Three Passions of Bertrand Russell (and a Collection of Free Texts)

in Literature, Math, Philosophy | January 31st, 2012

“Three pas­sions, sim­ple but over­whelm­ing­ly strong, have gov­erned my life,” wrote Bertrand Rus­sell in the pro­logue to his auto­bi­og­ra­phy: “the long­ing for love, the search for knowl­edge, and unbear­able pity for the suf­fer­ing of mankind.”

This five minute video, a pre­view of a three-part series pro­duced in 2005 for Ontario pub­lic tele­vi­sion called “The Three Pas­sions of Bertrand Rus­sell,” fea­tures a record­ing of Rus­sell read­ing pas­sages from the pro­logue, enti­tled “What I Have Lived For.” You can read the orig­i­nal text at the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety, an excel­lent online resource, that also makes avail­able free books by Rus­sell, includ­ing:

You can also down­load the first edi­tion of Rus­sel­l’s land­mark 1910–13 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Alfred North White­head, Prin­cip­ia Math­e­mat­i­ca, as well as many of Rus­sel­l’s essays, includ­ing:

To explore the full list of avail­able resources, and to learn how you can sup­port the soci­ety’s activ­i­ties, vis­it the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety web­site.

Also don’t miss some great Rus­sell mate­r­i­al in our own archives, includ­ing all six of his 1948 BBC Rei­th Lec­tures, a clip from a Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion inter­view fea­tur­ing his views on God, and his elo­quent 1959 mes­sage to the future.

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Alain de Botton Wants a Religion for Atheists: Introducing Atheism 2.0

in Philosophy, Religion | January 26th, 2012

Last sum­mer Alain de Bot­ton, one of the bet­ter pop­u­lar­iz­ers of phi­los­o­phy, appeared at TED­G­lob­al and called for a new kind of athe­ism. An Athe­ism 2.0. This revised athe­ism would let athe­ists deny a cre­ator and yet not for­sake all the oth­er good things reli­gion can offer — tra­di­tion, rit­u­al, com­mu­ni­ty, insights into liv­ing a good life, the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence tran­scen­dence, tak­ing part in insti­tu­tions that can change the world, and the rest.

What he’s describ­ing kind of sounds like what already hap­pens in the Uni­tar­i­an Church … or The School of Life, a Lon­don-based insti­tu­tion found­ed by de Bot­ton in 2008. The school offers cours­es “in the impor­tant ques­tions of every­day life” and also hosts Sun­day Ser­mons that fea­ture “mav­er­ick cul­tur­al fig­ures” talk­ing about impor­tant prin­ci­ples to live by. Click here and you can watch sev­er­al past ser­mons pre­sent­ed by actress Miran­da July, physi­cist Lawrence Krauss, author Rebec­ca Sol­nit, and Alain de Bot­ton him­self.

If Athe­ism 2.0 piques your inter­est, you’ll want to pre-order de Bot­ton’s soon-to-be-pub­lished book, Reli­gion for Athe­ists: A Non-Believ­er’s Guide to the Uses of Reli­gion.

Thanks to Elana for send­ing this our way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Athe­ism: A Rough His­to­ry of Dis­be­lief, with Jonathan Miller

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Michel Foucault: Free Lectures on Truth, Discourse & The Self (UC Berkeley, 1980–1983)

in Philosophy | January 23rd, 2012

Image by Nemo­main, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Michel Fou­cault (1926–1984) was an enor­mous­ly influ­en­tial French philoso­pher who wrote, among oth­er things, his­tor­i­cal analy­ses of psy­chi­a­try, med­i­cine, the prison sys­tem, and the func­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty in social orga­ni­za­tions. He spent some time dur­ing the last years of his life at UC Berke­ley, deliv­er­ing sev­er­al lec­tures in Eng­lish. And hap­pi­ly they were record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty:

These last lec­tures are also avail­able on YouTube (in audio for­mat).

One of Fou­cault’s more con­tro­ver­sial and mem­o­rable books was Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish (1977), which traced the tran­si­tion from the 18th cen­tu­ry use of pub­lic tor­ture and exe­cu­tion to–less than 50 years later–the preva­lence of much more sub­tle uses of pow­er, with a focus on incar­cer­a­tion, reha­bil­i­ta­tion, pre­ven­tion, and sur­veil­lance.

Here he is in 1983 com­ment­ing on that book (thanks for the link to Seth Paskin). The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast recent­ly dis­cussed the book with Katharine McIn­tyre, doc­tor­al can­di­date at Colum­bia. Fou­cault’s image of the panop­ti­con well cap­tures mod­ern pri­va­cy con­cerns in the elec­tron­ic age.

Final­ly, we leave you with a School­house Rock-style pre­sen­ta­tion of Fou­cault’s book The His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, Vol­ume 1 and some vin­tage video of Fou­cault’s 1971 debate with Noam Chom­sky. Fou­cault’s lec­tures have been added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our big col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. He also per­forms with the Madi­son, WI band New Peo­ple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jacques Lacan, Aca­d­e­m­ic Rock Star, Gives a Pub­lic Lec­ture, 1972

Lovers and Philoso­phers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Togeth­er in 1967

Phi­los­o­phy with a South­ern Drawl: Rick Rod­er­ick Teach­es Der­ri­da, Fou­cault, Sartre and Oth­ers

100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es (Part of Our List of 875 Free Cours­es Online)

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Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intellectuals

in Philosophy, Podcasts | December 12th, 2011

How many of the great philoso­phers have you actu­al­ly heard speak? This clip comes from the 1976 doc­u­men­tary Sartre by Him­self, which fea­tures dis­cus­sions with Jean-Paul Sartre and his near-equal­ly famous part­ner Simone de Beau­voir, among oth­ers. The film was released with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles in 1979, a year before Sartre died.

In this clip, Sartre crit­i­cizes mod­ern intel­lec­tu­als as “spe­cial­ist work­ers in prac­ti­cal knowl­edge,” who apply “uni­ver­sal notions and prac­tices” to par­tic­u­lar pur­pos­es deter­mined by a polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. This can cause a con­flict of con­science: Sartre gives the exam­ple of sci­en­tists work­ing on the atom­ic bomb, but also pro­fes­sors whose efforts sole­ly ben­e­fit a small group of pros­per­ous stu­dents. Sartre thinks intel­lec­tu­als use this kind of con­flict to feel bet­ter about themselves–they may sign peti­tions, side with the work­ing class, etc.–while still not seri­ous­ly ques­tion­ing them­selves. Intel­lec­tu­als rage against the machine but are still play­ing their assigned role in it. “[They are] very pleased to have an unhap­py con­science, because that is what allows [them] to denounce.”

This is an exam­ple of his famous notion of “bad faith,” where we dis­as­so­ci­ate our­selves from our actions, or more com­mon­ly where we claim to have more lim­it­ed choic­es than we actu­al­ly do. Bad faith is pos­si­ble because of the nature of the self, accord­ing to Sartre: there is no pre­de­ter­mined “human nature” or “true you,” but instead you are some­thing built over time, by your own freely cho­sen actions, too often using the roles and char­ac­ter­is­tics oth­ers assign to you.

Ear­ly in his career, he con­struct­ed a the­o­ry of con­scious­ness and the self that makes this plau­si­ble. The work in which he did this, “The Tran­scen­dence of the Ego,” is the sub­ject of the most recent episode of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast, pro­filed in this ear­li­er Open Cul­ture post. The pod­cast has since tak­en off: it’s cur­rent­ly fea­tured on the main pod­cast page in the iTunes store and has bro­ken the top 40 in “top audio pod­casts,” reach­ing #1 in the phi­los­o­phy cat­e­go­ry.

Vis­it the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life web page, get the episodes on iTunes, and sub­scribe to the PEL blog feed.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life and fronts a band called New Peo­ple.

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Life-Affirming Talks by Cultural Mavericks Presented at The School of Life

in Life, Philosophy | December 8th, 2011

Since the late 1990′s, Alain de Bot­ton has been break­ing down dif­fi­cult philo­soph­i­cal and lit­er­ary ideas and see­ing how they apply to people’s every­day lives. He did this with his 1997 best­seller, How Proust Can Change Your Life. And he took things a step fur­ther with his tele­vi­sion series called Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness.

Then, in the sum­mer of 2008, de Bot­ton and some col­leagues set up The School of Life, a Lon­don-based insti­tu­tion that offers cours­es “in the impor­tant ques­tions of every­day life,” in areas we all tend to care about: careers, rela­tion­ships, pol­i­tics, trav­els, fam­i­lies, etc. The school also hosts a series of “Sun­day Ser­mons” that fea­ture “mav­er­ick cul­tur­al fig­ures” talk­ing about the virtues they cling to, and the vices to be wary of.

Today, we’re fea­tur­ing sev­er­al of these ser­mons. Above, the actress, writer, and direc­tor Miran­da July takes an off­beat and endear­ing look at strangers, and the role they play in our lives. Then come some notable men­tions:

Physi­cist Lawrence Krauss on Cos­mic Con­nec­tions. (Also don’t miss this oth­er unre­lat­ed but splen­did talk by Krauss.)

Author Rebec­ca Sol­nit on Hope.

And Alain de Bot­ton him­self on the impor­tance of defy­ing pes­simism.

Again, you can find the full list of ser­mons orga­nized chrono­log­i­cal­ly here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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Philosophy in Prison: Weighty Conversations about Right and Wrong

in Life, Philosophy | December 7th, 2011

When not found­ing tech com­pa­nies, Damon Horowitz teach­es phi­los­o­phy through the Prison Uni­ver­si­ty Project, bring­ing col­lege-lev­el class­es to inmates of San Quentin State Prison. In three min­utes, Horowitz raps about phi­los­o­phy meet­ing real life — about how pris­on­ers con­vict­ed of seri­ous crimes come to terms with Socrates (who fin­ished his days in prison), Hei­deg­ger, Kant, cat­e­gor­i­cal imper­a­tives, ques­tions of right and wrong, and the rest. The “talk” was orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at TED 2011 last March.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps

Bertrand Rus­sell & Oth­er Big Thinkers in BBC Lec­ture Series (Free)

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Death Masks of Dante, Nietzsche, Joyce, Beethoven and Other Greats

in Life, Literature, Philosophy | November 9th, 2011

Dante.deathmask

Death masks — they have been around since the days of King Tut in Ancient Egypt, and (per­haps) Agamem­non and Cas­san­dra in Ancient Greece. A way to remem­ber the char­ac­ter and expres­sions of the dead, this memo­r­i­al prac­tice con­tin­ued right down through the Mid­dle Ages when wax and plas­ter became the mate­ri­als of choice.

nietzsche death mask

Today, we’re left with facial imprints of impor­tant his­tor­i­cal lead­ers (Cromwell, Napoleon, Peter the Great); cul­tur­al giants (Dante up top, Shake­speare, Voltaire, New­ton, Beethoven, James Joyce, Niet­zsche); and some recent­ly more depart­ed icons (Hitch­cock and Tim­o­thy Leary).

joyce death mask

Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty hosts online a fair­ly large col­lec­tion of Life and Death Masks, and the good folks at Bib­liok­lept high­light masks of the intel­li­gent, pow­er­ful and famous on an ongo­ing basis. Unfor­tu­nate­ly these col­lec­tions skew almost entire­ly male — a sign of the times that came before us.

Above, you can see the masks of Niet­zsche, Dante, and Joyce mov­ing from top to bot­tom.

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Monty Python’s Best Philosophy Sketches

in Comedy, Philosophy | November 1st, 2011

From dead par­rots to The Mean­ing of Life, Mon­ty Python cov­ered a lot of ter­ri­to­ry. Edu­cat­ed at Oxford and Cam­bridge, the Pythons made a habit of weav­ing arcane intel­lec­tu­al ref­er­ences into the sil­li­est of sketch­es. A clas­sic exam­ple is “Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Con­clu­sion Vis­it Jean-Paul Sartre,” (above) from episode 27 of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus.

The sketch fea­tures writ­ing part­ners John Cleese as Mrs. Premise and Gra­ham Chap­man as Mrs. Con­clu­sion, gab­bing away in a laun­derette about how best to put down a budgie. Mrs. Premise sug­gests flush­ing it down the loo. “Ooh! No!” protests Mrs. Con­clu­sion. “You should­n’t do that. No that’s dan­ger­ous. Yes, they breed in the sew­ers, and even­tu­al­ly you get evil-smelling flocks of huge soiled bud­gies fly­ing out of peo­ple’s lava­to­ries infring­ing their per­son­al free­dom.”

From there the con­ver­sa­tion veers straight into Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Roads to Free­dom. It’s a clas­sic sketch–vintage Python–and you can read a tran­script here while watch­ing it above.

Anoth­er clas­sic is the “Philoso­pher’s Drink­ing Song,” shown above in a scene from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. The song was writ­ten and sung by Eric Idle. In the sketch, mem­bers of the phi­los­o­phy depart­ment at the “Uni­ver­si­ty of Wool­loomooloo” lead the audi­ence in singing, “Immanuel Kant was a real pis­sant who was very rarely sta­ble; Hei­deg­ger, Hei­deg­ger was a boozy beg­gar who could think you under the table…”

And one of our favorites: “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match” (above), a filmed sequence from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl, pit­ting the Ancient Greeks against the Ger­mans, with Con­fu­cius as ref­er­ee. The sketch was orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in 1972 in a two-part West Ger­man tele­vi­sion spe­cial, Mon­ty Python’s Fliegen­der Zirkus.

When you’re done laugh­ing, you can dive deep into phi­los­o­phy here with our col­lec­tion of 55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es online.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawk­ing Sings Mon­ty Python’s “Galaxy Song”: Hear the New­ly-Released Sin­gle

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

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