Comments on: About

By: ctrlshift

ctrlshift — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:19:30 +0000

No worries… I had a lot of trouble getting a hold of the videos since they were out of print, so I just assumed noone from ttc would care. In the end I probably got them from the same torrent you did then decided to spread it around a bit. I have no idea who eventually digitised the videos, noone ever took credit on any of the sites I found. All I did was clean them up a bit and transcribe them to make sure they get indexed in google

By: Max Lowe

Max Lowe — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:51:41 +0000

Hi there,

Like, WOW. Cant thank you enough for putting this together. I download Ricks’ stuff on a torrent site years ago, and its wonderful to have all his lectures in one place, as a great testament, to a great teacher. Thanks.

I’m so inspired by this site, that I’m thinking of doing something similar. Did you need to ask permission from the teaching company? What the deal regarding copyright?

If you could give me some pointers, that’d be great.

By: The Moral Minority

The Moral Minority — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:41:02 +0000

Thanks very much for this site.

As a recently minted academic in the humanities – i.e. the equivalent of a new trained coal miner in 1980s Britain – I have taken great heart from listening and learning from Rick. The most immediate lesson that so many academics could take is that making your class accessible and making your students laugh does not necessarily mean you are wasting time on frivolity.

Like any great teacher, Rick leaves you wondering what he might have thought on all sorts of issues:

What would he say about the fact that the Iraq War – the enemy having irritatingly disappeared – had to be replayed so the footage could be gathered in HD this time?

How would he have reacted to the further rationalisation of the higher education sector, and the popularisation of anti-intellectualism in the US? Sarah Palin? His namesake Perry? His namesake Santorum?

Most importantly, how would he work a reference to Jersey Shore into an elucidation of Sartrean bad faith?

By: Max Roderick

Max Roderick — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 23:31:37 +0000

While I certainly agree… Most of us are simply too busy leading our own lives. It may seem ironic, but my brothers and I can barely afford an education, and spend most of our time working for minimum wage or close to it. That kind of promotion isn’t easy, especially for a professor of philosophy…

By: alf

alf — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:03:27 +0000

Here goes-Take 2) they are free! All over world on the 25 of january people of diverse backgrounds(often scottish) gather to celebrate the “bithday” date of their poeticle heroe Robert burns-a stupid neurotic fancifull idea made them think it more “possitive to celebrate his BIRTH rather than his DEATH some how forgetting that it was his LIFE that mattered aneasured surely …..(he died on 21 of july)
Anyway (tell me to shut the hell-up if I am being presumpscious) Rick was bourn in49,two years before me-still a youngster-He died in 2002 O.K.?10 years ago.How many people remember his death? Quite a few ,if i am not greatly mistaken.But how many more would LOVE to pay their respects to the memory of this charming and valiant philosipher and do it openly/publicklyTogether?

By: alfredhutchison

alfredhutchison — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:41:50 +0000

I dont visit this page as often as I should……always find kindred spirits flying all over the placce.
How about a “Rick Roderick Night” (as in “Burns Nights”) to celebrate this great and generous man s life and ..death. You texans should be gad-damd-praoud of this man.

By: alfred

alfred — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:33:29 +0000

update: this guy should really be promoted more widely by someone surviving ,close to him……..

By: ctrlshift

ctrlshift — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 03:52:27 +0000

William James is mentioned in 202
John Dewey is mentioned in 103 and 307

By: Tobias Brown

Tobias Brown — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:50:50 +0000

Can you identify any videos from Prof. Roderick which touch on the American Pragmatists? It would be interesting to hear his thoughts on Dewey, James, Pierce etc.

I’m am very grateful for these videos. Love this material!

Thanks.

By: quietjoy

quietjoy — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:01:16 +0000

love this guy! he is so honest, authentic, down-to-earth yet still very faithful to the authors’ ideas that he is discussing…i was somehow lucky enough to find his lectures and they were critical to my intellectual development…ive since started my own site to ensure the spirit of inquiry that Rick celebrated never dies in this great land of ours….if you’re interested its at http://www.greatestgoodforman.blogspot.com...

By: ctrlshift

ctrlshift — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:40:00 +0000

Hi Beck, You can download the source videos I used to create the youtube videos here: http://www.wimpywombat.net/rickroderick/1993%20Self%20Under%20Siege%20%28fixed%29/

By: Beck Devenyns

Beck Devenyns — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:40:26 +0000

Does anyone know if The Self Under Siege is available on DVD? My philosophy club wants to watch the videos, but our connection for YouTube streaming is undependable. I don’t believe the Teaching Company publishes them any longer.

By: gaurau ernesto alexender

gaurau ernesto alexender — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:17:46 +0000

wow,i hav gone through some of his lectures, if hav find some remarkable pnts in it.althoug he is great guy what a thinking.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:49:31 +0000

After entertaining the idea of the hyper-real, I have been pondering, through my own procrastination and pessimism that I am creating a hyper-falsity or negative or illusion. I Believe the hyper illusion is the assumption of a certain condition and then further elaboration through the imagination that it is real. Thus a perpetuation of an illusion after its imagination and then into reality and ultimatley becoming my perception.

By: Razak

Razak — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:43:24 +0000

Dr.Roderick may your soul rest in perfect peace.I have been listening to this series of lectures and always wondered why haven’t I ever cross his work[Dr.Roderick Rick] earlier.I am not good with words but will say this a great mind has been lost.

By: mac

mac — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:24:10 +0000

i have been hooked on philosophy for a long time, roderick made it interesting again. thanks for producing the series. mac

By: Darren Crawford

Darren Crawford — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 21:43:58 +0000

Sometimes I wonder what, or where I would be had I discovered these lectures earlier. Dr. Roderick’s lectures startled something: permanently unsettling, and rekindled my love for philosophy.

By: David Smith

David Smith — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 13:39:59 +0000

Hey Marshall, I was really saddened to hear of the untimely passing of your dad Rick. Such a man can’t help but leave a massive hole in your life. You have my sincerest best wishes and empathy. Your dad seemed to me, to be one of the few people I have come across whose intellect was sharp as a razor, but who kept the easy human quality I think we all loved and respected about him. He wanted to inform, he genuinely wanted others to understand. And wasn’t so impressed by his self importance that he became an obstacle to this. A rare and deeply authentic kind of educator. I never met him face to face, and only know him through his work and his lectures. But his quality as a person, a natural person is unmistakable to me. I hope you and your family feel better in time.

Deepest Regards and best wishes David Smith.

By: Henri Montandon

Henri Montandon — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 04:00:05 +0000

I couldn’t remember the quote. It was something like, “A ________ once is a necessity forever.” Google pointed me here.

Rick Roderick felt like a close friend – one who I never met. The incongruity of the West Texas drawl and the philosophical acumen always tickled me.

After Derrida and Nietschze the philosopher who taught me the most.

It’s hard to say whether his philosophy drove his life or his life drove his philosophy. He was a master of suspicion.

Death is the only truly democratic undertaking.

By: Joe Hayns

Joe Hayns — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 12:53:29 +0000

To add, there are other great lecture series on Youtube; try Brian McGee’s interview series, Appadurai’s reading of Capital, the European Graduate School’s page (Baudrillard, Zizek, Badiou), for just a few.

By: Joe Hayns

Joe Hayns — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 12:49:33 +0000

I wish more of the internet was like this. I wonder what Rick Roderick would have made of the medium, if that’s even the proper way describe the internet (?)
It seems as if one of his aims was to render various (potentially) emancipatory projects understandable to a wider audience, or to put it another way, to take philosophy out of itself. I don’t think the obvious criticism of potentially freedom-making projects – that the very people that they might help are very often unable to grasp their insights – is a bad one, at all; people like Roderick (or Socrates) are far too few.

Anyway, perhaps the author of this terrific resource might consider gathering Rick Roderick’s journal articles and make them available here? I’m not currently enrolled anywhere, and so cannot readily access journals.

By: Luke Scientiae

Luke Scientiae — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 23:43:58 +0000

Rick Roderick has mastered the art of communicating to the public concepts that are typically perceived as dry or irrelevant. That is very hard to do. It’s such a shame he’s no longer with us.

The one thing that Roderick doesn’t cover, however, is the philosophy of science, which is a shame. Luckily, the Teaching Company have a series out about that too by Jeffrey L. Kasser. I highly recommend them too.

By: Siavash

Siavash — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 01:14:34 +0000

Hey, great site. thx

By: avi

avi — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:54:59 +0000

Thanks for your reply. It made sense what you told me about the overlap of the series. On the other hand this makes me think that there is some ramdomness about your pick up. I was worried about something beyond that becouse in my own philosophical thinking i came up with the same simbol to express the central idea of my methaphisical tesis.

thanks again

By: ctrlshift

ctrlshift — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:35:07 +0000

I never really thought about it… I went through hundreds of themes and this one just “felt right”. I can make something up if it helps… there are three recorded series available and they all stand on their own but overlap in an important way (thematically connected). Clues to this can be found in the 1987 interview recorded three years before the first lecture series.

By: Avi

Avi — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:12:01 +0000

Why did you use a simbol of three spheres in an eclipse manner to represent Rick Roderick´s thinking? Its very important to me to khow how is Rick Roderick related to this sistesis?