The Living Philosophy

It's become common to appeal to our evolutionary past to justify present ideologies. In this episode we are honing in on a vegan account of human diet and contrasting it with a less ideologically motivated piece published by The Atlantic.  There's a few interesting discoveries to be had. For one it's always interesting to see how subtle warpings of facts can lead to very different p...

This episode is an attempted revaluation of the much maligned Ego. Drawing on Jung, Freud, New Age thinking and the myth of Icarus and Daedalus we pick apart the many meanings of Ego as we try to unearth the infamous reputation of Ego in the culture and to restore to it some of its lost dignity.  ____________________ Further Reading: - Basic Writings of Nietzsche edited by Walter Kaufmann - The Fr...

In this episode we are going to explore Nietzschean spirituality in contrast to Buddhist spirituality (and other Ascetic Ideal spiritualities and religions). This topic was prompted by a question from Kevin Sherman on Patreon so thanks to Kevin for the interesting spark.  This script kind of poured out of me and it was only afterwards that as I was listening to it again and again in editing that I...

Why it matters is back! And this time we're talking about why Nietzsche matters. We're going to look at why I find Nietzsche so important and why you should too.  ___________________ ⭐ Support the channel (thank you!) ▶ Patreon: https://patreon.com/thelivingphilosophy ▶ Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/thelivingphilosophy _________________  💬 Discord  ▶ https://discord.gg/XNd4gTpfu9 __________...

In this deeper dive into philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche we are going to look at his big ideas and his overall philosophy through the orienting generalisation of his thought as being health vs. decadence. Through this lens we can fruitfully place Nietzsche's "no-saying" work where he critiques Christianity, science and philosophy as well as his "yes-saying" work in Thus Sp...

Friedrich Nietzsche is commonly known as the Father of Existentialism but he could just as well be called the Father of Psychoanalysis or the Father of Postmodernism. Along with Marx and Freud, Nietzsche is one of the most influential thinkers in the past 200 years.  Nietzsche's ideas are famous (and due to much manipulation of his work, infamous) — the Will to Power, the Ubermensch/Overman a...

The Living Philosophy is two years old! Two years ago the 100 videos in 100 days began. But before there was the Living Philosophy, there was The Living Myth — an Irish mythology podcast with my friend Barry that gave me my first taste of YouTube and podcasting.  I thought it'd be nice to mark this second anniversary by looking back at the origins of this channel. It's also an auspicious...

This is a deeper dive into the Father of Existentialism Soren Kierkegaard. Following on the 5-minute introduction to Kierkegaard, this episode looks in more depth at the philosophy and life of Soren Kierkegaard and why he is one of the greatest philosophers ever. In this episode we look at the three phases of Kierkegaard's work: the First Authorship (and its masterpieces Either/Or and Fear an...

Soren Kierkegaard is commonly known as the "Father of Existentialism". This brief introduction to Kierkegaard looks at why you should care about the Danish philosopher and why his work is still relevant today.  Kierkegaard was one of the most prodigious philosophers. In 1843 he published three books in a single day (one of which Fear and Trembling is commonly placed in the canon of great...

Immature heroic complexes and us and them dynamics — after reading The Cut's article "Did Olivia Wilde Just Make Jordan Peterson Cry?" something stirred in me that seems quite obvious in hindsight: the two sides of the culture wars are psychological mirrors of each other.  Both sides partake of the same ingroup and outgroup signalling. They show a lot of compassion for a certain gro...

Martin Heidegger is the greatest philosopher of the 20th century for many — from Giles Deleuze to the alt-right and undoubtedly one of the most controversial characters in the history of philosophy. In this episode we are going to look at the life and philosophy of Martin Heidegger and his masterpiece Being and Time. We also explore his lesser-known later philosophy after going through what schola...

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's theory of evolution posits that with the emergence of the Noosphere (the thinking or mind sphere which transcended the Biosphere and in turn the Physiosphere) the Omega Point was now being converged upon. With the Noosphere Life has penetrated a new ceiling unlike any since the birth of life itself. Now evolution wasn't limited to chromosomes but we saw the e...

In A Conflict of Visions Sowell distinguishes between the two visions that have shaped the landscape of the modern era (and beyond): the Constrained Vision and the Unconstrained vision. From Hobbes's "bloody war of each against all" to Rousseau's "man is born free but is everywhere in chains" we see these visions develop and grow in the modern era, shaping the world w...

The Three Metamorphoses is Nietzsche's map of the development of Re-Valuers of Values — the Übermensch. At the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche's Zarathustra delivers his first discourse — The Three Metamorphoses. In the first 100 days of the channel I made a video exploring this topic. Recently I sat down to transcribe the video and release it in article format on the webs...

In the episode on Foucault we touched briefly on the question of what might happen if we combined Jung's analysis of the gods with Foucault's analysis of power. There is a precedent for this question in the work of the philosopher loved by both thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche.  In his book, On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche talks about how the gods can have very different effects on th...

The Presocratic Heraclitus of Ephesus is a philosopher's philosopher. His work was beloved by Socrates, Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger. The philosopher from Ephesus is commonly known as the philosopher of fire (thanks to Aristotle) or, for those with a little more nuance, he is known as the philosopher of panta rei or flux — of constant never-ending change.  But there is another side o...

For Michel Foucault Power is critical to understanding the world we live in. Foucault's theory of power revolutionised the way we look at power from being a top-down domination to being an omnipresent force of nature. This episode is an introduction to the Foucault theory of power. We'll be explaining Foucault's theory in simple terms using examples from everyday life to show how re...

In this episode we explore a potential Nietzschean revaluation of all values in the form of a distinction. If we separate the ideas of femininity and masculinity from females and males, we are left with two possible revaluations.  There is the fight over the respective value of men and women in society; this is the classical struggle of historical Feminism. In this episode we are going to call thi...

The Four Quadrants model developed by Ken Wilber is an exceptional map of knowledge and of the human experience. It gives us a language for understanding differing fields of knowledge and why they are approaching the problems that they are and in the way that they are. The Four Quadrants model was developed by Ken Wilber in his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and for him it is a map of the Kosmos...

Jordan Peterson’s idea of Postmodern Neo-Marxism is a conspiracy theory. It is also the Shadow in the Jungian sense of Jordan Peterson. Nothing whips Peterson into a more passionate frenzy than the Postmodern Neo-Marxist idea. And to hear the way he talks about the “main villains” of the Postmodern Neo-Marxist movement — Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida — this diagnosis becomes all the more obv...

Is Buddhism a religion or philosophy? I have debated many times over the years with people who are fond of Buddhism but tend to dislike religion. Of course anybody who has studied Buddhism in any depth knows that Buddhism is a religion first and foremost. Is Buddhism a philosophy? Yes but in the way that Christianity is a philosophy that is to say that there is a philosophy within it but that is n...

Metamodernism might be the most important idea you come this year. According to Hanzi Freinacht, the pioneer of political metamodernism, metamodernism is a new cultural phase that transcends and includes (to use Ken Wilber’s Integral Philosophy language) the previous phase of Postmodernism (which is turn transcended and included the previous phase of Modernity).  Hanzi Freinacht is one of a number...

Is humanity a cancer? It’s a perspective that’s growing increasingly popular. It tells us a lot about humanity’s self-perception in the 21st century that this view is gaining traction. But it’s completely false. In this episode we are going to explore why it is false. The analogy to cancer is a poor one as we’ll see. A much more fruitful comparison can be made with bacteria but even this compariso...

Modernism and Postmodernism are two cultural stages with their own worldviews. In this episode we talk about the emergence and differences between these ages and look at the contrast between postmodern philosophy and the Modern philosophy of the Enlightenment that preceded it.  This episode is an exploration of the two worldviews whose conflict is so prominent in our world today.  ________________...

Ahead of the release of the Matrix 4 I thought a second run into the world of postmodernism’s high priest was due and so today we look at Jean Baudrillard on The Matrix. Simulation and Simulacra, Baudrillard’s famous book from 1981 was required reading for the entire cast of The Matrix and the Wachowskis even asked Baudrillard to work on the second and third movies. He declined. As it turns out he...