The Wes Cecil Podcast

With the excess food available from the slow transition to Agriculture, cities began to form approximately 12,000 years ago. Nonetheless, as recently as 100 years ago most humans still did not live in urban settings. We are still learning how to adjust both mentally and culturally to putting so many primates in such a small area. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered...

A reflection on the way in which Philosophy and its uses is so often misrepresented as an attempt to be RIGHT. However, this mistakes the power of philosophy and how it can help us understand our lives and our world. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly di...

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q7: Where is the universe? He who sees all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings, he never turns away from It (the Self). He who perceives all beings as the Self' for him how can there be delusion or grief, when he sees this oneness (everywhere) ? He (the Self) is all-encircling, resplendent, bodiless, spotless, without sinews, pure, untouched by...

After Art and Tools, Agriculture is clearly one of the most significant breakthroughs in the evolution of human culture. The changes both socially and intellectually necessary to enable a transition to sedentary cereal growing are likely still incomplete.  Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer dis...

A brief argument for a few habits of mind and time use that are necessary for developing a life of the mind. Not overly prescriptive, but time for quiet reflection, spending time with powerful people that inform and inspire, and creating an outlet for one’s own discoveries are central to experiencing our own power. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, g...

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q6: What can we learn from nature? Hundred Schools of Thought (600-200 B.C.) Legalism : Humans are inherently corrupt and social order can only be maintained through strict hierarchy that imposes order through force. Mohism : Human society is best served through equality, frugality, and ethical education focused on helping people understand their own bes...

Likely more important than tool use and necessary for the development of more sophisticated tools, the development and creation of art marks the fundamental development of the modern mind. Here we see the imagination put to work in ways that fundamentally altered both the world and how we understood and understand the world today. At the very dawn of the Upper Paleolithic the arts become central t...

It may feel like the end of the world, but it is mostly just the end of our conception of how the world works. When our fundamental values shift then it often undermines our sense of order and prevents the coherent presentation of political arguments. However, and hopefully, it also represents the opening for new ideas and systems to develop Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questio...

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q5: Why was the past so great? Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tool use has evolved more slowly and means something different than has generally been understood. Over three million years of practice with tools led, eventually, to a revolution not so much in tools as in the social structure and mental outlook of the primates we are.  Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading...

Henri Bergson explored the tensions between two different conceptions of time - the objective/scientific and the subjective/experienced. The latter he called la duree’ and, despite being how we sense the world, it has been almost totally overwhelmed by the objective measure as represented by the Day-Planner mindset. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus,...

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q4: How should we govern? We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Ar...

An introduction to a new series exploring the profound influence our primate heritage has had over milennia in shaping practically every aspect of our world today. A different approach that I hope will open some of the deep structures that shape our understanding of the world. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to peer conversation, course...

We often think of corporations as primarily destructive for their exploitation of natural resources. However, it is possible that the destruction of the social fabric of countries and communities is even more damaging to our long term health. Yet, this is a little commented on aspect of the Capitalist worldview. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain...

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q3: How should people live? Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A few thoughts to take us out. Most importantly Plato provides a model - as well as a trap - for us as we pursue philosophy and thinking in general. Thanks to everyone who read along with me! Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  H...

Our society's obsession with Data and Information leads to a series of systematic errors in both our understanding of the world and how we approach all kinds of problems we face. We refuse to accept that DATA and INFORMATION cannot solve what are fundamentally ethical problems. In any case, many of our challenges are not soluble but aspects of the human condition that can only be addressed in diff...

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q2: What the hell is going on? Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Other than our concept of Romantic Love, Body Soul Split, Self-Improvement and Truth, Plato really has had no influence at all . . . I mean, Plato is just everywhere - I mean EVERYWHERE! Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted...

Wes and Jeremy take questions from PATREON members on Plato's Symposium Lectures 4-11 Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The History of Philosophy in 16 Questions - Q1: What the hell happened?  Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The influence of Plato grows from the repeated introduction of Platonic ideas into Catholicism, Calvinism, Humanism, Romanacism, Enlightenment thought and even Scientific Rationalism. Platonic ideals surround us in so many ways it is difficult to actually narrow our focus to a few key points. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course ma...

Wes and Jeremy take questions from Patreon members on Plato's Symposium, Lectures 1 - 4 Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON  to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our culture in theory tells us not to be stressed and filled with anxiety yet structurally virtually guarantees we will feel this way. Taoism works the other way around and singles out stress and anxiety as signs that whatever you are doing something is going wrong because those are feelings that demonstrate you are not living in harmony with the great Tao.  Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON &nb...

Enter Alcibiades - seemingly disrupting the entire structure of Plato’s dialogue, he actually works to underscore the power and truth of Socrates’ argument without ever actually engaging with the claims Socrates has made. We see and hear the quality of Socrates as a person rather than engage with the rationality of his thought. A masterclass in using misdirection and action to make arguments that...