Then & Now: Philosophy, History & Politics

An introduction to the philosophy of Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism. Bacon was born in London in 1561. He was an establishment figure born into one of the most powerful families in Britain. He as a member of the house of commons and the house of lords for 37 years, a lawyer, Attorney General, and a member of the Privy Council, the group who advises the monarch. He died of pneumonia after...

What did Bacon give us? Induction, the scientific method, experimentation, his was a theory of epistemology – a theory about knowledge. He said that knowledge about the world comes from the senses and should be carefully and systematically collected to make use of instrumentally. Ok, so there are two lines of criticism I’d like to discuss today. First, the idols – the idea that knowledge is distor...

Modernity is many things. Urbanization, industrialization, technologization. At its simplest, it’s a project of supposed improvement, science, and progress. As a project, then, modernity seeks to expand itself. If improvements can be made, they should be made. Exploration was at the heart of the modern expansionist drive that began in earnest in the 17th century. But why then? Why not before? What...

How do we deal with coronavirus? I look at the 'Great Barrington Declaration' - a group of scientists against lockdowns - and the history of how science is always political. The Declaration has been signed by over 20,000 medical practitioners and scientists, including Professor Sunetra Gupta from Oxford. There are some problems, though. First, anyone can sign the form – a look through the signatur...

I look at the thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, his anarchism, his mutualism, and his theory of politics. Proudhon was the first self-declared anarchist. He wrote What is Property in 1840. He was not a wide-ranging and difficult writer, he wasn’t a system builder, he was critical of utopianisms, and was fascinated with contradictions. For Proudhon, The ideal society was a contractual one – where...

An introduction to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's 1840 book, What is Property? Pierre Joseph Proudhon was the first self-declared anarchist. He wrote What is Property in 1840. He was not a wide-ranging and difficult writer, he wasn’t a system builder, he was critical of utopianisms, and was fascinated with contradictions. For Proudhon, The ideal society was a contractual one – where individuals are free...

An introduction and overview of the British/Latvian philosopher, Isaiah Berlin's 1958 classic lecture on Two Concepts of Liberty. Berlin thought that where philosophers, politicians, and commentators had talked about the idea of freedom as one definable concept, throughout the history of modern thought you could identify two different ideas about what freedom or liberty meant. He called them negat...

In his 1977 essay, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, Michel Foucault criticizes the traditional historical method and makes an argument for why a ‘genealogical’ approach is important. But what is genealogy? It’s a history of us. Of the attitudes and dispositions we embody today. The way we approach and do things. These things often seem like they don’t have a history, that they’re human nature. Tha...

'Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).'This is American philosopher Robert Nozick’s bold pronouncement at the beginning of anarchy, state, and utopia, a 1975 book that is largely a response to Rawl’s 1971 A Theory of Justice. It's the classic modern defense of libertarian political philosophy. For Nozick, the rights that i...

I respond to some of your comments on the Rawls video, specifically thinking about utilitarianism, rights, race, and radicalism. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it mean for a body – flesh and bones – to be politicized? For the rhythm of heartbeats, the density of muscles, and the flow of the arteries to be molded and shaped by power? What's the best way to rank citizens on a scale? To make the child’s body still, obedient, but strong? How far can we go in engineering modern utopian bodies? Is it possible to forge the iron of the national body th...

John Rawls, as we saw last time on Then & Now, came to the following conclusions about what a just society should like. He said that:‘‘All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values, is to everyone’s advantage.’’But what would this look like in practice? It’s on...

The American philosopher John Rawls was the most influential political thinkers of the late twentieth century. Born in 1921 and died in 2002, he’s responsible for a renaissance in political philosophy. In this introduction to Rawls, I look at A Theory of Justice, his magnum opus. It was published in 1971 and is a philosophy of what a just and fair society would look like. I like at concepts like t...

I look at the Black Lives Matter protests and the controversial debate around statues like Edward Colston, Cecil Rhodes, and King Leopold II. What can the philosophy of history and civil disobedience tell us about this moment? What exactly is a statue for? What is public history? How do we think about them ethically? And when is Civil Disobedience justified? I look at John Rawls, W.E.B du Bois, an...

I look at the history of the Spanish Flu of 1918 - the worst pandemic in history - asking what lessons we can learn. Avoiding a traditional approach to the story, I look at history’s worst pandemic from a number of perspectives. As a preface, I think about the memory of the flu and remembrance of World War One – why was the Influenza forgotten, while the war memorialised by poets like John McCrae?...

An introduction to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962, and itself a revolutionary approach to the philosophy of science. The book was both influential and controversial. Born in 1922, Kuhn began his career as a physicist before turning to the history of science. He was interested in how scientists approach their daily work, and in thinking about the question o...

In a follow up to the Fist of Modernity I look at the history of the police in England in the nineteenth century, particularly at David Churchill’s critique of the State Monopolisation Thesis which was influenced by Max Weber and articulated through the work of historians like V.A.C. Gatrell and his concept of the policeman state. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as littl...

The foundations of modern policing are based not on justice, but on the punishing of poverty, the imposition of the status quo, the disciplining of the public, the constriction of liberty, and justified as the protection against an ugly, sinful, idle, greedy, and organised criminal class that has no basis in reality. In this video I look at the birth of the modern police force in Britain, what the...

What is modernity? I look at this question through my previous video - the Shock of Modernity - and my next video - the Fist of Modernity - and ask how we can think about the vague term and how it applies to the current COVID-19 pandemic. I take a brief look at Foucault's comments on the Plague during the 17th century and its place in the genealogy of governmentality, while thinking about contempo...

I take a look back at the introduction to Romanticism to see if it can offer any insights to current events, including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and little issues like modernity, reason and industrialization. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is creativity? I take a look at the philosophy of creativity to try and find out. Plato said the inspiration is a kind of madness. To the Ancient Greek philosopher, creativity was a kind of divine inspiration – it came from outside the limited understanding of men – a burst of lightening not reducible to human reason. Almost 2000 years later, he mathematician Henri Ponclaire influentially arg...

In this video, I take a look at what ‘trust’ is philosophically. When trust is in low supply in our societies, it’s a sign of a deeper issue. That’s why any social progress involves, in some way, an increase in trust. Trust is a difficult concept to define, but it is, ultimately, an optimism in people; which is why any positive social change should revolve around trust in some way. So much of our...

I take a look at the Rene Girard text 'The Plague in Literature and Myth', taking an introductory perspective on Girard's thought before seeing if we can learn anything about 'scapegoating' - a central Girardian concept - and Coronavirus. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy fo...

In another lockdown special, I look at my introduction to Stoicism video to see if we can learn anything about our attitudes to coronavirus. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a lockdown special, I look back at George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By to see if it can offer any insights in a time of Coronavirus pandemic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.