Last updated: 27 March 2023

Download: Philosophy and Human Values (1990) Lecture 7: Kierkegaard and the Contemporary Spirit.mov

Transcript: Okay, last time I may have dropped out of my West Texas mode for a moment and become a little too philosophical, so I am going to try to restate a few things from Nietzsche in a simple way, quickly, before I move on to some remarks about Kierkegaard. What I was trying to evoke in you was more the spirit of Nietzsche than the specific text. The spirit of Nietzsche is one of deep suspicion, and that suspicion is that power is intertwined with things that we normally like to think of, even today, as not being dependent on power, for example: truth, goodness, and so on. Nietzsche says they are. View full article »

Last updated: 04 November 2020

Download: Philosophy and Human Values (1990) Lecture 6: Nietzsche – Knowledge and Belief.mov

Transcript: Last time, in our last lecture, we were screaming about the United States government and its many failings. I want to make clear something, and it’s… unfortunately in the current context… I must tell you that many of you who came here to hear a course on “Philosophy and Human Values” probably expected more “Philosophy” and less on the “Human Values” side. Well, I hope some of you were here yesterday when I ran through a series of ethical theories, and I think I gave some arguments. That was my “professionalising” work. In other words, that was the display of my rough credentials to do this. View full article »

Last updated: 04 November 2020

Download: Philosophy and Human Values (1990) Lecture 5: Hegel and Modern Life.mov

Transcript: Okay. In our last lecture, I ended the history of ethics in a way – what would be a usual introduction to an ethics course – by discussing Hegel’s view of ethics with its… what one might call it… “super concept” of freedom. The very large concept of freedom as formulating those goals and desires of individuals in whatever given historical period. And the idea that freedom represents is to see those goals and obstacles and their overcoming in that period, and to name that activity and those sets of practices “freedom”. View full article »

Last updated: 27 March 2023

Download: Philosophy and Human Values (1990) Lecture 4: Mill on Liberty.mov

Transcript: Okay, we ended the last lecture by discussing the Utilitarian ethical theory which is that we should always act so as to bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and Kant’s ethical theory that we should always act so that the rule of our action could be willed by us to be universal law, and then we raised objections to both those. Now, a further reminder is in order, and it’s very important. View full article »

Last updated: 04 November 2020

Download: Philosophy and Human Values (1990) Lecture 3: Kant and the Path to Enlightenment.mov

Transcript: I have the daunting task of summarising 2000 years in two sentences, so I’ll avoid it, and hope that you saw the last tape. Which was basically… the movement so far is to present something like a traditional history of ideas but – if you’ve noticed – with little rejoinders along the way that suggest that that history of ideas is not innocent. Not as though it were being presented in the way that the National Association of Scholars would have you believe. Books being selected as though by very intelligent readers because they are the best books. That isn’t always wrong, but the story of the survival of books and the formations of canons clearly has other factors. View full article »

Last updated: 27 March 2023

Download: Philosophy and Human Values (1990) Lecture 2: Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics.mov

Transcript: Well, in the last lecture I tried to just make a few suggestive remarks in order to get us off the ground about what might be called “the Greek way of life”, and different forms of human conduct of which only one I suggested and discussed, and that was the Socratic life of enquiry. And I didn’t mean by that life of enquiry an inactive life, an apolitical life or one unconcerned with the state or with other humans. But, in fact, I wanted to present it not as some academic debate, but as a life deeply immersed in your social situation, and to understand who you are and who your fellow citizens are. View full article »

Last updated: 26 March 2023

Download: Philosophy and Human Values (1990) Lecture 1: Socrates and the Life of Inquiry.mov

Transcript: A course in philosophy and human values may seem paradoxical because philosophy was that discipline, in our traditions – that’s western traditions, western civilisation – that began with a search for unconditioned knowledge. Unconditioned by human knowledge, of things that transcend this world or any other. That tradition is very much alive in philosophy today, mostly in formal logic and mathematics, where it seems in place, and professional philosophers have a name for that tradition. It’s the “analytic” tradition in philosophy. A course in philosophy and human values has very little to gain from that tradition. View full article »