David Hume in 3 Minutes … For His 300th Birthday

in Philosophy | May 8th, 2011

The Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy calls David Hume (1711–1776) “the most impor­tant philoso­pher ever to write in Eng­lish,” and this week the phi­los­o­phy world cel­e­brates the 300th birth­day of the great Scot­tish empiricist/skeptic. Around the web, you can find more seri­ous com­men­tary on Hume’s phi­los­o­phy. Just head over to The Philoso­pher’s Zone, Phi­los­o­phy Bites, or The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life to lis­ten to their enlight­en­ing pod­casts. And then you have this: Hume’s phi­los­o­phy summed up in three slight­ly rib­ald min­utes. It’s part of a series of YouTube clips that offer idio­syn­crat­ic sum­maries of the phi­los­o­phy of Aris­to­tle, Kant, Descartes and oth­er giants.

Mean­while, let us note that you can down­load free ver­sions of Hume’s major works online. Let us list a few for you:

  • An Enquiry Con­cern­ing Human Under­stand­ing Audio — Text
  • Dia­logues Con­cern­ing Nat­ur­al Reli­gion Audio — Text
  • Trea­tise of Human Nature Audio — Text

Find more great works in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and eBooks

via The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life

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Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche: Documentary Presents Three Philosophers in Three Hours

in Philosophy, Video - Politics/Society | April 26th, 2011

“Human, All Too Human” is a three-hour BBC series from 1999, about the lives and work of Friedrich Niet­zsche, Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The film­mak­ers focus heav­i­ly on pol­i­tics and his­tor­i­cal con­text — the Hei­deg­ger hour, for exam­ple, focus­es almost exclu­sive­ly on his trou­bling rela­tion­ship with Nazism.

The most engag­ing chap­ter is “Jean-Paul Sartre: The Road to Free­dom,” in part because the film­mak­ers had so much archival footage and inter­view mate­r­i­al (Check out a still love­ly Simone de Bou­voir at minute 9:00, gig­gling that Sartre was the ugli­est, dirt­i­est, most unshaven stu­dent at the Sor­bonne).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

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

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

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American Philosophy on Film: Pragmatism, Richard Rorty and More

in Philosophy, Video - Politics/Society | April 15th, 2011

In his online bio, Penn State lec­tur­er Phillip McReynolds con­fess­es his “unhealthy fas­ci­na­tion with movies.”  McReynolds chan­nels that obses­sion to healthy effect in his doc­u­men­tary “Amer­i­can Philoso­pher.” The film — which is real­ly a series of 8 shorts — fea­tures inter­views with Richard Rorty, Hilary Put­nam, Joseph Mar­go­lis, Crispin Sartwell, Richard Bern­stein, and many oth­er promi­nent philoso­phers. The con­ver­sa­tion gen­er­al­ly turns around prag­ma­tism, the nation­al char­ac­ter, and the cen­tral ques­tion: Is there such a thing as a native Amer­i­can Phi­los­o­phy?

Our favorite sec­tion is prob­a­bly Part 6, “Progress:” It fea­tures a live­ly 2002 debate between Rorty and Put­nam which (the film argues) was large­ly respon­si­ble for the revival of prag­ma­tism as a viable school of thought.

(Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Mr. McReynolds did his dis­ser­ta­tion on John Dewey.)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Walter Kaufmann’s Classic Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

in Online Courses, Philosophy | April 14th, 2011

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Wal­ter Kauf­mann spent 33 years (1947–1980) teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton. And more than any­one else, Kauf­mann intro­duced Niet­zsche’s phi­los­o­phy to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world and made it pos­si­ble to take Niet­zsche seri­ous­ly as a thinker – some­thing there was­n’t always room to do in Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles.

With­out sim­pli­fy­ing things too much, Kauf­mann saw Niet­zsche as some­thing of an ear­ly exis­ten­tial­ist, which brings us to these vin­tage lec­tures record­ed in 1960 (right around the time that Kauf­mann, a Ger­man-born con­vert to Judaism, also became a nat­u­ral­ized Amer­i­can cit­i­zen). The three lec­tures offer a short primer on exis­ten­tial­ism and the mod­ern crises philoso­phers grap­pled with. Kierkegaard and the Cri­sis in Reli­gion begins the series, fol­lowed by Niet­zsche and the Cri­sis in Phi­los­o­phy and Sartre and the Cri­sis in Moral­i­ty. You can hear them right below:

Kierkegaard and the Cri­sis in Reli­gion

Niet­zsche and the Cri­sis in Phi­los­o­phy

Sartre and the Cri­sis in Moral­i­ty

Kauf­man­n’s talks are now list­ed in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es. There you will also find cours­es pre­sent­ed by oth­er major fig­ures, includ­ing John Sear­le, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel.

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:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

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

The Phi­los­o­phy of Niet­zsche: An Intro­duc­tion by Alain de Bot­ton

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Charismatic Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan Gives Public Lecture (1972)

in Philosophy, Psychology | March 21st, 2011

The footage above is from an extreme­ly rare – and unex­pect­ed­ly enter­tain­ing – video of the philoso­pher and psy­cho­an­a­lyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), giv­ing a lec­ture at The Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Lou­vain in 1972. The film is notable for a cou­ple of rea­sons:

1. In France, Lacan’s rock star sta­tus owed much to his pop­u­lar pub­lic sem­i­nars. The charis­mat­ic icon­o­clast had been giv­ing free pub­lic lec­tures for decades, and those lec­tures were usu­al­ly packed with stu­dents, col­leagues, skep­tics, young rad­i­cals … and fans. The video gives you an idea of what the fuss was all about. Even at 70, Lacan still owns the room, and he has the pres­ence of a stage actor, com­plete with dra­mat­ic paus­es, iron­ic self-reflec­tion, and pitch-per­fect storms of emo­tion (see minute 15:07).

2. At minute 21:37, a polit­i­cal­ly inspired heck­ler tries to ambush him. It’s a moment right out of a com­e­dy show, if the com­e­dy show were chic and grainy and edit­ed by Jean-Luc God­dard. Note the grace with which Lacan neu­tral­izes the poor guy, lights his cig­ar and then con­cludes the lec­ture, even though the fall­out from their encounter is still stuck in his hair.

Lacan’s ideas have fall­en a bit out of fash­ion in the past two decades, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the U.S., where psy­cho­analy­sis has been nudged out of the spot­light by neu­ro­science and post-struc­tural­ism has lost ground to post-colo­nial stud­ies. But Lacan still has his fans, notably the “Elvis of Phi­los­o­phy,” Slavoj Zizek, who dom­i­nates YouTube the way his pre­de­ces­sor once did salons.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Alain de Botton Tweets Short Course in Political Philosophy

in Philosophy, Twitter | March 20th, 2011

Alain de Bot­ton has mas­tered the art of pop­u­lar­iz­ing great phi­los­o­phy. His books, lec­tures, tele­vised pro­grams and the Lon­don-based School of Life – they all help de Bot­ton get great ideas “out there.” And now he turns to Twit­ter. On Fri­day, @AlaindeBotton tweet­ed a short course in polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy in sev­en parts. The course, with each les­son pre­sent­ed in 140 char­ac­ters or less, begins like this:

1: Pla­to: We should be ruled not by lead­ers cho­sen by a major­i­ty, but by those who are most intel­li­gent.

2. St Augus­tine: We should not try to build par­adise on earth. Aim for tol­er­a­ble gov­ern­ment, true gov­ern­ment only pos­si­ble in the next life.

3. Machi­avel­li: Politi­cian must choose between serv­ing the inter­ests of coun­try and the inter­ests of Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty. Can’t have both.

You can fin­ish the course here, and start fol­low­ing us on Twit­ter here, where we post a steady flow of cul­tur­al good­ies through­out the day. If you like Open Cul­ture, you will love our Twit­ter stream (and our Face­book page)…

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Alain de Botton: The Glass of Life is Half Empty

in Philosophy | March 11th, 2011

Here are a few basic truths: life is essen­tial­ly mean­ing­less; your hard work won’t dic­tate where your life goes; you will be struck down by death; and your loved ones and your achieve­ments will whith­er and turn to dust. A grim way to look at things per­haps. But a long line of philoso­phers, start­ing with the Sto­ics, have seen wis­dom in tak­ing a dim view. As Alain de Bot­ton points out, a pes­simistic out­look reduces our expec­ta­tions, our envy, our dis­ap­point­ment, and it cre­ates room for emo­tion­al upside and health­i­er life deci­sions. The talk (which fea­tures a sing-along to Elton John at the 29 minute mark) runs 38 wis­dom-filled min­utes, and it’s pre­sent­ed online by The School of Life, a Lon­don-based insti­tu­tion co-found­ed by de Bot­ton in 2008. A big thanks to Miguel for send­ing this our way…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness (also by Alain de Bot­ton)

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Steve Jobs on Life: “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

in Apple, Life, Philosophy | January 18th, 2011

Every so often, we like to bring back a favorite talk of ours, and today seemed like a bet­ter day than most. Speak­ing at Stan­ford’s com­mence­ment in 2005, Steve Jobs gives the grad­u­ates a glimpse of his life phi­los­o­phy. Some pearls of wis­dom here for the young, to be sure. But if you have some more life under your belt, you’ll appre­ci­ate the mes­sage even more. The talk ends with Jobs telling the stu­dents to “stay hun­gry, stay fool­ish,” a line from The Whole Earth Cat­a­log, the Bible of Steve Jobs’ gen­er­a­tion, which became freely avail­able online back in 2009…

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