Rick Roderick on Kierkegaard and the Contemporary Spirit [full length]

This video is 7th in the 8-part lecture series Philosophy and Human Values (1990).
Thanks to rickroderick.org for making this available. I'm merely interested in redistributing to anyone who might enjoy and benefit.
I. A recap of Nietzsche:
A. Power is inter I wined with things which are not dependent on power, such as truth and goodness.
B. The Greeks were straight-forward with their idea of virtue. It was based on excellence and the fulfillment of human powers.
C. Christian morality grew out of a slave context. Its doctrines of love and compassion were tooted in resentment of a power that could not express itself.
II. God is "dead."
III. Kierkegaard
A. In a place where all are Christians, ipso facto, none are Christians.
B. Kierkegaard did not believe that each one of us are individual subjects some how separated from each other like monads.
IV. The Sickness Onto Death:
A. Kierkegaard argues that psychology is, in principle, impossible.
B. The self is not a substantial thing but a deep relation, and it's not even that relation but the relating of relations.
1. We are a synthesis between our desire for freedom and our recognition of brutal necessity.
2. Because we are a relation, we are incomplete.
3. This despair constitutes the self.
C. Kierkegaard describes a morally ill person who is struggling with death yet does not die. (sick unto death)
D. The hope is to find a way to die.
1. Suicide is not acceptable.
2. Despair is the reaction to the struggle to be human in inhuman conditions.
V. The relation to human values and social systems:
A. The 19th century story was the replacement of manual labor with machine labor, while the 20th century story will be the replacement of intellectual labor with machine labor.
B. Humans driven to this extent of socialization would greatly prefer death but are unable to do it,
C. In the postmodern culture, images are more real than the real thing, and patriotism is cynical.
D. Things no longer look like human values but rather human commodities.

[@dascher]

Rick was my professor at Duke. I feel so lucky to have learned from him and am pleased that you’re sharing his lectures online.

[@FaradaySpeaks]

You are really lucky. i think we need ppl like this now more than ever. Are you aware of a man named Jordan Peterson? Rick would be the anti-dote to such a person. Too many pseudo-intellectuals these days who claim to have the answer to modern life.

[@annereidy7981]

You were so lucky, and I'm so glad I got a look in!

[@jonathanalpart7812]

@@FaradaySpeaks Peterson complements Roderick quite nicely on existentialism, actually. However Peterson's thoughts on "cultural Marxism" are definitely unfortunate, and Roderick clearly outclasses him in that regard (and just recently, Zizek).

[@jonathanalpart7812]

@@FaradaySpeaks Peterson complements Roderick quite nicely on existentialism, actually. However Peterson's thoughts on "cultural Marxism" are definitely unfortunate, and Roderick clearly outclasses him in that regard (and just recently, Zizek).

[@user-xq5ui2uw9v]

@@jonathanalpart7812 chatting shit, no wonder you’re in real estate amigo.

[@MKHobson]

42:05: "No less so than when you show up at Harvard in your little wool sweater." 42:06: [Jump cut to annoyed looking guy in wool sweater.] I love everything about these videos so much. 😂

[@xalian17]

Burn 🔥 AF

[@scoon2117]

He was COLD

[@txnyriny]

I took his class on Heidegger and Wittgenstein at the University of Texas in 1985. Professor Roderick made an enormous, lifelong impression on me and my way of thinking. So happy to find this and revisit his brilliance and sense of humor!

[@crisgon9552]

You remember anything from his Wittgenstein lecture? I can't find anything of him talking about it

[@txnyriny]

@@crisgon9552 Only impressions of the lectures, sadly, not specific content. Wish my brain could still hold details from 38 years ago but 28 of those were particularly boozy, so I'm afraid not.

[@crisgon9552]

@txnyriny np and thank you for the response!

[@stefanthorndahl1666]

such a brilliant professor. Also I do enjoy this quote: "Literally speaking there is not the slightest possibility that anyone will die from this sickness or that it will end in physical death. Thus it has more in common with the situation of a mortally ill person who lies struggling with death and yet cannot die. Thus to be sick onto death is to be unable to die and yet not as if there was hope for life, but when we learn to know that even greater danger, we hope for death. When the danger is so great that the death becomes the hope then despair is the hopelessness of not even being able to die."

[@davidgomez-wt7pn]

Oooff. All of these lectures are brutal (and tantalizing) to listen to here at the end of 2020.

[@jplawrence3]

this guy LOVES bladerunner

[@legionjames1822]

Who doesn't. Blade runner was amazing. A masterpiece.

[@Michael-yg1qd]

It's on its way!

[@zootsoot2006]

These lectures are not so much, 'Rick Roderick lectures on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche..' rather, 'Rick Roderick lectures while leaning on books written by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche...' Damn entertaining stuff.

[@Stereotype23]

Yeah the lectures seem very personal because of that, and more entertaining as you said :)

[@theberkeleyhunt]

"you can't be cured of it; you ARE it" hooray

[@waynerbrucer2061]

theberkeleyhunt yessir!!!

[@DarkAngelEU]

He's right, tho.

[@nightoftheworld]

weirparty now we get corporate guru culture which professes to _know_ us better than we know ourselves. There is no escape from their quasi-scientific western Buddhist psychic colonialism. Our era is synonymous with the holocaust on a deep inner level.. the death of reflexivity and the birth of Roderick’s nightmare of the zombification of subjectivity.

[@ocnus1.61]

@@nightoftheworld at least this exists tho. The absolute worst situation I think are people who because of epistemological limitations, are completely cut off from material like this and surrounded by people you just described. Assuming you aren't a zombie in that situation, in the desire of wanting "to take a gamble on living" you might risk feeling like Jim Carrey's Character in The Truman Show.

[@nightoftheworld]

@@ocnus1.61 yes, I am very grateful for The Teaching Company as well and for KZbin despite their faults-and for whoever uploads their content. Michael Sugrue is another gem in here that their cameras preserved. The Truman show is a good movie. Hegel’s _madness_ haunts it, in the necessity of the point of recoil in his journey of emancipation from the chains of his world.

[@homerfj1100]

This guy is just so good at a popular philosophy level. He makes sense in his examination of philosophers. He's also funny, with a few jokes thrown in. He died in the 90's yes? A good man. T

[@nightoftheworld]

homerfj1100 died a hero’s death on January 18, 2002 from cigarettes and Big Macs. May he live forever.

[@scoon2117]

Aka congestive heart failure

[@christinemartin63]

Yeah, I'd say that in 2021 the struggle to stay human takes on a whole new meaning ... this guy would have understood better than anyone since he seems to have predicted it.

[@ashred9665]

my exact thoughts Christine

[@caylynmillard6047]

Best teacher of the modern era

[@doentexd4770]

I can feel that he combines Kirkegaard's ideas about the disappearence of human beings with the simulated rebirth of these very humans that Baudrillard talks about... More real than real, HYPERREAL

[@juvenalhahne7750]

Cabe aqui como exemplo do hiperreal a piada da mãe para a mulher que comenta como sobre a beleza da filha dela: "Isso é porque você ainda não viu a fotografia dela a cores!"

[@sinkwink]

Thank you for this! It has been a boon to my spirit, which is my self, which is a relation that relates itself to itself. Freedom and necessity brought me here.

[@nightoftheworld]

8:56 *Kierkegaard skepticism regarding institutionalized Christendom* “In a place where all are Christians, _ipso facto_ none are Christians.”

[@pikiwiki]

"Truth" becomes truth because the reality at the time supports it. And that reality is intimately connected to power, influence and what supports your life.

[@Obilio222]

Your job is to play golf with Pharaoh - blew my mind. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

[@annereidy7981]

but an accurate description of Billy Graham's 'evangelical' life, I think!

[@davidd854]

Is Jordan Peterson despite all his flaws trying to lead this people out of bondage? Perhaps he is just teaching them to be more effective and thus less beaten slaves.

[@jhonnatanwalyston6645]

"I have no mouth, and I must scream".

[@TheMusicWiz]

Love listening to Rick...thanks for uploading!

[@michaelhebert7338]

Enjoying your lectures thanks for sharing.

[@PappyMandarine]

Lots of Baudrillard in this. So many digressions in Rick Roderick's lectures. Thank God they're usually quite bright and thought-provoking

[@differous01]

"dispayer that is unaware that it is despayer" - Thanks to Rick I'm learning to love this accent; it's not typically (ie. stereotypically) associated with intelligence.

[@RossPeterson06]

+differous01 I lived my first 18 years in west Texas, and now I'm feeling a little cheated that I didn't leave it with that accent. lol Come to think of it, Rick looks and sounds like a guy who lived across the street from me.

[@differous01]

Ross Peterson Rick says, in one of these vids, that he finds atheists boring; I wonder what he would make of AronRa (another guy who's made the accent interesting to me)?

[@cmattbacon7838]

Thats why he does it. Its meant to be ironic but in reality the fact its seen as ironic shows how bigoted the people who think that actually are, which is the deeper irony about it.

[@timhorton2486]

differous01 I can almost guarantee he’d find him boring

[@davidd854]

@@cmattbacon7838 I don't think he talks with his native accent his entire life in an effort to be ironic

[@spacecaptain87]

"Designer Tranquilizers"

[@nightoftheworld]

40:06 *sickness unto death* “In a totally commodified culture (I’ve mentioned you know phone sex and other things) in a totally commodified culture it’s hard to decide _whether you have just adopted a fashion_ or _you’re developing as a person._ In fact how you could argue between the two becomes very difficult in a culture like ours. Does it mean _more than_ you now jog and do diet pills? Does it mean something more? It becomes difficult to say what more that is. That attempt to articulate meaning finds _all_ these bizarre outlets... ‘Shirley MacLaine’s Chakras’-I mean people watch that on TV without just bursting, not in laughter but either in laughter or tears, because when you’re driven to that extreme to find some meaning then your condition is a *sickness unto death.* If you’re driven to _that_ extreme to find meaning. When the only warmth you can get is to cuddle up by a flag that you’re all too cynical to really believe in-it’s long gone and we all know it-the new patriotism is a cynical one in a way. We know better now, but we just have to forget that we know better. When that’s your comfort to go into that as a kind of a new lifestyle [...] the _point_ here is that what these things are don’t look like human choices or human values any more but human commodities-things you can buy you know.”

[@SolSilence]

Nietzsche: God is dead, and we killed him! Kierkegaard: Yes, and he rose from the grave.

[@nightoftheworld]

Jonah amazing how people miss the metaphorical dimension of the Holy Spirit. And the forsakeness of God of himself. Wish Rick and G.K. Chesterton could have discussed things together.

[@davidd854]

@@nightoftheworld What do you mean?

[@nightoftheworld]

@@davidd854 that there is much reason internal to myth-“where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” That there is life after death so to speak-that through the ultimate kenotic gift (God for a moment becoming an atheist “father why have you forsaken me” -Chesterton) we are freed into the Holy Spirit, into the community of believers together in the here and now. That our freedom actually hinges on the death of God. That though God doesn’t exist, God insists (functions) in the social relationships we maintain between each other.

[@nightoftheworld]

22:40 *two genres of horror movies and despair* “Does anybody remember the old B-horror movies or even the sort of Freddy-the-13th-the big danger in them is that you will die. And that’s what everyone is trying to avoid and that’s what generates the fear-but that is not the fear generated in the near, near science fiction like Blade Runner. In Blade Runner the greatest _hope_ is to be able to die. You know they won’t let you, they will cybernetically make sure that you’ll be around, they will record your image and save it, shoot it to rockets in space and the desire to be obliterated, to die a concrete death becomes an almost a utopian _hope.”_

[@nightoftheworld]

27:17 *anxiety and $elf* “What has structured you as this despair-it is you!”

[@abcrane]

When you are focused on excellence, in art, in endeavor, in purpose, in effort, there simply is no time nor necessity to engage in mischief . Unless, that is, it is the mischief of revolution.

[@juvenalhahne7750]

Será que a revolução na medida em que fez da política sua religião não é: "uma travessura"?

[@abcrane]

Quando pensei que tinha acordado, logo descobri que estava caminhando durante uma revolução aprendida. Mas então acordei para uma revolução da revolução.@@juvenalhahne7750

[@OALM]

34:39 it sounds just like reality tv stars and instagram influencers of the present

[@thinkneothink3055]

I think the mistake that both Kierkegaard and Rick make here is in assuming the majority of the populous is like them, in their need for greater meaning in life. Right around the 30:00 mark he asks, “are there people”? To me this suggests a class distinction; Kierkegaard is saying “I’m distinctly one kind of person, and the rest of you are distinctly a different kind of person”.

[@plaidchuck]

Well thats kind of the point. People are living in despair and lack of real meaning without even realizing it

[@rentaghostokish5628]

OMG, if he felt like that in 1990, imagine what he would make of America in 2016....

[@DarkAngelEU]

More like a hellhole.

[@tegan2mares]

So relevant

[@zootsoot2006]

I wonder if Rick was Professor at Duke at the same time as Ken Wilber was a student there. If he was that would have been an interesting time to have been a fly on the wall if they ever met. I doubt though that Rick would have appreciated Wilber's aspirations to create a totalising philosophical system, he was too much of a rebel and free spirit it seems.

[@jean-marce.choufani2781]

38:48 makes me think of the story David Foster Wallace shares in his speech "This is Water"

[@mastersloseymusic3928]

41:59 "We all know that when you put on a hat that says 'Lonestar Beer' that you bought a kind of identity. But no less so than when you show up at Harvard in your little wool sweater." *immediately cuts to guy wearing a wool sweater*

[@joshfrench6426]

Roderick gets it

[@arcadedomination8006]

And you can't get any further than being "it".

[@sedeslav]

:) Religion is not opium of the people. Religion is placebo for the people.

[@gaspingfortruth]

sedeslav and placebo is more effective than most drugs

[@larkohiya]

See the very end of this lecture for why it doesn't matter. They are the same thing at the end of the day.

[@moiafro]

30:56 accurate prognosis of our current plight

[@munkiechatchat]

Rick Roderick rocks

[@levinb1]

23:00 Bladerunner reference to the Hope of Life-Death. 28:00 brief Blade Runner reference to being an authentic person.

[@yogi2436]

from around 14.13 to 15.30 or so is very interesting

[@rohmann000]

Comment to 15:00: the Kirkegaardian self ("selvet" in Danish) is not just "a long joke"; it seems more natural and less "constructed" in Danish, and should be read as an experiment for writing further with a more subtle irony to it than is described in this otherwise fine introduction by Rick Roderick :-)

[@annereidy7981]

interesting, thanks! But I think Rick took it far enough for his audience to get the point, if not then please say more?

[@pepijnstreng4643]

Does that mean I would have to learn Danish to understand it

[@rohmann000]

​@@pepijnstreng4643Well, I don’t think that it is absolutely necessary to know Danish to understand Kierkegaard, no. :-) Fortunately, one might say! As for this video, I think Roderick's interpretation of Kierkegaard is otherwise (as I recall it) very fine and demonstrates that he probably understands some of the subtleties of Kierkegaard's thinking better than I do. But I would personally disagree with the idea that the famous passage that Roderick reads out loud here from 'The Sickness until Death' should be taken as a "long joke", whatever Roderick has in mind when he says that. In my interpretation, what Kierkegaard, or rather Anti-Climacus (his ‘pseudonym’), is doing here is that he is trying as best as he can to give a formal account of the self, considered as a relationship to itself. More specifically, for Anti-Climacus the self is a relation between two aspects of the self which can never be synthetized completely. In other words, this is Anti-Climacus’ way of defining human beings as formally as he can, as constituted by a relationship to that which we consider to be our "selves". In its most simple form, Anti-Climacus’ account of human beings entails that we are 'spirit', or 'Geist' as Hegel would say (‘ånd’ in Danish). A human being is, so to speak, a "spiritual animal" for Anti-Climacus. A being that must either is able to posit itself; or must be posited by something that is outside of itself (an "Other" of some sort). We might interpret that “Other" as referring to the “Big Other”, i.e., the Christian God. However, that cannot be deduced from this passage from 'The Sickness until Death' seen in isolation. Hope these few sentences make it a little clearer to you why I think that it is not helpful to think of this passage from 'The Sickness until Death' as some kind of “long joke”, but rather as a quite serious attempt to provide a formal account of what we might call "the structure of the self" :)

[@kevinburke3478]

I opened this to hear about Kierkegaard and I am listening to Nietzsche

[@juvenalhahne7750]

De fato. Já verifiquei o mesmo noutra postagem sobe Kierkegaard: anuncia- se ele mas fala-se de fato sobre Nitzsche! Sem ignorar o muito que subliminarmente os aproxima, acho que é isso que leva de preferência a focar em Nietzsche: afinal ele é bem mais fácil de ler que Kierkegaard.

[@davidd854]

If technology through capitalism has really become so advanced can we at least clone and resurrect Rick Roderick so he can lecture us about the current state of the western world?

[@rgaleny]

Think of the song, 'Black hole Sun."

[@junemoonchild69]

My only despair is that I read so much of Kierkegaard's work rather than having spent more time doing ANYTHING else with my boyfriend! 😊✌💛

[@juvenalhahne7750]

Juro que não entendi, mas fiquei curioso. Se você pudesse elaborar isso melhor, ficaria bem agradecido. Parece-me realmente curioso como uma leitora de um autor dos mais difíceis (com a provável exceção de seus diarios) relacione isso com seu relacionamento amoroso. A não ser... a não ser que sua paixão tenha sido maior, na época desse seu namorado, por Kierkegaard que por ele. E o desespero agora, mais um sentimento de culpa por ter se entusiasmado pelo sujeito errado... Mas se for isso, não será também uma traição a paixão que te levou a ler tanto Kierkegaard?

[@neurojitsu]

45.54: ... of Hollywood: "... are these people really here or is this central casting? And it's not a funny question"... made me laugh out loud... brilliant explanations, such clarity illiminated with humour is a joy to watch... whoops, I mean think about, ahem.

[@proseminded]

"is that Uncle Henry...OR IS IT JUST SOMEONE WHO LOOKS LIKE UNCLE HENRY" will always be my favorite postmodern critique :)

[@edenjevyoliveros7644]

Have a nice day, to all, i am edenjevy a seminarian, as of now i am having theses philosophical writing on soren kierkegaard and nietzsche on authenticity: a comparative study. i need your help how to pursue this one, i don't have much sorces these two philosophers...thank you

[@annereidy7981]

So sorry you didn't get any help here, hope you managed anyway! It's difficult to find comparative studies in relation to either because those who read Nietzsche don't tend to deal with Kierkegaard and turn about.

[@gabriellucas3639]

Can anybody tell me which books from Kiekegaard did he used it in this lecture?

[@newagereactionary]

The Sickness unto Death

[@Eoen1]

Okay, stupid question but, could anyone point me to Nitzsche's books is which he is elaborating on the ideas mentioned from 0:40 ish to 3:30 ish.

[@gabrielajonczyk5663]

Try 'On Genealogy of Morality", this was the book that he mentioned before. It is also the easiest one by Nietzsche.

[@nightoftheworld]

5:02 *God is dead* “Nietzsche’s famous remark, he was not the first to make it, Hegel was the first to make the remark, God is dead (here in a certain context) But Nietzsche is best known for saying, _God is dead._ And my way of treating that is not like other philosophers-I took Nietzsche to be making something like a sociological point, a point about society. Nietzsche is trying to tell us something about the condition of the modern world...”

[@ebenholmes3235]

i love me some roderick

[@virtue_signal_]

This guy is one of the angriest and most self-satisfied philosophers I've ever heard.

[@ajnil2011]

Can anyone else explain the discussion of the second half of the lecture, so to speak, with the first half? How is the so-called modernity and the 'image' of the self relate to 'human subjectivity' as Kierkegaard describes? and why is despair such a central theme in his work? The lecture never really makes that too clear.

[@scythermantis]

If you watch this it may give you more background on Kierkegaard: kzbin.info/www/bejne/g5rXYWSHi9KckKM Basically, he saw himself faced with an impossible choice, between 'Jerusalem' and 'Athens'.

[@davidd854]

I think Roderick connects the idea of being in despair by not knowing that you are in despair to the condition he sees contemporary western society in. Which seems to be according to Roderick an effect of post-modernity, where selfs become images to others and human subjectivity disappears.

[@willowbell3756]

That is when people tend to commit suicide. If they are really desparate, they can't, but when that feeling appears to lift a bit, they can. But the idea is probably there already.

[@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

[@davidd854]

Eric Dodson is interesting although perhaps more basic

[@davidd854]

Michael Sugrue is a good speaker and talks about the ideas of some philosophers. But generally he doesn't seem to do those of the continental tradition much justice.

[@nightoftheworld]

39:10 *Postmodern banalization* “I think we have a very modernist economy still, a very modernist state-but when you hear the phrase _postmodern culture_ one of its referents is a culture based on spectacles and images that have become more real than the real thing. Where Madonna is more real than your real lover. Where _the real thing_ is not God, but Coca-Cola-Coke is *It.* _It_ that’s a strong claim. *It* what do you get that could be more than that-It! It’s almost like a Hindu religion. This is this cultural aspect of society and culture is very important because it’s where we draw our meaning from and our identities. It’s in a culture where we learn how to speak a language, what our identities are.“

[@rgaleny]

Try the movie "Rep-Man".

[@nightoftheworld]

11:37 “Rugged individualism leads to ragged individuals.”

[@annereidy7981]

Yes, I really liked that one and it is really relevant now more than ever!

[@christopherjordan9707]

@@annereidy7981 some of us would rather be "ragged individuals" than content psychological slaves. Quit forcing your government power on us.

[@annereidy7981]

@@christopherjordan9707 really Cristopher? Or are you just one of the divided and conquered? I'm no docile body, individuality depends on integrity and not a gun waiting to go off.

[@willowbell3756]

He should have seen Get Out, the film.

[@alexey5481]

he died in '02

[@nicolaasleach]

When he said that the post modern Man is unable to be truly moved, my balls fell to the ground.

[@davidd854]

Can we awake from the matrix?

[@KendallClarkinDC]

Kierkegaard did nicely anticipate the homo sacer of Agamben... @28:40

[@absoluterefusal]

What? Doesn't Kierkegaard say the relation that relates itself to its own self is "constituted by another," and that the despair is the disrelation with this "power" that constituted it? Roderick said "this despair constitutes the self." This seems to be off track from analyzing Kierkegaard.

[@HighPeerAeon]

Yes, it is. Also, what Kierkegård says at the beginning of "The Sickness Unto Death," "The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self," is not a joke. It is strictly Hegelian. It may be a bit complicated for the uninitiated, but it must be said this way.

[@absoluterefusal]

I also do not think of it as a joke. Thanks.

[@Deantrey]

It's a joke, in two senses. Number 1, you have to be aware that all of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works are ironic. Period. No getting around that. You guys keep saying that Kierkegaard says this or says that, but Kierkegaard is not saying anything here, Anti-Climacus is. We are no supposed to read them as being the views of Kierkegaard, and indeed, his pseudonymous works often contradict one another, sometimes openly attacking the views of the other. So, insofar as they are works of irony they are already kind of like jokes. That does not mean that they do not advance real philosophical propositions. In the same way that, say, someone like Steven Colbert might make a real argument during one of his satirical segments, Kierkegaard makes real arguments in his works. But they can not be read straightforwardly. There is always a hidden, indirect dimension, a joke, and you're either in on it or you aren't. Secondly, yes, it is Hegel. He is imitating the language of Hegel. One might even say, he is parodying it. Kierkegaard was always getting at Hegel. He made a career out of it. It's not to say he was completely opposed to him, but he hated the influence Hegel had on the Danish academics during his day, and so he makes a lot of jokes at their expense. It's not the kind of joke we would understand as a joke today in contemporary America, and that is where the confusion may be. But he is imitating the style of Hegel while advancing arguments that are intended to interrupt Hegel's system. There's always a humorous element to Kierkegaard's authorship as well.

[@reeseriley225]

Though isn't exactly this self-reflexive kind of humor the type of disrelation he is positing? Isn't the rhetorical move of signifying one content and euphemistically having signified another(via, in this case the intertextuality of the authors own pseudonym laden discourse) synthesis as, say, finite/infinite is felt as a synthesis posterior to irresolvable terms? I don't doubt that apart of his purpose in parodying Hegelian prose is to put into despairing question how philosophy is read, and, in doing, how a self plods away at understanding 'that' self, as it does 'that text' and 'that intertextual volley' we can't have writers without. It's important to separate then 'irony' from mere 'jokes.' Ironies function is much more precise and endlessly useful for displaying the structuration of a given system, since it is always a doubling and tripling of the signifier, just as the type of self kierkegards trying to get across here.

[@SolSilence]

It isn't a joke, he is just a leftist who likes making disparaging remarks about anyone who isn't left wing. Whenever someone who isn't left makes a good point it has to be ironic, a joke or because he is secretly gay or hated jews. It's just how the leftist mind works.

[@rgaleny]

The Existential condition is that living is a process of acquiring survival skills. The economic condition and Political condition is another level. The personal self is to manage your internal life. See the Buddha. Hinduism talks about The quest for Love , of Duty, For wealth, and Liberation from unhealthy attachments. You have to be a stoic. Is Post Modernism a kind of "Animal Farm"?.

[@zardoz7900]

I jog too 😂 and sometimes I feel I'm like a dog who runs away from it's owner driven by an impulse to be free only to find itself with no shelter, no food or water and too stupid to realize what happened.

[@rgaleny]

The Price of Liberty is eternal vigilance.

[@nightoftheworld]

42:57 *Telematic world* “You can have a revolution in Beijing, have the pictures over here in two minutes and then forget about it in a month and three months later have one of the people on the Phil Donahue show. That kind of society produces different kinds of people. The question is whether we still want to call them that or not? At a certain point we don’t-I don’t anyway, this is my view.”

[@jsmdnq]

I think the dynamic is between the past and future. As the "older" generations struggle to retain their grip on the past(trying to make it the future) and the "newer" generations struggling to define themselves and bring their visions in reality there is a sort of tug of war. When one side is winning it creates problems. There has to be a balance, more so it should be realized that it is not a game of tug of war.

[@LongTran91]

had me good @ 45:45

[@plaidchuck]

Wow in one lecture he predicts the opioid crisis, columbine, iraq 2.0, and trump. Anyone know if he wrote or recorded his thoughts on 9/11? Sadly he died the following january so he may not have been well enough to do so.

[@DarkAngelEU]

I very much feel this despair and I find it very real just the same. Nationalism is just one of those things that people use as a commodity to not question where real human value can be found. It's happening in all the countries where there is a fatigue of the financial crises. It's also happening in countries where there are movements towards secularization, to convince people that religion should be, and supposedly still is, the only law to abide by. It takes extreme forms but today we most certainly live in an age where this image is the highest value. We are always concerned on how we show ourselves towards others, we even impose those images onto others for the sake of "social justice", just to show off how good we can be and how bad others are. Things are getting out of hand, people are losing their touch with reality. We should take drugs. Not designer drugs. But DMT, LSD. Those things filter the fake straight out of the real no matter how stuck your pighead is down the shithole.

[@sameash2990]

Evola loved DMT

[@lutherblissett9070]

In Saudi Arabia they are creating an ultranationalist cult of personality around MBS, it's basically a replacement for religion.

[@kylewitherrite6916]

Collapse thread incoming. 😂

[@juvenalhahne7750]

De 5 anos pra cá a coisa se agravou. Da Globalização como consequência inevitável do desenvolvimento economico- tecnologico surgiu também como parte da nova realidade transnacional a Internet. Esta inicialmente saudada como transcendendo o poder do Estado-nacao, um meio democrático internacional, tem se revelado insuficiente ou abaixo da utopia de seus criadores. Ao contrário pois das expectativas iniciais tem -se assistido a resistência conservadora das nações e a ameaça é enfraquecimento das instituições sobrenacionais.

[@arunjetli7909]

My great regret that I never went to Duke to hear this great prof otherwise I am a Duke hater go tar heels

[@Sarah-no7lv]

Rip

[@mrow9863]

Telematic is not used this way nowadays.

[@googlewantstoknowyourlocat1115]

Duh?

[@brianliu7020]

hes a bizarro zizek

[@benjaminhennessy8050]

What's he saying? Play goth with the pharaoh? Play golf with the pharaoh?

[@davidd854]

Play golf

[@jay3898]

MJ caught a stray

[@ryanchiang9587]

you end up marrying one

[@pikiwiki]

"it doesn't make any difference if it's real or not. They're buying it." wow Trump.

[@rahulthakar8006]

@43:15 onwards, the definition of NPCs.

[@jcrass2361]

Rahul Thakar I hope you escape your anti humanistic thinking, man.

[@woestijnjongen]

just say sheeple, it's the same faux elitist buzzword

[@nightoftheworld]

@@jcrass2361 it is the definition of NPC though. To me it’s elitist if you don’t include yourself into it. I think everyone has their NPC moments.

[@FavianShields]

Kierkegaard>Nietzsche

[@aagantuk7370]

Zombie-like audience

[@LoneStarRocker]

God is Dead is an oxymoron.

[@plaidchuck]

That’s the point

[@robinturner9786]

preface preface...what i said about the other midwestern...this guy is a southerner? how dare he compare kierkagaard to billy gram. billy gram supported the vietnam and nixon, so much for the ethical 'either or' this guy like most texans is just undereducated. he went to graduate school where he studied under academic want-to be's , and got an 'education. i don't know what the criteria is to become a professor in texas, but i know the american academic system is based upon nepotism and student enrollment. he doesn't understand nuances, complex concepts ,he can only make the most simplistic observations while he regurgitates other simplistic observations that his fellow KKK members presupposed .

[@benjaminhennessy8050]

You're really ignorant. He did not compare Kierkegaard to Billy Graham, he merely used Graham as a (then) topical example to illustrate the roles of faith in the modern era. Did you seriously try throwing shade on the educational value of the graduate school system? Your prejudice towards Texans is unfounded in material evidence, and to suggest that a state with 27 million citizens would be completely homogenous in culture, ideology and intelligence levels is astoundingly absurd. He taught at Duke University, one of the top 10 universities in the nation. Obviously they thought highly enough of him to employ him at their prestigious school.

[@fonefan22]

Ever heard of NASA, Texas Medical Center, University of Texas, Texas A&M, and the associated research arms of these institutions? ? Maybe not the same as Massachusetts or parts of California or New York, but otherwise you're provincialism is showing.

[@choggerboom]

What a panicked, incoherent mess of a comment; a comment that you somehow thought necessary to share publicly. Never once you thought to revise your thoughts? Make use of the backspace button in the future

[@davidd854]

Obviously your intelligence is superior if you came to the elaborate conclusion that Texan = stupid and KKK

[@robinturner9786]

pure idiocy movies??? childish crap