Over 450 Videos in the Philosophy Core Concept Series

Since the beginning of the semester, I have been quite simply swamped with work!  In addition to teaching 5 different courses at 4 different academic institutions, I had my usual duties as editor of Stoicism Today - including Stoicon 2018 and Stoic Week - as well as a heavy load of speaking, meetings with clients, and consulting work.  I did manage to get some video production in there as well.

One type of video I've been routinely creating are "Philosophy Core Concepts".  These are short (10-25 minute) discussions of key ideas, arguments, or distinctions made by major philosophical thinkers.  They span the gamut from ancient philosophy down to 20th century thinkers (check out the list below).  I've produced quite a few of these.  Today, I took a look at the playlist, to see how many I'd done so far.

Over 450!  That's the number of the ones I've publicly released (my Patreon supporters get an early look at these videos before the general public does).  In fact, we hit number 451 today with the latest release, discussing the Epicurean distinction between mental and bodily pleasures.  So I thought I'd step back a bit, reflect, and write a few things about that video series (which I think will likely pass 500 videos early next year!)

Video Series - Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Immanuel Kant is one key thinkers I focus on in my classes.  I'm not by any means a "Kantian" - in fact I disagree with him on a number of matters - but he is someone whose works I very much appreciate, and even enjoy grappling with.  He is also someone whose thought tends to be very difficult for students approaching him for the first time - or even rereading his works! - and in my view, this difficulty stems from two main sources:  his academic terminology and style, one the one hand, and the systematic structure of his thought, on the other.

The first obstacle for students is figuring out what Kant is actually saying - and it is entirely understandable that they would encounter serious difficulties and frustrations when attempting to make sense out of what they see on the page!  Once they do understand just what all the jargon means, then there is the further difficulty involved in wrapping their minds around what Kant is proposing, arguing, criticizing, distinguishing.

If you've ever tackled Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals - or if you'd like to try your hand at one of the most important and influential works of Ethics - then I have something you might find very useful, a series of 21 short videos covering the entirety of that very work!

Originally, I created these core concept videos to assist my face-to-face and online college students get more out of their study of Kant's deontological moral theory in my classes.  Some of the early ones in this series were actually recorded in the classroom.  Then, I began producing additional ones in front of my chalkboard in our old apartment in New York. The last nine videos were shot and uploaded more recently.  So, you'll notice that the later ones have higher video and sound quality - but the content is all quite solid!

The Philosophy Fans Have Spoken!

It is an astounding number, but at this point, I have created over 300 short Philosophy Core Concept videos - check out the playlist here - covering a pretty extensive range of philosophers.

Looking to expand the figures that I included in the series, I decided to get some input from my viewers, subscribers, and social media followers.  So I created a poll.  And the results were quite interesting.

The philosophy fans have spoken!  It looks like this summer - in addition to the other video production I have planned - I'll be shooting, editing, and releasing a lot of new video content on three main thinkers, all of them German:  Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche.  (By the way, I've also created a Patreon page to support that time-intensive video production work)

10 Famous Lines By Philosophers You Should Definitely Read

Every once in a while, a philosopher comes up with a great line, a saying that for one reason or another "sticks", so well that many - even most - of the people who employ the saying couldn't tell you which work the quip came from.  Why is that?  In most cases, it is because they haven't read that philosopher's work, or perhaps anything by that philosopher.  They just know - or rather, think they know - that the philosopher said it.  And it sounds cool, or apropos, or at least relevant.

After seeing yet one more person start out a post ostensibly focused on gratitude by citing Cicero - who did in fact say that gratitude is the "parent of the other virtues" - a post that made it clear that the author either had never read Cicero, or if she did, had managed to forget everything that she had read, I decided it was time, rather than to silently curse the intellectual darkness again, to shed a bit of light.

I put out a challenge in three of the social media platforms I use - Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Here it is: What quotations of philosophers, in your view, best meet these four criteria:

1) the passage is posted online fairly often
2) the passage was actually said somewhere by that philosopher
3) almost none of the the people posting the quote would be able to say what work it comes from
4) most of the people posting the quote have not read more than a bit of that philosopher's actual work

Violence Over Kant Interpretation?

The story from Rostov-on-Don last month is the sort of incongruous verging on comedy that, as the saying goes "you just can't make up" -- or at least not easily -- since nobody who has seriously studied the moral theory of Immanuel Kant would think to associate his work and thought with the sort of disagreement that would turn nakedly violent.  And yet, there they were, the headlines.

You've got the straightforward and succinct Reuter's story: Man shot in Russia in Argument over Kant.  The more cheeky Guardian story: Unreasonable critique of Kant leads to man being shot in Russian shop.  Time's wince-worthy pun: “You Kant Say That!” Philosophical Debate Leads to Shooting.  Huffington Post displays the alarmist anti-intellectualism always lurking just below their superficiality: Philosophy Is Dangerous! Immanuel Kant Debate In Russia Leads To Fist Fight, Ends In Gunshot.  We could go on multiplying examples.  I'd rather muse a bit about why this was and remains such an interestingly, even sublimely strange story.

This is What Democracy Looks Like?

In my home state of Wisconsin (where, unfortunately, I haven't lived for years), protests have been going on for some time now, long enough for a great deal of interesting and exasperating, sage and foolish, things to be said.  There's been enough time for dramas to play themselves out -- or at least their first acts -- time enough for loads of "new" information -- typically information nobody had paid attention to until it became polemical bargaining chips -- to come to light, for the "nation" to take notice and chime in  -- typically in very onesided, evidence-ignoring, partisan ways, even time enough for some protesters in Egypt to mistake what is going on in Madison for anything remotely resembling the revolution working itself out in the Muslim Mideast, and time enough for the protesters in America to seize on the comparison as one more rhetorical tool.

I didn't have a dog in this particular fight, not being a Wisconsin taxpayer, not having voted for or against the current democratically elected Wisconsin political regime, not having a child in Wisconsin schools -- and neither did the majority of my academic friends and colleagues who almost immediately upon hearing a few (far too few) points of the case, immediately sided with the teachers union and against the governor, willing to conflate all sorts of issues with each other, pass on misinformation mixed in with genuine information, take stands that quite understandably feel good but may not be all that well supported when one thinks matters through -- and call what is taking place "democracy".  But, now it has catapulted onto the national stage, impressed itself upon the national consciousness, provided to great a temptation for politician and pundit not to all to hastily weigh in with their opinions, their spin, their takes.  The Wisconsin issue has become a rallying point, and a precedent to imitate, for Left and Right.  So now it's everybody's issue, fair game, and I do feel not only permitted, but in some sense required to make a few points that in my view are being overlooked

Kant at the book club

Tonight at the Cumberland county library Great Books club, Kant's short, dense but readable essay Towards Perpetual Peace was on the docket.  I showed up a few minutes after everyone else had arrived, having walked the five blocks in a cool drizzle that hopefully heralds the end of summer here in Fayetteville.  The old members greeted and the moderator greeted me as I came in, happy I was back after having been AWOL since June, traveling up north.  Someone said:  "we were hoping you'd show up," a reflection both of the fact that we were talking about a philosopher this time, and of the cordiality of the group.

All the seats around the table were occupied; there were a few new faces, and for the first time, I was not the youngest member.  At one end, next to the moderator, a thin, young white man whose close copped hair and mannerisms betrayed him as having strayed in from Ft. Bragg (now that I think back, perhaps he resembles me at his age, in the Army, 20 years ago, an array of commonplaces, allusions to an idiosyncratically perused  literature, half-worked out thoughts at my disposal, searching for something, not sure what, not sure where, not sure with whom. . . ) At the other end, two black women, one older, collected, smiling, the other, a social worker younger than me but closer to me in age.  I disentangled a chair from the stack, and she slid her seat over slightly so I could between her and Jacquie (a regular, French, who I later asked for a word I couldn't recall:  tremblement de terre)

I am always very interested whenever our selection is a philosopher to see what the book club makes of him or her. It's a quid pro quo.  They are happy to get my explanations, context, occasional judgments, mentions of connections, since for better or for worse, I'm a philosopher -- or at the least have studied them and teach them.  I don't think they need me much, actually, and I'm paying close attention each time to what they have to say, how they construe the passages, what they respond to, what makes sense to them, resonates with them, what else it calls to their minds.

So far, in the sessions I've been able to attend we have read selections by Simone de Beauvoir (from The Second Sex) and Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish), and the whole of Machiavelli's The Prince.  So, Kant, and this essay in particular, actually fit in quite well.