Ep. 23 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Romanticism

New videos released every Friday.
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Books in the Video:
• Gary Lachman - Lost Knowledge of the Imagination
And the vile, anti-semitic treatise that is Martin Luther's "The Jews and Their Lies'"
Series Playlist: www.youtube.co....
Facebook: / vervaeke.john
Twitter: / vervaeke_john
Twenty-third episode of Dr. John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

[@dsuleyma]

Thus Spake Vervaekustra

[@albertomuitofixolas3192]

Lo! I teach you the meaning-man. Man is something to be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

[@oO-_-_-_-Oo]

​@@albertomuitofixolas3192 hey my wife overcomes this man whenever and wherever she so chooses to do so and that, my friend, is all I have to share. Be good, make smart choices, ✌

[@albertomuitofixolas3192]

@@oO-_-_-_-Oo lol gay

[@oO-_-_-_-Oo]

@@albertomuitofixolas3192 lol happy happy Joy Joy

[@albertomuitofixolas3192]

@@oO-_-_-_-Oo I never understood what this means, man

[@FearNoGrave]

“If you don’t know about Kant, then shut up about Jung!” Noted.

[@spiralsun1]

Yes, but I think there is a way of understanding both outside that framework. I don’t care what Jung said he was. Hitler thought he was the savior of Germany. I am of the opinion that whatever you think you are is stages of thinking. So you are not that. I was also once a blastula. Then a zygote. I am not that. I say things that I am but I am not that. How it looks to you, I am not that. So what am I? Michael Jackson. (Ok a small humor, because ❤️ ). Actually just ask that question and don’t answer it. Live and find out. Love where John talks about the understanding of poems… even when Bacon said “knowledge is power” people totally minced that up. When it’s more like understanding is power, knowing what it is like to be something, making your mind work well -knowing as internalizing and being as John says. One of my peeves of history. Along with the degeneration of education into a vocational skills pursuit, and stuff like that. I am overjoyed at the comments on John’s stuff. Nuff said ❤️

[@mariog1490]

@@spiralsun1 I actually wouldn’t pay attention to that. Freud is definitely a romantic. And Jung is a deep Freudian and Kantian in the beginning. Then he writes symbols of transformation and he finally became independent. By then end, Jung is still a Freudian and a Kantian, but he has opened the door to escape. Then when Jung writes his two famous essays the relationship between the ego and the unconscious he is really starting broken away from Freud. But he also talks of Schopenhauer in the essays. And though he appreciated a bit of Schopenhauers pessimism-not all of it-he attacked Schopenhauer, but the Kantian aspect of Schopenhauer. After this essay, I don’t really hear Jung talk of Kant. He moves away from this skepticism of metaphysics. If I were to go even behind that, I think the red book is very metaphysical. But then you get to his later works like the symbolic life or the archetypes of the collective unconscious and he becomes very metaphysical. He ultimately goes away from Kant and rejects him. And by the end, he starts saying beautiful things like this: “Man is the microcosm of the macrocosm ; the God on earth is built on the pattern of the God in nature.” - Jung “Man can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in endless self deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom he will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown - ignotum per ignotius - that is by the name of God.” - Jung

[@ryue65]

2 years have passed, but I thank you for your contribution. It gives me pause for thought.

[@masterllama321]

this series has been one of the most enlightening and educating things i have ever encountered. thank you!

[@masterllama321]

@Toby Callen not sure if anyone gives a shit, but in less than 15 minutes I hacked Toby Callens password with insta portal!! Wow!!! 🤯🤯🤯

[@felicityjames8299]

@Toby Callen zzz y

[@felicityjames8299]

2RY

[@IngridHurwitz]

"Its difficult to be fair to this". And he stops to re-center. I so love the commitment to doing so. This is intellectual integrity. Straw men are easy to make. Loving one's enemy is most crucial in philosophy.

[@scott8957]

I would trade my knowledge of the Earth revolving around the sun IN A HEARTBEAT for the relief of my existential anxiety and fear. The beginning lectures on Plato, Aristotle, Buddhism etc. made sense to me and the world views described were beautiful and rational. Everything from Luther on just doesn't make sense to me and feels tragic.

[@johnvervaeke]

Yes. I feel that tragedy.

[@processrauwill7922]

That’s actually pretty profound, it speaks to the nature of true knowing, rather than facts.

[@justarandomperson7664]

Cccccccccccccccccccuc..

[@conornagle9528]

Is there not an integration/reemurgence technique or process that can distill what we "have" currently with all the potential wisdom cultivation that comes with events pre-Luther? I suppose that is the potential manifestation of listening (really listening) to what people like Dr. Vervaeke and others reflect on and share with us. Thanks again for these lectures. Invaluable.

[@scythermantis]

@@johnvervaeke Have you talked to any Lutheran theologians about this? While I actually accept a lot of your criticism of Protestantism, and I appreciate hearing a very different narrative than the one that many hear first about the Catholic church, nevertheless there were some VERY REAL problems with corruption at the time of Martin Luther that he was responding to, and injustice as well, and there is also apparently something beautiful about being able to have a *personal* and *meaningful* relationship with God, without the need to go through another human being who is a priest, where the souls of our loved ones may hang in the balance based on indulgences paid to the church to build ornate basilicas and cathedrals while the poor working class of Saxony grovel and beg for food... surely you can see that side as well. Anyways, thanks so much for this; there's a lot to think about here.

[@larsandersen5006]

The best thing about Friday is the next episode of Awakening from the meaning crisis. Your work is much appreciated John :)

[@cartergomez5390]

Listening in 2023!

[@P3rformula]

J.V. Squad rolling in to watch the weekly video

[@accadia1983]

14:45 mind making sense 17:00 contient model: like matrix multiplication 18:00 bottom up (from inputs), top down (from cognition) 21:00 Kant+Gnostic=Jung. Also, Freud 30:00 "sorry, but romance has to go" 39:50 enter Shopenhauer, with Nihilism. 55:00 Nietzsche: we are self-deceptive, but I have no self-transcendent mechanism to solve this. What an episode! Do not get lost in your mind ♾️❤️

[@jasonaus3551]

Saturday mornings in Australia are "New Vervaeke Episode" day, perfect with Coffee and sunshine

[@floriansebastianfitz2697]

It‘s so interesting… when you were talking about all the ideas and concepts predating the enlightenment I was listening with both a sense of wonder and deep understanding, as if someone was speaking to the core of my being, to some long forgotten intuitive knowledge in me. Yet, at the same time, my rational mind often felt so foreign to the propositions that were made. Now I’m listening to this and I’m catching myself in my head going „oh, I‘ve had that thought as well“ and „yeah right, sounds logical“, while simultaneously feeling somewhat sick about it all because it just feels so wrong and uninspiring and somehow less real, less true to me. So, it‘s like throughout this lecture series I am actually able to experience the conditioning of my own mind and how it tends to judge and frame things and how it‘s often in diametrical opposition to my intuition, my deeper sense of what this life is all about.

[@Lerian_V]

Listen to "The Forerunners of the Reformation with Dr. Scott Hahn"?

[@lucasfabisiak9586]

Does anyone else have the sense that the episode before this one were fairly straightforward and easily digested, and that here it’s as though we are starting to get into the thick bog of the meaning crisis? It’s as though this aspect of it is still too recent for us to have a firm grasp on it, which is perhaps precisely why the crisis persists.

[@dubsackken]

I always thought wisdom was only in ancient text then John verveake comes and connects all the dots of the towering intellects before him in such an eloquent way. In the future he will be mentioned along side all of these great minds he mentions in this series.

[@badreddine.elfejer]

Vervaekianism 😂

[@AugustasKunc]

Yeah I used to wonder "wheres the Plato of our time? Wheres Augustine?" and so on. Now I'm convinced that Vervaeke, the Pageau brothers and possibly Peterson are going down in that line.

[@philosophycoaching8002]

That shot at Peterson. 😆😆 "I don't understand people who like nietzsche but dislike postmodernism "

[@emmashalliker6862]

I've never understood this with Peterson either.

[@brendantannam499]

It's a year later now and thank goodness he seems to have got over Peterson. I think JV answers the question himself when he says Nietzsche goes back and forward with his ideas so I don't think it's true to say he is a bona fide postmodernist.

[@benjaminlquinlan8702]

Peterson foray against postmodernism is very postmodern. The concept postmodern is not in an of itself a moral good or bad, however it cannot be argued that the dissolving deconstruction power and potency of postmodernism as been used to mindlessly and unethically dismantle the order of hierarchy under the assumption that POWER is all that hierarchy is predicated on NOT VALUE/ MEANING.

[@VM-hl8ms]

@@benjaminlquinlan8702 yes. it's purely "guns don't kill people, people kill people" (rational) thing, versus "live by the sword, die by the sword" (irrational) thing. personally i do not understand people who talk about awakening and meaning crisis while being selective.

[@iforget6940]

@@VM-hl8ms guns don't kill people I kill people - mc vagina it's a song just a light funny rap.

[@eScooterRidesPerth]

I can't believe I get to listen to this for free. Seems too good to be true. Thanks so much John for making Fridays so much better. Dreading when this series ends. Will probably do all 50 again.

[@AugustasKunc]

I deeply appreciate these lectures as well. However, this might just be a symptom of how dire the situation is, that someone would just throw their gold out into the public square in hopes that it might be of true use to someone and save our world in the long run.

[@keyframe5806]

"Rom-coms are the quintecential form of porn we endulge in the decadence of romantisism" im making a shirt with that phrase. So cool.

[@torehaglund1117]

Might want to double check the spelling before sending it to print though ^^'

[@wcropp1]

This was a fun one, lots to think about here. Your comments regarding the Kantian influence on Jung and Nietzsche’s influence on post-modernism were spot on. It’s good to have someone talking about these subjects that is knowledgeable of the web of connections that is the Western philosophical/theological tradition. Thanks Professor-looking forward to next week’s video!

[@matthewheadland7307]

Yeah he is weaving together all of the theoretical underpinnings of our cultural right now. When someone says “I believe -something-“ I think for most people (at least it was for me) it is simply a feeling. Listening to this, Anyone can track their thinking to philosophers or theologians who developed these ideas to see where your gut feeling originates. Absolutely fascinating.

[@paulmagnuslund7096]

John Vervaeke, I just want to thank you for doing this. This is the best lecture series I've ever seen. Thanks!

[@rockshowii]

Nietzche took away my drive to stop living, I'm very thankful for that, and his axial revolution inspiration came with his profession "ancient philologist". Yes, he is an obnoxious critic on almost everything, but man, his writing and expression prowess are superb and delightful. As John's remark on his "one-sideness" of transcendence, I think the critical point of his failure is lack of a broader view, if he had the abundant information that we have access now, he would have done a different and more complete legacy. Such a brilliant man, such a sad and broken gift to the next generation. Thank you again John, tremendous respect for your effort and work.

[@duncanclarke]

"Nietzsche is the god father of postmodernism" Jordan Peterson fanboys are seething. This series rules

[@db8205]

This fan isn’t seething. Sounds like a great topic for their next convo. How fun would that be!

[@ryanolozz6384]

😂

[@al1665]

@@db8205 JP has to let the man speak and get off that carnivore diet first.

[@taryn2736]

related: "JBP on Nietzsche and Postmodernists" kzbin.info/www/bejne/fpDVk6ujj7qtqMU

[@user-yp4it7ed5r]

Re-watching this episode after reading Shopenhauer, it answers a lot of questions now but doesn't help to overcome Shopenhauer's hangover. Finally although it's hard to admit but romanticism affection is over. Thanx for this

[@JoshFlorii]

John shines the starlight of wisdom on a darkened culture, awash in despair and bullshit. Highest praise to the efforts of john vervaeke!

[@Jacob011]

John is really killing it. This is the 3rd lecture I'm watching today (yesterday I watched 2) and I'm gaining a ton of valuable insight. This is a tour de force! A pattern emerges in my mind. The world-man was progressively deadened until man blew up and expressed himself onto a blank canvas. Really eye-opening to see how the canvas came to be.

[@adamgolding]

They don't just give us words--they gave us Tchaikovsky!

[@vc6327]

John's stuff is so deep that you have to watch several times to grasp.

[@spiralsun1]

Which, notice, is like life. 🥰🙋‍♀️

[@mylesflaig148]

I have the temerity to say “I don’t believe in Jesus Christ. I know Jesus Christ.” I am NOT a Christian. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. Not a follower, rather I am yoked to him, and the load is light.✨😺💫

[@domc2909]

These lectures get better and better

[@ENOC772]

wow, these episode is so important to understand the meaning crisis and the colapse of meaning in the actual world

[@zeb358]

These lecture episodes just get better and better! I'm truly astounding at the way you are able to encapsulate history, philosophy, religion, myth, science,psychology etc... in the way you do to make it so relevant and fascinating for me. This is no easy feat because, for me, anyone who can encapsulate as well as you do is a sure sign of someone who is well read across a broad spectrum, someone who is deeply and passionately engaged with the material and can see its inter-relatedness. As much as I like JBP and I have followed his lectures from the days when he was addressing his class students. You sir are on a different level in terms of intellectual understanding and knowledge. And finally, this episode is the best one so far :)

[@edwardfosterart3848]

Brilliant lecture yet again! I love Romanticism, though one can love a deep pool even though it may drown you.

[@Portekberm]

This is the best explanation of Kant I've heard, by a long way. Thanks.

[@lau-guerreiro]

Totally agree, Kant and how that links to Romanticism and Nietzsche and Jung. The links all become clear where previously I couldn't see any.

[@DesignEcologies]

Thank you John

[@alexey5351]

What a beautiful introduction to Kant. Indeed, in FEP/Active inference, the predictions are top-down and prediction errors are bottom-up and both are needed; the thing in itself is not knowable, only probabilistically inferred. I also like the dichotomy of rational/irrational and would like to propose that at least a part of that is deterministic/predictable vs. chaotic and stochastic. It seems that Kant was under the impression that our minds in the core are orderly/deterministic then (while there is some research to the contrary, certain regimes of the brain-mind are perfectly chaotic, which is healthy and normal) I think that one of the ways we impose structure on the world is we impose the narrative structure. As Kahneman and Taleb suggested - we think in stories. Stories are deterministic things. This at times creates a distortion called the Narrative Fallacy (Taleb, 2007,) we unfortunately don't talk about that enough, while it has a profound effect on mental health diagnosis and treatment. More on that here Tolchinsky, A. (2023). Narrative Fallacy and Other Limitations of Psychodynamic Case Formulation.

[@stephen-torrence]

24:00 The icon for this series should be a hand gripping a red cup. 😂 35:00 Whoa.... JV without glasses! 😮

[@kbeetles]

I am beginning to see history in a different light ..... thank you!

[@nugzarkapanadze6867]

Thank You!

[@LeeGee]

I wish these were podcasts

[@mattgumbley6080]

Hi Lee. Links to Podcast are in the description.

[@LeeGee]

@@mattgumbley6080 Thank you!

[@Viplexify]

I'd absolutely love to have this in a book on my bookshelf.

[@jacobjorgenson9285]

The books have publishing

[@d.r.m.m.]

Such an important lecture. Thank you, John

[@matthewheadland7307]

The saying “we are products of history” has a profound, profound meaning for me now.

[@matthewheadland7307]

Professor, thank you! I actually had the pleasure of taking one of your cog sci classes at UofT. For some reason I remember vividly the moment you had told them class we could get an extension on our paper if we were going through a break up. haha Anyways, it's an absolute honour to be able to sit in your class again now.

[@Rhimeson]

This was my favourite episode of the series so far, thank you for all your work :)

[@GrapplingwithReality]

Every new episode is my favorite episode lol

[@jaredcole5228]

This is in my top three so far. I think that choosing a top five at the end is going to be tough.

[@pablo_astorga]

Loving this series. Thanks.

[@johanneswanngren8996]

At this point of carefully going through and thoroughly enjoying this series I just go ahead and click the thumbs up immediately as the intro music plays.

[@TwinAquarius484]

Wonderful again. You have given me a lot to think about every week and now I'm doing videos to express my thoughts. My crop of wisdom that I have been cultivating is starting to bud.

[@trinitycare2023]

Thank you for your time and dedication.

[@badreddine.elfejer]

I changed my whole view on Nietzche. Very enlightening 😮

[@MrStumpmeister]

Welcome back indeed...

[@francescos7361]

Thanks I think it's important to remind this . Respect for Megyn.

[@keithpeavy8466]

This is excellent!

[@jmholthuysen]

This series is fantastic. Thanks for creating it.

[@nathanwoodsy]

Profound criticism. Thank you.

[@luiscoig8703]

I have been listening to all the previous episodes in this series and it is the most revealing thing I've ever found, but this episode in particular is absolutely blowing my mind!

[@jennifersamson8397]

"And so the Romantic return to reality through irrationality gets connected with love, and that's how we get romantic love. And we get the idea of it as a fundamentally irrational force, and you get romanticism." My Dad has said things like that in support of his faith, using "Love" as an analogy to things tjat are real but not rational. And despite being a very rational person, also believing that some things get a pass on being rational, because there are basically two worlds: logic & love. Thank you for giving me a taste of where all this came from.

[@leedufour]

Thanks John.

John dropping the mic so many times in this one 🤟

[@Andrew_Cotton]

Integrates and beautifully interrelates the four pillars of culture: art, science, philosophy and religion. A juggernaut of a lecture. Fucking brilliant. This is what atheists will never understand about how the life of the spirit touches all dimensions of the human condition. Thank you sir.

[@Beederda]

I deeply appreciate YOUR time JV ❤️🍄 this one was really great i got some poets to look up and thank you for such vast extensive work. Like actually awe inspiring work you’ve done.

[@GodwardPodcast]

First of these lectures I don’t totally agree with. Romanticism “only gave me words,” and it led to a night of fire life-changing mystical experience that I’ve thought about every day since 2007. Yeah, I can’t “give it” to anyone else, but it changed my life and gave me meaning.

[@tracywilliamsliterature]

Unbelievably brilliant. Superlatives abound... on Romanticism I almost fell over at your take as "spiritual junkfood"... this pulled the rug from under me... indeed i paused and slept on it... must meditate before episode 24. brilliant brilliant brilliant...

[@intrograted792]

I've always thought Romanticism is to the Enlightenment as post-modernism is to modernism. We seem to have a never-ending propensity to over-correct. I really wish we'd stop doing that. I'm hopeful but doubtful.

[@karolinasz.141]

thesis, antithesis, synthesis?

[@tatsumakisempyukaku]

3:15. Vervaeke talks about the “I” as in “I am typing”, is this almost infinitely discrete moment. I think Edmund husserl would push back on this and say that the smallest unit of consciousness is temporally extended. See husserl’s “Form of the living present”… i Believe that’s what he called it.

[@arono9304]

51:28 "I don't understand people who advocate for Nietzsche and criticise post-modernism" Jab at Peterson, John? ;)

[@johnstewart7025]

Alan Bloom, 30 years ago in the Closing of the American Mind, pointed out what big influence Nietzsche had been on American life, but mainly under the radar. He was referring to moral relativism, mainly.

[@jamieyoung9392]

Prof Hicks has some good things to say about Nietzsche, but nothing good to say about PoMo.

[@punjab135]

The problem with most post-modernists is that they backed away from the precipice at the essential moment. At least those who weren’t turned into devout nihilists, and/or novelty seeking beasts. The ones who were too scared to stare into the abyss became neo-Christians and created new objects of pity out of their respective black people (African for England, Africans for Americans and indigenous for Canada and Australian) as stand-ins for Jesus, the most enduring, now discredited object of pity.

[@dalibofurnell]

This makes me glad that I studied photography it really takes this lecture and upcycles it in a way I feel I can actually understand and perceive and interpret what you are saying. And ironically it's helping me to focus as the information links up with my brain In a way that I can keep up with your dynamic here. I also drew a new model so thanks

[@meddlesomemusic]

With the world slowly shrinking and foundations continually crumbling throughout this series so far, I'm having a little disturbing daydream while listening, of John gradually sinking further and further into insanity as the series progresses

[@kbeetles]

Shaun Jones - I know what you mean! I think he will manage to pull back from the brink with the help of Eastern martial arts! ....and then he will see the Light!

[@chriskenney4377]

KZbin has stopped the ability to download your lectures. Now we seem to be obligated to KZbin to get your wisdom and knowledge.

[@P3rformula]

you can't use Keep Vid or another website to download the KZbin vids? Hope those still work...

[@momomoDividedBy3]

Search online a bit. There are dozens of ways to download KZbin videos. Cheers

[@nejibderouiche54]

Dr. Vervaeke, thank you very much for this excellent work. at 42:11 you mentioned that Kant inverts Protestantism. Despite watching the previous and videos several times and the following ones and despite the knowledge I have about Kant's philosophy, I failed to understand how Kant does this inversion. I would appreciate your explanation of this particular point or anyone who would volunteer to doing so on this page. Thank you all!

[@stochastic24]

If you don't understand people advocating for Nietzsche while criticizing post-modernism then you don't understand Nietzsche. It's true that a lot of ideas of the post modern movement come from Nietzsche but he was incredibly more complex and nuanced, and would have absolutely abhorred present day post-modernists.

[@WaylonFlinn]

My interpretation of the neuroscience suggests that rationality (in the form of the prefrotal cortex) is about constraining all aspects of the unconscious. It isn't merely about limiting self deception. One illustration of this is "rationalization". This is clearly the rational part of the brain assisting with self deception. While rationality can be a tool for limiting self deception it is not necessarily so. Furthermore, as illustrated above, rationality is prone to it's own pitfalls of self deception. These are the pitfalls common to all abstraction. Namely, after constructing a useful map it confuses that map for the territory itself. Rationality can then fall under the tyranny of it's own constructions, failing to notice deviations from the scant bits of reality it can access, until the self deception leads to catastrophic failure. In this mode it is the unconscious that brings forth the truth and breaks the self deceiving tyranny of the current conscious rational model. The flood brings both chaos and fertility.

[@jessierowlands1203]

Hi Waylon, You mention that: 'the unconscious that brings forth the truth and breaks the self deceiving tyranny of the current conscious rational mode'. Can I ask you, are you suggesting that unconsciousness has intent? One of the ideas I struggle to ascertain from J.V thought (and I appreciate his thought immensely) is that if participatory knowing affords insight doesn't that then suggest that reality itself wants to co-operate and like your suggesting in the above: the affordance of insight is coming from both within the individual and without. I'd like to hear your thoughts if you have the time. Thanks!

[@MrGuanyin]

The equation for Jung - I love this expression, I've studied psychotherapy and Kant + Gnostic would have been profoundly helpful at the time. Thanks as always John

[@nicholibaldron8171]

Books in the Video: 22:26 Gary Lachman - Lost Knowledge of the Imagination

[@mattgumbley6080]

Dark as fuck. Thank you

[@jasetheacity]

Pseudo-religions gave us "spiritual junk food": tasty but not nutritious! ....... I think I need a Gnostic thickshake to wash that down lol

[@lianaschill6132]

Moving away from the „Chaos of Reality“ into Rationality makes us sane human beings, I think

[@TheAdamRatiff]

Good ole Friday

[@justinseligman9539]

I find it ironic that you chose a Romantic painting for your series intro (Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Freidrich) when you are so critical of the movement (rightly so).

[@skadiwarrior2053]

Another 'best so far' lecture.

[@ToriKo_]

Something to note is that, while you *feel* small/isolated when you do that Cartesian/Eastern drawing inwards, notice that you still *felt* connected before you did that

[@miroslavaleksandrov5312]

Best episode so

[@mikhailvolkov833]

Will to live. Will to power. Can we have a will to agency? That would include the other two, but in a non-selfish and non-cruel way - e.g. me with my friends have more agency than me alone, being a part of society increases my agency, volunatary cooperation does so etc

[@DavidD-xb6yn]

John - these lectures are amazing but are starting to make my anxiety grow. The earlier ones made me beyond happy and they seemed right to me. Then these more modern men ruined it all. I’m hopeful the series has some positivity going forward. If not - I’ll have to go back to Jesus, Buddha and the earlier sages for the way i operate in the world.

[@vincentcornejo3759]

Hahaha I love this response. It's true. But it's also revealing. I propose a little bit of anxiety in response to chaos is a good exercise. You just don't want to stay there. I'll share a thought I received from a Shaolin Monk who talked about the structure of Temple life. He said one of the rules of Temple life is (and he was speaking to students) if you commit to Temple life you have to agree to be mostly silent. Discussion is held to a minimum. Also there are no cell phones allowed and there is no Wi-Fi. I think this is a good idea. Too much mind is a bad thing in some cases especially if one has not developed the skill to pivot between a busy mind and no mind. Maybe a lot of these Industrial Revolution/Renaissance era philosophers more focused on the busy mind. Just a humble thought. Thank you so much Dr John Vervaeke. Your work is invaluable and extremely relevant to the human experience. 🙏✨💛🔥🤝

[@blooobish]

woah, didn't expect to see lachman pop up here lol. great lecture as always.

[@elsawiegers1093]

what do you mean, "i don't want to infringe on your time"!!!!! we, or at least i, am hungry for all this, so keep going, please...

[@Brad-RB]

I don't know if I should pray, impose my pattern of belief on the world or get drunk. Seriously this series has really captured my interest. The last series that did that was Game of Thrones. I truly hope this ends better than that did.

[@brendantannam499]

Best to get drunk - responsibly, of course.

[@Portekberm]

Why not both ? :)

[@QuirqUK]

I'm intrigued by the fact that the Luther quote is on-screen but not verbally quoted. I wonder whether this was done because of Google's AI, the infamous KZbin Algorithm, and the dumbing down of discourse that results from it when things are automatically demonetised or deleted because of "naughty words" or "bad thoughts" with no reference to context.

[@khadenpettingill6210]

After watching this video for the second time this is how I see it according to my naive protestant background... Romanticism is an imitation of the Beautiful participatory aspect of true religion, but all she possesses are vain imaginations. She disguises herself as love, but her ultimate ends are the opposite of love: compulsively imposing ones own will on reality as opposed entering into an agapic co-creating relationships with the cosmos. So she is the whore of the earth and her bastard children are the peusdo-relgious ideologies that bathed Europe in blood. Her fruits in the individual lives of those who worship, or act out her tenants, are nihilism and a solipsistic separation from reality. This series, your discussion with Peterson and Pageau, as well as the After Socrates series which I am currently working and practicing through have deeply enriched my spiritual life. I'm just a college drop out in my twenties living in the backwoods on my little homestead. Came across your work last year. Listened to this entire series over the summer while driving my tractor. Now I wake up early each morning and engage in an ecology of practices. Once a week I sit down as if I were attending an online class and slowy go through your After Socrates Series, taking many notes to really digest your material. I do lectico divina with much of what I read. It has opened up Christ's Sermon on the mount to me in many profound ways. My consciousness is expanding, my appreciation for life deepening. I'm still learning and contemplating so much, but thank you for your spiritual midwifery Vervaeke. You may not get immediate feedback from your work because it takes slow busy hicks like me a lot of time to digest and comprehend. Your videos are too deep to market quick sound bites and so it takes a while for your work to gain traction among the masses. It's a meditative wrestle to learn from you which doesn't't make for popular consumption. But for the few who are seeking, your work is making a deep impact. Keep doing what you are doing!

[@Portekberm]

Excellent lecture

[@brimmedHat]

another banger, thanks

[@accadia1983]

These are not third-world problems. This might be the base for the whole thing we call life. I hope you find your magical part of the world in the midst of the materialistic culture. Like Weeknd sang, You don't need to be afraid, we can take it step by step ♾️❤️

[@ConfusedApe]

Dear Dr Vervaeke, Luther's anti-Semitism only comes into play late in his life, after he thought that Jews had tried to poison him multiple times. He might have been a bit paranoid in his later years. Early on, he argued for being nice to Jews! Of course, his hope was that they would convert to Christianity because of that. This failed and also kindled his hatred for them. A third factor is the fact that there was a wave of Jewish proselytizers who actively were taking followers away from Luther. All of this, of course, doesn't exculpate Luther, but it's not just his gnostic undertones.

[@13Nicozurdo]

Hey John! I'd really like to dig in the Napoleon/Hitler theme you mentioned. Could you please let me know if you remember which is the podcast you mentioned? Thanks a lot!

[@alexkeis7272]

I am struggling to decide, what's more remarkable, the contents of these lectures or John's ability to distil dense subject matter?

[@nickshelbourne4426]

I previously critiqued Dr Vervaeke for being unfair to Romanticism, but I feel like he was more balanced in this lecture. One thing I would point out is that he makes the point at 30:43 that Romanticism is the root of all psuedo-religious ideologies, but arguably the movement which was seen during the French revolution, and then later in Germany and Russia with Marxism, was actually an enlightenment religion, despite some Romantic aspects, and some Romantic support. I imagine that Dr Vervaeke will argue that Hegel was a Romantic, but Marx as a literal reversal of this cannot be counted as a Romantic. For Marx, the human is a blank slate upon which the dialectical forces of historical determinism operate. Romanticism was a reaction to a symptom of sickness in the culture, and one of the first successful recoveries of what was missing part, and was the first realisation that there WAS something missing. I think it can be tempting to blame Romanticism for what was actually a result of Enlightenment thinking as the inheritor of the Greeks - i.e. the devaluation of any ontology other than the logos. Further, I would like to argue that separating people into Romantic or non-Romantic thinkers, although useful, is probably simplistic.

[@johnstewart7025]

I guess Marx was Enlightenment, but Nietzsche was Romantic.

[@traviswoyen2243]

I had completely forgotten the link between Kant, Romanticism, and Pietism until I watched this.

[@WaylonFlinn]

Great lecture. I enjoy grappling with the concepts and disagreeing with their titanic progenitors!

[@Krasbin]

Schopenhauer's "will to live" sounds very similar to many contemporary interpretations of "suffering" in Buddhism.

[@saintsword23]

Schopenhauer was deeply influenced by Buddhism. He even thought of himself as importing Buddhism to Europe.

[@deepfriedsammich]

"We can never know about things in themselves" IS an assertion about "things in themselves" which Kant is claiming that we cannot know.

[@spiralsun1]

You are getting too hung up on the symbols used to relay the idea. It’s like what Zeno was saying and Godel too. A hot dog is a hot dog, foot long has no existence but as part of a human judgement of relationship and communication. What a hot dog is, we don’t know. But you can order one at a restaurant and eat it yum. What I think is important is that we can’t make a blanket statement like that with 100% certainty maybe. Because I am certain that there are things undreamed of in any philosophy-not just Horacio. Fun stuff.

[@mariog1490]

This was one of Hegels criticisms. Kants skepticism is so radical, it becomes a skepticism AGAINST skepticism.

[@paulgoddard5535]

Amazing points on Romanticism's over use of imagination and lack of esoteric practice. However, this just makes it like every other exoteric religion that ends up stalling out on dogma. Romanticism seems to have a lot going for it if you introduce those practices.

[@davidfost5777]

I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated

[@marklefebvre5758]

Need slides. :) A glossary would be nice. How about a map of these connections you draw between people and events? What is this podcast you mention? Need a link please...

[@QuirqUK]

I'd second the request for a glossary, I've been thinking for weeks that one would be helpful. I usually watch at least a couple of videos every two weeks (sometimes rewatching a previous one so it properly sinks in). Even on the occasions I've watched weekly, there's so much to take in that an aide memoire to the key terms would be really helpful to maintaining the continuity, the flow, of the series and deepening my grasp of it.

[@GrapplingwithReality]

John mentioned Pierre Hadot's book on spiritual exercises today. Has anyone read this book? Would any of these exercises be useful in exercising ourselves of our own self-deceptive tendencies? Tired of feeling like Nietzsche over here with the constant undermining and self-critique. I would like to build myself up such that tragedy is not the necessary outcome like it was for Nietzsche and the Germany we will soon be discussing