There is some great philosophy content on RU-vid, but I also frequently can't find videos covering specific topics I'm looking for. I have started creating videos on those topics for my classes, and I'm posting them here in case you want to watch them as well.
The videos are low-budget, low production value. But they're free, and I guarantee you'll get more than you paid for!
Thank you Dr Lampert for analyzing in such a clear way the difficult subject of the Function Argument and the remaining material in Chapter 7, o Nicomachean Ethics, Book A. What an excellent analysis!
I truly understood what it means to own your own product when I translated a book in persian. I once saw someone with a copy who folded it out of habit. And it was like someone was wrenching my heart... That was when I understood what it was to own your labour and how precious it becomes. At least from my understanding of alienation. Pls correct me if I'm wrong
I've read the manuscript and seen tons of video. Read Erich Fromms take on it and understand alienation, but nothing comes close to your explanation. Absolutely wonderful...
Oh hey, thanks for this! For Fromm and the Frankfurt School guys, alienation was always such an important concept--but it definitely took me a while to get clear(er) on the concept itself! I really appreciate the kind words.
I remember a old plasterer 45 years ago saying to me as a apprentice .We turn a lorry load of sand cement lime e.c.t into a plaster finished house. Which through labour and skill I found extraordinary in the ordinary.
Great video. A suggetion for your next videos would be to get rid of background music or change it to something that has no lyrics. It is distracting when I try to focus on what you are explaning.
This is one of my most favorite subjects in Marx about human nature and ourselves. Like all animals we have eat, sleep, reproduce but unlike all animals we have to work for our sustenance. That was the clincher for me in Marx the role of labor in the making of our species and planet. I think it was in his 1859 Critique of Political Economy where he exposes surplus-value as the difference between labor-power and the value of labor. Individual objects, he says, are not without any connection to labor and this is what unravels the mystery of commodities and money for people,--- that as individual objects they are relating labor of two distinct kinds in each other when money is involved in their exchange. The labor in commodities is concrete labor and the labor in money is abstract labor on the level microscopic discovery. What it means to be Human is answered in Part III The Labor-Process and the Production of use-Values Vol. I Capital, K Marx. Labor as an activity defines human beings as natural as fish are to the ocean and because our species must work to produce our subsistence; our hands, arms, legs, brains are tools within natural limits and not forced. As human we are not the subsistence for another human. We do not consume exclusively from nature without changing nature makes us human. Our consumption embodies everything that is at the same time a production and our production embodies everything that is at the same time a consumption activity in the act of production. Its a deep dive but The 1859 Critique and the Labor Process in Vol I are good starters to get this eye-opening theory beautifully illustrated for Marx was a great writer.
To me it seems “All cats are mammals” is an analytic a priori judgment, not empirical. Which is to say that the concept “mammal” is contained within the concept “cat”. We know that the judgment is true simply by understanding what the word “cat” means, not by reference to some particular state of affairs in the world. I think “A cat is a lizard” is much like “A circle is a polygon” - inconceivable. A better example for an empirical judgment would be something like “All cats have black hair”. We would need to check the world to see whether it’s true or false. Am I wrong here?
Ah! Thanks for this--it's a great question! What you've said certainly explains why, if somebody said to you that they thought cats were reptiles, you might say, "I don't think you really understand what a cat is!" But here are a couple of important things: First off, we haven't just declared cats to be mammals by fiat or by definition; how do we KNOW that cats are mammals? There are empirical grounds for this claim--in other words, that cats, the animals we actually encounter in the world, have the right features to be (correctly) classified as mammals. That said, once we've identified some such species (felis catus), the question "Is this thing in front of me 'a cat'?" IS a matter of applying a pre-given category/identifier, in much the same way that "Is this shape in front of me a circle?" is. But UNLIKE the case of cats, "circles" have no empirical BASIS. A true circle is a geometic definition; everything we can know about circles is something we can learn just by studying the IDEA of a circle. Everything we know about the mammalian nature of cats, by contrast, is something we have had to discover within some actual creature in the world. Does this make sense of the distinction? It's a great question, thanks!
@ Matthew Lampert thanks for the reply. I see the distinction you’re making. I just thought analyticity was about the meaning of concepts and not necessarily their origin. No doubt everything we know about cats has an empirical origin. But I would say the same holds true for “bachelors” in the classic example of an analytic a priori judgment “All bachelors are unmarried men”. The content of this judgment has an empirical basis, the institution of marriage and actual creatures in the world (i.e. men), yet it is still not justified empirically. Even if all men were to have gotten married yesterday, the judgment about bachelors would still be true. Likewise, if all cats were to have died yesterday, the judgment “All cats are mammals” would still be true. The point I’m trying to make is that once a concept is formed (empirically), we can arrive at its definition a priori just by drawing out what’s contained within it. And you will find “being a mammal” included in most dictionary entries for “cat”. Am I completely off base here?
@@tylerhulsey982 This is great, and you're not off base here at all! The simplest answer to your question is that Kant has a very restrictive (and, ultimately, not completely thought-out) understanding of "analytic" judgments. The meaning of "unmarried male" is contained within "bachelor" in a way that "mammal" isn't contained in "cat"--this is to say that, if you don't know that a bachelor is an unmarried male, then you just don't understand the word "bachelor." But if you don't know that a cat is a mammal, it's not clearly the case that you just don't know what a cat is! The slightly longer answer to your question, though, is that you've hit upon (I think) exactly the thread which, if followed, starts to unravel the "analytic/synthetic" distinction completely. Because if science is helping us to identify properties of objects in the world, then the claims of science seem to be true about those objects in a way that isn't merely "accidental." So, for example, you could say: "Well, if you don't know that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius (at sea level), then you don't really know what water is!" And in this way, you can watch analytic (which should be to say: a priori) judgments slowly consume ALL scientific (which should be to say: empirical) knowledge...
Yes I agree this is why I subscribed the moment I discovered his channel I couldn't understand Kant until I came across his videos. Great illustration, I love his concept of association.
Well--Just because I can "list moral virtues all day" doesn't mean that EVERYTHING is a virtue! There are certainly still things that aren't virtues. And indeed, there are activities that Aristotle says CANNOT be done virtuously--things which, by their very names, indicate that they are bad and cannot be done "in the right way, at the right time," etc. (He gives the examples of murder, theft, and adultery.) But all of this can be true even if we could (as I suggested, somewhat sweepingly) "list moral virtues all day." My point, however, is that there are a great many "good habits" we could list; that it is certainly not confined to just the fifteen or so that Aristotle specifically mentions in NE, or the seven "heavenly" ones a lot of us grew up hearing about, etc.
A minor nitpick: humans are animals, and I think we would be better off if we stopped talking about nonhuman animals as though they're all radically different from us. Ultimately, all living things on Earth share a common ancestor once you go far enough back, humans have just gotten really good at deceiving ourselves about where we come from. I just found your channel and hope I won't be disappointed by your treatment of Marx's ideas; I understand why rich people hate him, but cannot understand why anyone who doesn't make money by stealing from the working class would side with the wealthy against Marxists.
Thanks for your comment; you'll have to let me know how you ultimately think I handle Marx's ideas here. To respond to your specific comment here: I'm not sure if you'd say that your "minor nitpick" is with Marx or with my interpretation of Marx, but either way I don't think there's any reason to deny what you've said--we are indeed animals, the same as birds and beavers and foxes. However, I think it's important to recognize the role that philosophical anthropology is playing here: Marx isn't trying to deny that we are animals (he says as much), but he IS interested in what makes humans a very distinct KIND of an animal (namely, what Marx calls "species-being"). To say that humans are capable of finding meaning in their actions, and to say that they take up a reflective stance on their own actions and world, is not to "deceive ourselves" about where we come from! Animals or not, humans are also reflective, autonomous creatures--beings with reason, free will, and the ability to produce cooperatively with others. And, among other things, this means that humans can be alienated, exploited, oppressed, and even just plain old dissatisfied in ways that, say, a snake or a cockroach can't be.
By far some of, if not the best videos discussing Kant that I have ever seen and I have seen tons. The "big" "popular" videos that are 9 minutes long and try to explain the CI along with Kant's moral theory are a mess leaving people confused left and right. These videos are great for actually beginning to understand Kant's moral theory in a wholistic sense. Most people watch one of those aforementioned videos and dismiss Kant (assuming they have no philosophical background) without another thought.
I really appreciate that, thank you! And I agree, it's too easy to dismiss or reject a lot of these difficult thinkers on the basis of the simplified summaries/caricatures one finds of them online!
what a great summary! you nailed the "punchline". Aristotle's contemplative life.. is self-sufficient and thus everything that is not by itself does not bring us happiness.
