hope - those "re-configurers" who find ways of re-arranging the software through which we view ourselves and reality. The software has become so corrupted since the major reboot.
Which “major reboot” are you referring to? There were two identified in the discussion: the Christian and the Cartesian.
Not clear at all what they suggest as a postmodern way of finding meaning . And how this can be applied in whole groups as it seems is an individual experiencing to start with.
@ham33d it's Zhuang Zi ;)
Just finished reading this book...wonderful book ...but they could have added some more chapters.... the chapter about Moby Dick is fascinating .... I love Moby Dick ...that is one hell of a novel .. as great as Shakespeare...
The examples of skillful coping or excellence as antidotes to nihilism given in this discussion (and the book) are predominantly located in what Kierkegaard described as the aesthetic sphere. In his exegesis of Kierkegaard's thinking on this issue, Dreyfus (2001) correctly highlights the limits of the aesthetic sphere to overcome nihilism and thus sustain commitment, which is better engendered by the ethical sphere but best sustained by living in the religious sphere. This contradiction is completely ignored in 'All Things Shining'. That's a massive shortcoming of the book.
The troubling thing about this chirpy discussion, is that one cannot detect a scintilla of pious sensibility among these three.
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
to me it seems that they returned at Nietzsche: dionysian living/experiences, to move away from nihilism, caused by too much of the apollinical.
@VoidOnTuesday
That may be how you define "sacred," but that's not how Bert and Sean are using the term. For example, they''re very clear that the sacred is socially constructed and changes in each cultural epoche. And, it is quite fascinating really that you are criticizing them for not understanding that values are situational and cannot be founded on abstract principle Yet that's exactly their point! Thus the emphasis on skill and receptivity to context Listen again.
@Mahoivlich
I think you are mounting a straw man argument. You assume you understand what Kelly and Dreyfus mean by the "sacred," but you are using the term quite differently than they are using it. If you are going to criticize, then do so on their grounds.
I am not sure what Hubert and Sean are attempting to accomplish other than to reintroduce mythology and storytelling as mechanisms to evoke something they identify as important: "the sacred sacred".
Certainly, there are numerous constructs and such within our natural lives and societies which are quite of value and which we do not need the imagination of "the sacred" to evoke a warranted sense of respect and of honouring such things. I may be off on this, yet "the sacred" is wonderful in poetry.
people reading books from philosophers who get caught up in thier work and express a kind of abstraction can be risky as well! Its not hard to impress on young minds new values using the myth and mystery of a certian time in literary history, the abrahamic religions do it all the time.I think the real value certianly lies in the original works in thier book and not ideas that are not personaly experienced as Neitche experienced.
@VoidOnTuesday
Your position represents the exact nihilism Kelly and Dreyfus are attempting to both acknowledge and overcome in their work. To say that there is nothing sacred is to say, in effect, that nothing is any more important than anything else--and that's not a livable or viable philosophical stance. You can espouse such a viewpoint, but it cannot be meaningfully lived out in any authentic way.
What distinguishes our time is the multiculturalism that's an increasing reality in our lives in America
@KC101X
... try again. Greeks did more than Jesus.
So what? Only if you are a great basketball player then you have access to the sacred and thus you find meaning in life ? Very narrow conception.
Man is a worshipping being. Kelly starts out the lecture by noticing that today there are many religious people but basically he says they don't really take their religion seriously because it doesn't affect their day to day decisions. He's right about this. American Evangelicalism worships "personal peace and prosperity" just like the rest of the culture instead of being true worshippers of Christ. Christ demands all. But folk refuse to give all, hence the nihilism (continued)
automatically sensitive sounds like oxymoron
We already have a way to engage with the gods in our secular culture. Hello! It's called Astrology. And the astrological community is very engaged with these archetypes. But as Carl Jung said it has been trying to get back into the universities for the past 400 years since it had been kicked out. Anyway great discussion and I want to read this book. The Astrology community is way ahead of you guys. Sorry.
No cancelling culture tho!!!
What a load of nonsense these clever guys are talking about. If you want meaning in your life, the idea that you should go back to Homeric gods is laughable, verging on the psychotic. If you want a religion based upon existential experience rather than a set of cultural beliefs, as monotheism and polytheism essentially are, something like zen buddhism is far more viable.
Zoot, Not unlike "Walk with those who seek the truth, run from those who claim to have found it." Also, the bit about if you meet the Buddha on the road, run...or some have it "kill him"...
This all has to do with a wrong definition of religion, Arguably, Eisenstein and Nield Bohr were religious men who did not believe in a creator god.