Rick Roderick on Sartre - The Road to Freedom [full length]

This video is 3rd in the 8-part video lecture series, The Self Under Siege: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (1993).
Lecture notes:
I. Sartre is a paradigmatic 20th Century intellectual: philosopher, artist, critic and political activist. For an American audience, however, he is known first and foremost as an existentialist. His novel "Nausea" and his philosophical treatise "Being and Nothingness" are the best examples of this period in his development.
II. Sartre's existentialism was based, in part, on a misreading of Heidegger as a humanist; but this misreading lead to his own interesting existential humanism. The first principle of his position is an absolute atheism. God does not make us, we make ourselves. Sartre's way of expressing this is that our existence precedes our essence.
III. Without God, humans are "condemned" to be free. Sartre sees our refusal to recognize our radical freedom as "bad faith"; a condition in which we treat ourselves as determined objects rather than as free subjects.
IV. Sartre's existential ethic requires us to ask of our actions; would others act as we act? Our decision must be made in the light of our humanity, but also with full autonomy. Sartre recognizes that without God some limits to our freedom remain such as the brute objectivity of nature and the behavior of other people. These limits are seen as negative. In his play "No Exit", Sartre goes so far as to say that "Hell is other people".
V. Sartre comes to modify and, in part abandon his earlier existentialism in favor of his own development of Marxism. In a sense, he tries to fuse his earlier emphasis on the singular individual and his growing concern with the fused collectivity, the group seeking to change its condition. In "Search for a Method" , Sartre uses a discussion of Kierkegaard as a representative of the individual and Hegel as a representative of the collective to express his desire to bring the two interests together in a future philosophy of freedom that, for him, only a revolution can make possible.
VI. Sartre experienced both fascism and the liberation of the 60′s; his philosophy always reflected a profound engagement with his own time. Perhaps he is not a great philosopher, but he is exemplary in his attempt to become a human being in the 20th Century under the most difficult conditions.
VII. Sartre's account of "bad faith" and his basic honesty in the face of the human historical condition will serve to guide us in our account of the self and its predicament in the late 20th Century.
For more information, see www.rickroderic...

[@cheri238]

Professor Roderick is one of the best. RIP 🙏 Thank you we still have these lectures ❤

[@saeedfarajollahi2240]

The 😅ee😮e😅😮 d

[@wesleylandis8466]

What a joy to listen to such an authentic man taking on some deep theoretical concepts and slamming his unique and witty personality into it like a sledgehammer! Hell yea Rick!

[@Patavinity]

The combination of subject matter and accent is jarring in a very enjoyable way.

[@differous01]

11:08 "Freedom would be unthinkable in the older worrrld that still was surrounded by this hoe lee hay low..." Not the kind of message one usually hears in this accent.

[@winupdate7854]

“Don’t read the critique of dialectical reason , it’s too damn long and life’s too short” I’d buy this man a bear any day. What a fucking cool guy 😎 thanks professor Roderick. Bon voyage

[@ditchweed2275]

Andy Pandy then your bear tears him to shreds.

[@E.B.J.S.]

Did Professor Roderick ever say he wanted a pet bear?

[@M4ruta]

Whenever people ask where to start with philosophy, I always recommend they listen to the lectures of Roderick.

[@sam-z8284]

While I symapthize with your sentiment, I think it is wrong to say that his lectures are a good intro to philosophy. Roderick's critique of modernity and his fears of the post-modern trajectory is clearer when you go chronolofically; starting from Platonism and Aristotelianism, skimmimg through the Medieval period, and then focusing on modernity (probably starting with Descartes), structuralism, and post structuralism. For example, knowing Plato's tripartite theory of knowledge (justified true belief), and if we ignore Gettier problems problems for a second, is essential since it functions practically as the infrastructure of epistemology.

[@Goobywoobygoo]

@@sam-z8284>skimming through the best period in philosophy.

[@Kobe29261]

You are a hero for uploading these videos! It (knowledge) is our only hope! Thank you!

[@DarkAngelEU]

They should show this at the Academy. So many teachers still believe art is an academic practice, that it only requires certain skills and inquiries but throw away the students' doubts and need for self-reflection away. Yet the greatest artists are those that speak of the human condition, not about craft.

[@nightoftheworld]

Yes it’s more like walking forwards with your head turned backwards.

[@wlljohnbey1798]

Can't begin to tell you how much I love his lectures.

[@scoon2117]

I wish professors were all this down to earth. I thoroughly love listening to him.

[@cheri238]

Professor Roderick lectures for myself not being from an college educated background has made my love of philosophy even more richer. SARTE AN INSIGHT TO FREEDOM ? HIS JOURNEY THROUGH HIS WRITINGS AND BOOKS ARE REVELATIOMS THAT SARTE ASK QUESTIONS . IN THE END WHAT WE SARTE THOUGHT. WE DON'T KNOW.,BUT HIS JOURNEY IS ABSOLUTELY REMARKABLE. World War 2, a freedom fighter against Fasicm as a young man. Revolutionary. HE LATER FINDS OUT HE WAS NO BETTER THAN ANYONE WAS. No one found out what kind of Marxist he was. HIS INSIGHT CHANGES AS HE MATTURES AN ARGUMENT BEING UNLESS WE CHANGE HUMAN BEINGS, THE ECONOMY WON'T HELP. WOW!! Find meaning inside and outside. Remarkable. Working people created socialism here in America. IMPORTANT FACT.

[@creepycrawlything]

I like the way RR approaches, considers and communicates. He is very much a person. He approaches the person within the corpus. He makes his thinking accessible. He leaves us free to engage with and if needed disagree with RR the person, simply by ourselves being a person. I find all this plays out across what he has to say about the 60s (my era also) and Europe (my continent). Across my own life experience and being my person in relation to that experience, useful agreement and disagreement (both equally useful) flows freely between his person and my own. So RR seems to me to be a good advocate for being a thinking, engaging, communicating person (or self).

[@ThePartiallyExaminedLife]

Good point, but I find value in both Prof. Roderick's approach and Prof. Anton's approach. There's a place for both entertaining polemic and methodical rigor when studying philosophy. So, a tip of my hat to them both!

[@PappyMandarine]

Hello! Would you mind please telling us who is this Prof. Anton you're mentionning here? I could use more mentors. Thank you!!

[@sorinruga3434]

Same for me, who is this Anton?

[@PappyMandarine]

@@sorinruga3434 I'm not sure, but if my memory serves me, someone ended up replying below (on another OP). It didn't lead to where I thought it would, and the referenced named didn't help much.

[@DaveFromVh1]

RIP Mr. Roderick thank you for the uploads

[@jonadabantonio7130]

This is not a comprehensive discussion of Sartre's. It merely criticizes Existentialism in general but not the main opus of Sartre called "Being and Nothingness". This lecture is intellectually satisfying to those who do not have background of the philosophers. Good for beginners.

[@nightoftheworld]

26:48 *Zizek’s obscene third way-beyond Sartre* “A critical analysis of the present global constellation-one which offers no clear solution, no “practical” advice on what to do, and provides no light at the end of the tunnel, since one is well aware that this light might belong to a train crashing towards us-usually meets with reproach: “Do you mean we should do nothing? Just sit and wait?” One should gather the courage to answer: “YES, precisely that!” There are situations when the only true “practical” thing to do is to resist the temptation to engage immediately and to “wait and see” by means of a patient, critical analysis. Engagement seems to exert its pressure on us from all directions. In a well-known passage from his ‘Existentialism and Humanism’, Sartre deployed the dilemma of a young man in France in 1942, torn between the duty to help his lone, ill mother and the duty to enter the war and fight the Germans; Sartre’s point is, of course, that there is no a priori answer to this dilemma. The young man needs to make a decision grounded only in his own abyssal freedom and assume full responsibility for it. An obscene third way out of this dilemma would have been to advise the young man to tell his mother that he will join the Resistance, and to tell his Resistance friends that he will take care of his mother, while, in reality, withdrawing to a secluded place and studying. There is more than cheap cynicism in this advice. It brings to mind a well-known Soviet joke about Lenin. Under socialism; Lenin’s advice to young people, his answer to what they should do, was “Learn, learn, and learn.” This was evoked all the time and displayed on the school walls. The joke goes: Marx, Engels, and Lenin are asked whether they would prefer to have a wife or a mistress. As expected, Marx, rather conservative in private matters, answers, “A wife!” while Engels, more of a bon vivant, opts for a mistress. To everyone’s surprise, Lenin says, “I’d like to have both!” Why? Is there a hidden stripe of decadent jouisseur behind his austere revolutionary image? No-he explains: “So that I can tell my wife that I am going to my mistress and my mistress that I am going to my wife. . .” “And then, what do you do?” “I go to a solitary place to learn, learn, and learn!” Is this not exactly what Lenin did after the catastrophe in 1914? He withdrew to a lonely place in Switzerland, where he “learned, learned, and learned,” reading Hegel’s logic. And this is what we should do today when we find ourselves bombarded with mediatic images of violence. We need to “learn, learn, and learn” what causes this violence.” -Zizek, _Violence_

[@Paseosinperro]

Only 12000 views... and I bet that many like me have watched each talk several times.

[@nightoftheworld]

I think many will listen to these for the rest of their lives.. The Teaching Company did a service to humanity with these-Michael Sugrue is another lecturer from them that will live forever on here.

[@Paseosinperro]

@@nightoftheworld Yes! Thanks for the recommendation

[@Tsar_NicholasIII]

15:00 "...but in how many subtle and countless ways do these things change us? ...Phenomenally...change us." And this was before the internet took off.

[@zsedcftglkjh]

Existentialism (especially French existentialism) is what happens when a philosopher picks up a pen instead of a derringer.

[@09cf]

i love this guy

[@nightoftheworld]

4:50 *Existential moods in the mall* “It has concern with a series of concepts that today would be.. I think if you were to discuss them today for example at the mall you would just be called someone that’s very depressing and if you went to your psychiatrist they would probably just give you some Prozac and hope things worked out because the existential concepts are, _anxiety, despair and death;_ these array of concepts.”

[@caylynmillard6047]

I love this man and his message.

[@aleisterdunn1528]

I love Rick Roderick, but he really botched Sartre's ethical argument. The situation as presented in his writing was that one of his students had approached him for advice. the man's brother had died in the resistance leaving him the only living child of his mother who loved him. His question was which was the morally superior choice, to join the resistance and avenge his brothers death, or to stay home with his mother, comforting her and protecting his safety for the sake of her happiness.

[@mikenowacki9729]

'if christ came back he'd get a deal with nike' . . ha ha

[@andrewgodly5739]

Probably would've been born of a teen mom, in a dingy garage. His apostles would be KZbin celebs. He'd be leading millions of people to the promised lands in an online video game. He'd be sentenced life in prison for many accounts of violating private property. Then he'd be handcuffed to a prison bed and left to die for our sins. The footage would be taken by a camera watching the cell and would be a meme on TikTok

[@NothingHumanisAlientoMe]

@@andrewgodly5739 Stop romanticizing jeez

[@nightoftheworld]

If Christ came back he’d kick some traders out of the temple..

[@nightoftheworld]

8:12 “I mean this is what opens up the human experience to anxiety, despair, dread and the absurd.”

[@LethalBubbles]

the comments who sound like they've never heard wisdom from a southern accent make me sad. There's much knowledge locked away by some of the best speakers you've ever heard in the south and all over! Southern orators have always been awesome. He kinda breaks into that preacher voice sometimes too.

[@nightoftheworld]

7:16 *absurdity* “It’s the sense that our life hangs on the same kind of contingencies that dice hang on, you know, like you roll eleven and it’s lights out, otherwise keep playing-that sense makes your life feel absurd.”

[@mehrdadmohajer3847]

Thanks to you & thanks to RR for his valuble Lectures. Rick reflects any one of these Philosophs in an impeccable mirror of VALUES.

[@maryjanero9896]

I know Bakhtin and Sartre are from quite disparate 'philosophical' backgrounds but I would be interested in any ideas you might have Rick, or any viewers might have, about shared or contrasting viewpoints between these writers.

[@nightoftheworld]

30:17 *Distant vs Internal enemy* “In Europe the experience was that fascism was not only an enemy to be fought _without,_ but it was _in us_ too-this was the European experience.”

[@oldworldhuman]

i like to think he's got like a fifth of rum in that mug

[@Nicksloan91]

"If Christ came back, he'd get a deal with Nike." Too true Rick, too true.

[@susanmcdonald9088]

Thanks, but why does it cut out in 2 very important places?! & at the end? Whole sentences, ending thoughts, right at critical points, why are they deleted?

[@the_famous_reply_guy]

Anton your a brilliant mind for sure and I enjoy watching your YT videos. Yet I find Rick so much more accessible on equally complex subjects. I think Ricks relaxed and very colourful yet detailed imagery on the main concepts is akin to Alan Watts. Your presentation is more like academic hierarchy of today. Technical square, neat and edited, yet lacking a signature or flavour from you.

[@afterthesmash]

4:00 Wow, I had to stop and do a mental date check to determine whether he was delivering this lecture before or after the fall of the Berlin wall. (Turns out it was after, but not by a lot.) Bureaucratic Fascism: Treblinka tatoos. Bureaucratic Marxism: Lubyanka lassos. (You've come a long ways, baby.)

[@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

[@contactkeithstack]

this guy's impression of Zach Galifianakis twin brother is impeccable

[@the_famous_reply_guy]

Antons method of oratory is clinical is all I'm saying. Rick is able to put himself in his argument in a very engaging way. Maybe its the accent or walking around but I feel his passion and stress with the subject matter. I've only seen Anton get upset in one video and it was subtle but interesting. We really aren't Vulcan's yet. Rhetoric in the classical sense is important. Notice those text to speech videos on YT. How disliked they are. No emotional content affects the listener. CD Vinyl.

[@PappyMandarine]

Hello, who is this Professor Anton you're talking about? What's his full name? Thanks!!

[@vvendetta721]

It was almost 9 years ago but I was talking to Corey Anton is Professor of Communication Studies at Grand Valley State University, Vice-President of the Institute of General Semantics, Past President of the Media Ecology Association, and a Fellow of the International Communicology Institute. He may have deleted his comments, it might have been his wife's idea, she is really smart.

[@PappyMandarine]

@@vvendetta721 Thanks, Vendetta. Then I completely misunderstood what the topic was about. I thought people were comparing two different styles of Philosophy teachers, those of Rick Roderick and a certain Anton. I was hoping to get the full name of Anton and to look for his Philosophy lectures on the internet. I didn't understand that he was merely taking part of a conversation in the comments box. Cheers!

[@vvendetta721]

@@PappyMandarine He has channel on KZbin which I recommend.

[@PappyMandarine]

@@vvendetta721 Alright, thanks for pointing that out. I just subscribed. Will probably start with his account of McLuhan's Understanding Media.

[@maryjanero9896]

Hi, I found your lecture very interesting. I'm considering what the intersection of ideas might have been between Sartre and Bakhtin, particularly in relation to the Carnivalesque, (which has the themes of rebellion, rebirth, egalitarianism and renewal that Sartre, particularly in his later life, ascribed to). It also strikes me that Bakhtin's 'Towards a Philosophy of the Act' implies a personal responsibility in the construction of one's own life, just as Sartre spoke of.

[@scioarete7987]

20:00 is a wise point

[@manuag3886]

Existence precedes essence

[@ThePartiallyExaminedLife]

[@jacobaguiar8018]

this guy kicks jordan peterson's ass

[@clairebouskill8847]

do you have videos of prof Anton aswell. These videos are very good,

[@nightoftheworld]

10:34 *It precedes I* _“Existence precedes essence,_ and what he meant by that was that human beings have _no_ essential nature. There is nothing universal or essential about human beings.” Except that what’s universal about human beings is this naturelessness, so he was right but also wrong. What’s universal to today’s Left according to people like Todd McGowan, is that we all share what we don’t have-that we’re connected through shared loss. Universality still resides where Hegel found it, in the contradiction at the heart of being-Lacan’s split, the point of reflexive negativity which is constitutive of the self.

[@Goobywoobygoo]

“Beyond good and evil” is just evil.

[@IFurato]

someones got a book list?

[@tylermanning2848]

i have a PDF of his book Habermas And The Foundations Of Critical Theory, if youre still looking

[@nightoftheworld]

12:46 _free yourself by identifying with us_

[@havefunbesafe]

Existence precedes essence…I think therefore I have thoughts…or I am therefore I think?

[@manuag3886]

If there were gods how could I not bare to be one

[@scioarete7987]

30:00 yep. That has really changed now

[@OPT15]

THIS GUY'S THE FUCKING MAN!!

[@ericbray4286]

We thought we were over the dichotomy of good vs. evil and Sartre helped us past that point, only to find both wings of the American political system bring back morality, shaming and dualism with a vengeance.

[@user-xq5ui2uw9v]

12:55 I feel personally attacked.

[@asmundt.strnen5899]

Sartres hegelian journey - from uhappy individual existence - to the next level - the universial and social. But his stand on stalinism is wrong, compared with Camus.

[@clairebouskill8847]

Åsmund T. Strønen what were his views and how are they different to camus

[@elliotunderhill3617]

@@clairebouskill8847 He supported Stalin for a long time, while Camus did not.

[@kshproductions7996]

If I recall, though admittedly much later in his life, he did eventually end up turning towards a type Libertarian Socialism/Anarchism

[@PappyMandarine]

I've watched all the Philosophy and Human Values lectures, as well as the first three in the Self under Siege (I'm going about it following the proper order). I have to say that unfortunately, this episode is the weakest I've watched from Rick Roderick.

[@uwaaa111]

'if christ came back, he would have a deal with nike' awsome...

[@samuelwolff6900]

i like to imagine rick as having a ponytail which seems to crawl down his legs

[@frankfeldman6657]

Wonderful lecture, but very dated. Kind of like Sartre.

[@almilligan7317]

Obviously, we start in the middle of things, rejecting the biological necessity of being. The little remark about the value of Swaggert’s happiness and his own reveals Roderick’s bias. Bias is always of value. Value is a way of meaning.

[@cimmeriantower]

Rick passed away in 2002

[@fineartist7710]

..Well, that definitely is an existential problem.

[@austink641]

12:12 Rick Roderick prophesizes hipsters.

[@bissboos3669]

I love that Texas accent. His Texan accent sounds like an anti-abortionist accused of burning down a clinic. Yet these brilliant concepts are produced through this accent. Diversity it is.

[@Goobywoobygoo]

Damn so he sounds based but is cringe…

[@christopherhamilton3621]

Philosophic logic cutting… Damn, RR tells it straight!

[@manuag3886]

Satan says it better to be in hell than to be a slave

[@nightoftheworld]

_better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven_

[@Goobywoobygoo]

Reality: better to be a slave to the devil than a follower of Christ. Kind of a stupid thing to say…

[@Zoahhh]

hwhat and hwhy

[@kickywicky4616]

Darth Vader is not a good example here. DV is one of the foremost movie examples of "We have met the enemy and he is us".

[@nightoftheworld]

13:33 “If Christ came back he’d get a deal with Nike.”

[@evgeny9965]

Rick Rodrick was and is a treasure . ...sad commentary on our current times that that the snowflakes that now populate academia would have had him run out of town.

[@ma7eus97]

It seems Sartre was a Kierkegaard wanna be haha

[@democracyrespecterilovedem8607]

fascism is the only doctrine that can counter the systems roderick criticizes

[@wigglethemiddle1]

Few facts, content .... lots of tangents to "clarify", which amounts to editorializing

[@wigglethemiddle1]

How did you get "equation" from my criticism? When we teach others about a philosophy there needs to be an explanation of the main assumptions, the inferences made, and their objectives ... this lecture only partially does that. This doesn't mean it lacks "equations", it means it lacks accuracy and scholarship ... if someone wants to learn what freedom meant to Sartre, this is a waste of time

[@MarcinP2]

I just wanted to find a philosopher to explain this postmodern shit who would not be another Slavoj Zizek. He was doing well for video or two but now it's stream of consciousness with jabs at other philosophers (but not even solid counterarguments, just pointing at them and saying "how typical").

[@limitless1692]

There is some BS in this video .....

[@basstrip73]

In 2020 Rick would probably find himself “cancelled” by hysterical woke wingnuts on Twitter

[@Goobywoobygoo]

He was a woke wingnut. 80% of all his lectures are cheap jabs at right wingers and Christians.

[@ginaaziz3124]

Discounting morality for some of its conundrums is silly, post modernist. It's why civilization is crumbling. Morality is the most important thing, the only thing, and modern philosophers ignored it because of their ignorance and evil natures. Only the good soul can have human understanding (Aristotle, Stoics), and the bad soul can never have real knowledge. Vietnam cynicism and presuppositions color Roderick's analysis. If not for Vietnam, he might have been a great one.

[@josefvenice7658]

+Gina Aziz can you break this down it sounds like gibberish..

[@Deantrey]

No one discounts morality. The view held by Neitzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and some of the postmodernists, is that moral systems are limited. It's not that they are bad, but that they are limited. Note, however, that what they are talking about is *moral systems.* It's a specific view of morality, that reduces it to a set of rules or rule bound behavior, that is questioned in that work. And it's not only post modernists, many analytic philosophers, a whole wide traditional of them in fact, have also questioned it, in much the same way and for many of the same reasons. Go read Alastair Macintyre or Bernard Williams for example, though there are many others. In analytic philosophy the view on morality that opponents of these other kinds of system based ethics take is usually called virtue ethics. It's the idea that, over and above just following a set of rules, being moral comes down to who you are as an individual. When your moral systems break down, as Sartre's example demonstrated, you can no longer rely on any rules from on high to tell you what to do. You have to make a choice for yourself. As Derrida said, to rely on a set of rules to make all your decisions for you, that is irresponsibility itself. It's saying, well as long as I followed the rules I'm a good person. No, you're not. You're just a machine. And Sartre would agree wholeheartedly with that. So the moral systems are not bad. But that's a choice you make, to employ the categorical imperative or whatever else. And when those things can't help you, you have to "just choose" as Sartre said. To me, in fact this is what civilization needs! We need to take responsibility for our actions, and the society we create. We have to focus, not on teaching our children the right rules to follow, but on cultivating their humanity, their respect and empathy for others (especially those who are different), on instilling within them a sense of responsibility. That is what postmodern ethics is all about.

[@joshfrench6426]

Gina Aziz and post modernism is a reflection of a state of society at a current period in time in relation to its historical economic, political, and social context. Can't separate out the society and its response to its environment. They are intertwined.

[@Obilio222]

Telling everyone else that they need to be moral is usually a sure sign that the speaker needs to practice what they preach. "Get the beam out of your own eye...", you know? What passes for moral in conservative circles today, as in Jesus' time, is hypocrisy on steroids. I don't think God is (or ever has been) fooled.

[@lsobrien]

Beware kids, this is your brain on Jordan Peterson.

[@cmattbacon7838]

Sort yourself out bucko youre getting pudgy