The authors themselves aged better than anything else. Boudrillard was from the 1960s, describing technology like he was from the 2060s. Yet analytics dismiss them entirely due to "poor scientific power"...
The thing I most admire about Rick Roderick was his commitment to the belief that these philosophers are SO worth it! SO worth exploring, that he took the time to make so many recorded lectures in the spirit of elucidating, rather than the spirit of polemic/apologia, what have you! Such a sweet and modest man with a solid grasp, if not profound understanding, of many thinkers, many traditions, etc..
These lectures are excellent because they get to the heart of great thinkers. For example, the focus on subjectivity - which leads to misjudgments of social ties - or the concept of rationality and bureaucracy - in which a world worth living in does not appear conceptually. But for Marcuse, his suggestions for improvement are not simply alternatives (to which one can refer and with which one can compare in order to make different decisions, better decisions. For him, the search for better solutions belongs to an a priori attitude (with which you have to approach the world in advance)
I miss this guy. His lectures are so accurate and important to the 21st Century that it should be required listening by any first-year student if not graduate business student.
Roderick knows of what he speaks; he knows the people of this country and his South. He knows that the country is on the decline and so knows the trajectory. This is a general introductory lecture to frightened people who carry bibles. Excellent start to the subject.
Agreed, these are very good. Interesting that they were made in the nineties, right on the precipice of VR and other advancements, and now we can watch these lectures in light of the past 25 yrs and see how relevant these topics are and what they get right. It seems like in the nineties young people were dealing more heavily with the existential crisis of this sort of fake/ banalized post modern life; now it feels like the attitude is more like "screw it," and the youth are grabbing the ecstacy of the hyper-real by the balls, having lost interest in the boring realities that come along with intellectual thought and philosophical introspection.
J.J. Savage isn’t a good deal of that “screw it” attitude and boredom with intellectual thought a byproduct of the culture industry? It seems to me that the hyper-real has fully saturated our lived world, to the point that one’s life now means more (economically/culturally) as a social media avatar/brand than a messy human animal full of real holes and gaps. Just looking at the weight that is placed on facsimile/virtual perfection nowadays, it’s no wonder more and more are grabbing it by the balls, trying to get a taste of that cultural ecstasy despite the poverty of such superficial posturing.
@@nightoftheworld Yes, I agree. Having lived through that transition, I am greatly uncomfortable with the digital facsimiles of ourselves outweighing our actual selves, but as this is becoming normalized at younger ages, each generation seems to mind less and less. It's all there is. So is resisting the tide of the hyperreal useless? Should we fight it at all?What does the next "what now?" look like?
J.J. Savage yeah, I don’t know really, but content like this or things such as philosophy/critical theory podcasts etc seem to be going down the right track.. utilizing the new tech in creative ways to lure youngsters into the tradition of philosophical thinking. I think we desperately need to keep this type of self-reflexivity/immanent critique alive through the new tech however possible. If we fight against the hyper-real by boycotting its mechanisms like Luddites then we run more of a risk of harming the image of critical theory and turning the young off. I feel like we should do what Zizek says capitalism did to the ‘68 revolution, parasitize it and appropriate its potential for our ends. So perhaps we “embrace” the hyper-real (social media etc) as the powerful medium which it is yet use it specifically to undermine the superficiality of the world it’s creating. Also, thanks for the response, what are your thoughts here?
It took me a while to warm up to this strange lecture, but whoa - this Rick Roderick person is amazing. This isn't your typical dry academic discussion; it is an impassioned reflection of the problematic ideas and behaviors that affect our daily lives and impede humanity from making meaningful, positive strides.
Much of Marcuse'sphilosophy has aged perfectly well. He was and remains spot on. I still thinking that his Freudian method applied or extrapolated to society is quite valuable. Women and men of today's society keep being alienated. We're basically consumers, and are treated as such. We live in a sick and unbalanced society. The suffering and problems of man are society ones. 🙄😔🙏
Pergunto-me se Rick teria lido a Crítica da Razão Cínica de Peter Sloterdjik? Eu não li, mas a palestra de Rick me faz saber o que essa razão. Mais: me leva também a ver A Condição Pos-moderna sob a ótica da banalidade com que a cultura entrou na era do Neoliberalismo, conforme Mark Fisher... Em suma, nada como não estar agradecido a Rick Roderick por reunir ideias aparentemente separadas...
May I say , i LOVE that prof. OMG so few in the Anglo countries have the level of precision and abstraction with a healthy dose of reality. I never have enough of him !!
When he's looking down at the papers with his hands on the podium, saying sadly "it cannot be defended," that moment feels so sad. as if he really wants to believe the hope Marcuse has but the reality just won't allow it.
Such a legendary lecture on Marcuse. He never got to actually develop what the concept of "one-dimension man" truly means. I really would have wanted him to do so as the expression almost never turns up in the book. Marcuse speaks of one-dimensionality, of one-dimensional "things", but never of men.
3:47 *the enlightenment paradox* “The more that the enlightenment project progressed.. it simply turned out not to be the case that we became _less_ afraid in the face of the unknown-no the unknown appeared more terrifying than ever. And it wasn’t the case that we became less dogmatic. As a matter of fact, the sciences have now branched out into so many areas that the only way anyone could believe in any of them is _dogmatically_ since none of us could study them because we don’t have world enough or time. So in [a] paradoxical way the enlightenment builds up a kind of intellect _intelligent_ enough to see through mystification-that’s where I talked about Marx and Freud and other figures-we build up an intellect _hard_ enough, as it were, to see through these mystifications, but any intellect _that_ powerful has a tendency to become _totalitarian-this_ is the fundamental problem. And _nowhere_ would that be more evident than in the experience of the Germans who were a, you know a great.. their technology, the advance in science and so on-a world as instrumentally rational as.. you know the famous joke that _the trains run on time.”_ Zizek, _In Defense of Hegel’s Madness:_ “Furthermore, we should test Brandom's reading of forgiveness and reconciliation at history's extreme phenomena: what would it have meant to forgive holocaust and get reconciled with it? Can we also imagine that this terrifying "wound" gets fully healed and disappears by way of becoming a moment of rationally-reconstructed history? Should Jews pardon the Nazis because, although in its direct intention, holocaust meant the total destruction of the Jews, its unintended consequence was the emergence of the state of Israel plus the prohibition of anti-Semitism (in parts of the world, at least)? Or, even more obscenely, should the Jews recognize their own complicity with holocaust (Heidegger's reading)? The easy way out is, of course, to claim that the rational recollection of history included only moments which contributed to the progress and ignore blind accidental deadlocks. But this easy way out obviously doesn't work: violent anti-Semitism is all too clearly part of Western spiritual history to be ignored like that, plus the unintended consequence of holocaust effectively was some level of ethical progress (higher awareness of the dangers of racism), so that, in a weird way, it did contribute to the ethical progress which wouldn't take place without it. Which means one cannot squeeze out of this deadlock by way of reading the phrase "wounds of the Spirit" literally, as referring openly to spiritual wounds proper (and dismissing holocaust as a pathology that doesn't really belong to the domain of spirit): holocaust IS part of the innermost history of our Spirit, of our collective spiritual substance.”
I don't come here to hear about philosophy or this, or, that...I come here to listen to Rick. His digressions ARE the message. And this lecture has to be the best! Don't expect an analysis on Marcuse...that would be boring. Hell, if you wanna know about Marcuse, just read his damn books! But if you want a great talk, that utilizes some interesting ideas, and this is Rick's charm, that bridge all the philosophers he talks about, then this is the guy! Fantastic!
+ishinadish yeah right like the elvis being a cyborg and rationalizing sheep in game theory, you are obviously are lil lost, that's OK, because Jesus forgives you!
Shit man, don't come roun here to listen bout philosophy n shit, them damn effeminate frenchmen with all that fancy marxy talk. Just give it to me straight n simple, pair it down to a soundbite and be on my way between bouts of opium fixes.
I get what you are saying but I beliwe that Marcuse's argument goes deeper. He explains that in the post industrial it is incredibly difficult to awaken from the capitalist corporate control of what being human is about. The answer comes in deconstruction of self
I love all the like-minded comments praising this content. These lectures really live up the name of Great Courses. But I am disheartened now, because I just realized that this video has been up for 11 years and only has 3K likes and 354 comments which is, perhaps not coincidently, about the same number as the Bryan Magee video featuring Marcuse that just came from. I hope more people will find this content.
I got Marcuse's book *Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory.* Whatever anyone says about Marcuse, it takes a respectable person to make Hegel seem clear and logical the way Marcuse does.
This is also why I dislike the use of memes to convey larger, and more complex ideas. When we reduce such complex ideas into simple gists where people could easily digest the material, we take away the nuance and subtleties that came with the original message in the first place! Without these subtleties, it prevents the audience that views the meme from reaching a deeper understanding or insight of the idea that was originally conveyed.The banality that is a consequence of such reductionism can only result in the death of the original idea by over saturation and mass production of said idea as if it were a cheap commodity to be humorously indulged in, which then more importantly leads to the pervading sickness of collective unoriginality. The spirit of originality is dead, and memes have killed it.
You know you can subvert the banality of the memosphere (I made that word up) by making your own, better, memes? I think that works better than literary criticism of meme culture.
Speaking of a society of addicts, Daniel schmachtenberg proposes that the measure of the health of a society is it's propensity for addictive behaviour. It is interesting that Roderick was thinking these same things 30 years beforehand and long before the smartphone.
I always find Rick's inspiring belief in the revolutionary ideas of the 1960s moving despite their banalisation. I wish he would've opened for some rock bands. I'm sure he would've delivered a brilliant and hilarious denunciation of the system.
When he said opening for rock bands, my mind immediately went to Zizek. And it's true: it's like the establishment gives a venue for critical thinkers just to make them banal.
I don’t think JP has ever suggested that things are simple or that he has answers. He seems to be pointing at a problem that we all know exists. He does have fans, I wonder if having fans makes someone non serious. Is Zizek serious? He has fans. I am interested in JP and Zizek.
@@porfavoralguemmemata8624 JP seems to have both a cult and an anti-cult around him. Anyway, I'm not sure why you believe that an experienced psychologist shouldn't help people turn their lives around. I thought that'd be the whole point. Did you ever consider your assessment of him could be unreasonable?
I like you summary. I found him absolutely entertaining. I also learn how to fill the gap between my understanding and the ability to express ideas already deeply embedded in my own mind. Especially the prosperity preaching and teaching folks. Motivational speakers and t.v. preachers. Professional people finding away to wallet telling you what you should already know really irritates me. The idea of paying some one to tell you that you can do it yourself. is stupidity on their part..
Zizek is a master appropriator.. him and Rick are like a philosophical binary star system dancing with one another. Zizeks grasp on Hegel and theology fills in Rick’s _gaps_ there.
TV does banalize its content, and i think that’s because TV alienates the viewer from the experience, because fed through the tv the experience becomes just another image. It doesn’t matter if it’s a video of a policeman shooting someone. “How awful; they were unarmed. The immorality of it.” These performative phrases replace actual feelings from the actual experience, because we’re just looking at an image.
Yeah, read Neil Postman’s _Amusing Ourselves to Death,_ if you haven’t-he makes a similar point using Sesame Street. Like.. yeah yeah it’s a decent kids show and the producers may be well intentioned, but the format itself presents a major problem since it is a _passive medium._ Postman, _AOTD:_ “As a television show, and a good one, ‘Sesame Street’ does not encourage children to love school or anything about school. It encourages them to love television [...] like the alphabet or the printing press, television has by its power to control the time, attention and cognitive habits of our youth gained the power to control their education [...] Television’s principal contribution to educational philosophy is the idea that teaching and entertainment are inseparable [...] Indeed, they will expect it and thus will be well prepared to receive their politics, their religion, their news and their commerce in the same delightful way.” *As a side-note though-RU-vid and other interactive digital platforms seem to be challenging his notion. It remains to be seen how humanity will develop as each new generation is pulled more deeply out of touch with reality and into the digital representation..
Thanks, I like it too! It's the Ouroboros, the snake that eats it's tail. It's actually a Western symbol, but it is very similar in nature to the Taoist Yin/Yang.
@@carlosoliveira7304 a year later and it’s out of control. The Coca-Cola corporation is now using the movement to try and help society recognize that the lives of Black Americans should also matter as an advertising slogan.
At around the 37 minute mark he wonders about a society that produces a reaction in its youth that believe, hope, and expect nothing, and whether or not such a society should be allowed to exist This was in 1993 right? This is the ninties, the height of Pax Americana, when the USSR fell and the Twin Towers didnt yet Consider our youth twenty years, one War on Terror, and one 5-year-long recession later... Would this man have torn his hair out had he been alive right now?
Austin Millett it's actually the left who depict Trump this way. The banalisation is even big on their own agenda. Look what they did to feminism. They turned it into a joke. Look a people like Hillary Clinton or Justin Trudeau. They turned banalisation into their religion.
@@chris_sndw That's not the left, that's Neo-liberalism. I can understand the confusion, since the major media pretend that the reds (neo-conservatives) and blues (neo-liberals) are conservatives and socialists. Outside that limited overton window, there are still lots of anarchists and socialists out here being denied by the system for attempting to challenge it.
@@kategoss1397 They both drink in the same water... materialism... Liberalism came from the product of the proto-socialist French revolution... a strand.....its all when this shit came from.. Neoliberalism is just the continuation..its a strand..like the frankfurt school..
I LOVE Roderick!!!! A true intellectual Fossil! We read Marcuse in Germany in High School in teh early 1970´s Now Zero Dimensional Man Getting worse I call myself Culture Cosmonaut Exile from Mainstreet Nomad of the Spirit
I love Professor Rick Roderick. His lectures are phenomenal. Philosophy:Suggestion Krishnamurti and Alan Watts!!!! Carl J.Jung"The Redbook", edited and with in introduction by Sonu Shamdasani, 2009
It saddens me that JP is being mentioned in the same conversation down below of what's being discussed and not realizing that nothing is unique about what JP is doing but also not realizing JP's propagation mystified reasoning/logical positivism that Roderick/Marcuse is criticizing .
This is a summary of thoughts that I have been involved with. I found my struggle as being one just criticism. Even though I did not know any theories of my own I did like bits and parts of so many other. I could not accept the whole body of thought from no particular one. Myth Religion Science Technology. The psychology of Freud or Jung. Economics doctrines of Adam Smith. Sociology blaming the victims..The politics of self. And the philosophy of take over with greed power and control.
14:34 *the union spirit* “Let’s take _trying to start a union._ Let’s say you _want_ a union.. and when American workers used to have them we had steadily raising wages, we had them for years and years and years. Since we haven’t had many unions we haven’t had that-may be a connection there I don’t know. But trying to start a union always suffers this problem because you have to transcend _instrumental reason_ to start a union because it’s not rational for the first three people to join, you follow me? The first three-it’s not rational, you have to convince them there’s a bigger rationality than theirs at stake, something that transcends their selfhood or you haven’t got a union. So, if you don’t do that the total outcome for all the workers is itself _irrational-namely_ they are then forced to negotiate against a power greater than themselves at a massive disadvantage rather than to have equals negotiate these things. Again, this is a case where individual instrumental reason left to its own produces irrational results.” Which is maybe why the reaction of modern corporations is to frame Rick’s logic here as unnecessarily antagonistic, they’d say he’s “not being a team player” (negative/disruptive/counterproductive/non self-aware). They’d say that if Rick has a problem that he should _find a positive way to bring it to the attention of his coworker or boss._ Knowing full well the limits of the systems ability to respond to genuine democratic communication authentically. _The Citizen is United and the cries of the workers will be heard no need for organization-we’re family._ _IEP, Habermas:_ “This is a main thesis in Theory of Communicative Action: strategic action embodied in domains of systems integration must be balanced by communicative action embodied in reflexive institutions of communicative action such as democratic politics. If a society fails to strike this balance, then systems integration will slowly encroach on the lifeworld, absorb its functions, and paint itself as necessary, immutable, and beyond human control. Current market and state structures will take on a veneer of being natural or inevitable, and those they govern will no longer have the shared normative resources with which they could arrive at mutual understandings about how they collectively want their institutions to look like. According to Habermas, this will lead to a variety of “social pathologies” at the micro level: anomie, alienation, lack of social bonds, an inability to take responsibility, and social instability.”
I like you Zen symbol of the hole in the circle of all things. The representation of the everything and the nothing. Never ever been a closure. Just a continuous recycling process in action.
2:10 *Following Kant into Hegel* _”Dare to use your own reason._ Which already you know tells you that church fathers and things like that aren’t... you know don’t listen to them, dare to use your own reason-have the audacity to reason for yourself.” G.K. Chesterton, _Heretics:_ “[I]f we do revive and pursue the pagan ideal of a simple and rational self-completion we shall end--where Paganism ended. I do not mean that we shall end in destruction. I mean that we shall end in Christianity.”
If anyone really feels what he is saying and was growing up in this time, you might enjoy listening to Nirvana. Kurt wasn’t around long enough to be banalized, and it feels just as relevant today - since the system has only become more totalitarian.
Kurt wasn't around long enough, true. But he has been one of the most banalized rock figures of all time. More than Hendrix, more than Jim Morrison... I just watched a Japanese movie a few days ago and the MC says at some point "Jesus, I approve of you as the only cool man besides Kurt Cobain". So Jesus himself is judged by the barometer that is Kurt Cobain. Of course, that doesn't mean that I won't be able able to enjoy Smells like Teen Spirits anymore, it just says a lot of our culture of recuperation & banalization.
Yeah, but he ruined it at the "eating soy beans and jogging" part. What's wrong with people who take proper care of their bodies? He confounds the matter by calling it "eating soy beans and jogging". I would phrase it as providing proper fuel for you body and moving your body a bit. "Eating soy beans" really means providing your body with the best fuel. Every heart disease prevention or reversal diet advises eating plant-foods (eg. potatoes, rice, sweet potatoes, barley, chick peas, lentils, kidney beans, lentils, bananas, dates, pistachios ... ) while avoiding animal foods (meat, dairy, and eggs (yes, fish and bird body parts ARE meat)). Why would he want us to put more time, money, and effort into keeping our cars functioning properly than our bodies? And no, I'm not anti-conscious alteration. One can dabble in "drugs" while still caring for one's body and other things.
He does the same remark in earlier Heidegger lecture, what he's criticizing is the mode of being where good health and long life is regarded as the supreme value (becoming the best looking 125-year old in the neighborhood) - as opposed to a life lived full of meaning and development worth living for.
There's nothing socially beneficial about legalizing highly addictive poison - unless your view is that society is evil and needs to be destroyed, that is.
His point is that eating healthy and exercising can function ideologically just as powerfully as being stoned all the time. Sure, you may (emphasis on may) live longer, but that doesn't really speak to the ideological function of using the diet and exercise to find a false sense of identity.
From the last line of Voltaire's Candide and the barren disillusionment of each of the characters, hope shines through,- the source, the origin, the pure voice of "I am who I am" In the same way mankind corrupted that voice in the form of the Established Religious heirachy, so secularism quickly degenerated from pure reason into intolerant tyranny, and the philosopher now hears that voice in the Garden..."Did God say?"....only to turn away and reply.. "no". But the Alpha and the Omega reigns!
real heartbreaking and thought provoking lecture. this banality isn't going away, it is absolutely everywhere, I would say beyond what Rick Roderick anticipates here.
29:45 ff "...banalisation..." Is there not some defence to be made for banalisation? Hiraldo and Buffy the Vampire Slayer may be corrosive to the self, but consider QI; QI is a show which exposes us to all the things we think we know from popular media. Doesn't its popularity demonstrate that people are interested in what they have picked up passively elsewhere? Thereby they build and amend their picture of the world.
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
![Rick Roderick on Marcuse - One-Dimensional Man [full length]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
