Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pridsue wisdom
Speaker 1: in the past between Primary second eight worlds. I'm Andrew
Speaker 1: Snyder and I'm glad that you're here. Hey, everyone, Andrew
Speaker 1: here Today we'll provide you with the introductory video for
Speaker 1: my upcoming course called a Brief History of Ideas, which
Speaker 1: begins the week of May eighteenth, twenty twenty five. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this video and this seems like something that
Speaker 1: you want to continue on with, then you have a
Speaker 1: couple options. And first of all, you can go to
Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind Patreon shop and you can enroll in
Speaker 1: just this course. However, if you're interested in more than
Speaker 1: one course that I have to offer in the next
Speaker 1: year or so, then you'll be better off purchasing a
Speaker 1: Tier three annual membership to Mythic Mind, and that is
Speaker 1: the apprentice level, and getting that Tier three annual patronage
Speaker 1: will give you access to all courses that begin within
Speaker 1: that term. And so this currently includes a Brief History
Speaker 1: of Ideas, plato Stoicism until we have Faces, the Elder
Speaker 1: Scrolls and Philosophy, and the Soulmarillion, which begins the beginning
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty six. So again, if two or more
Speaker 1: of there's interest to you, then your best deal is
Speaker 1: going to be to get that annual patronage and also
Speaker 1: give you ad free and usually early episodes of Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind and the various things that patronage includes. And so
Speaker 1: you have a limited time here because again that deal
Speaker 1: with the Tier three patronage applies to any courses that
Speaker 1: begin within that term, and so if you want to
Speaker 1: take full advantage of that, then go ahead and do
Speaker 1: that right now. But all right, for now, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and get into the introductory video for a Brief
Speaker 1: History of Ideas. Hello, and welcome to a Brief History
Speaker 1: of Ideas. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm really glad
Speaker 1: to be leading you on this study over these next
Speaker 1: six weeks, whether you're joining one of my independent courses
Speaker 1: for the first time or even with me since we
Speaker 1: began with the fiction and Philosophy of C. S. Lewis.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about sort of where things are going
Speaker 1: as I'm really focusing right now on the broader model
Speaker 1: of my course offerings. I'm focusing on building a community
Speaker 1: of people that will indoor together across multiple courses. This
Speaker 1: is why now, Well, people can still enroll in a
Speaker 1: singular course if they want to. I've moved to this
Speaker 1: model of really encouraging people to take a more comprehensive
Speaker 1: approach of purchasing an annual Tier three patronage, and then
Speaker 1: with that I give them any course that begins within
Speaker 1: that term. And so my hope here is that we
Speaker 1: get this ongoing community and that we all continue going
Speaker 1: further up and further in together, rather than simply in
Speaker 1: isolated pockets here and there. And so that being said,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you being part of this community. Today, I
Speaker 1: want to just tell you a little bit about what
Speaker 1: this course is and what you can expect. You probably
Speaker 1: already know from the title and just from the outline
Speaker 1: of the course that this is essentially an intro to
Speaker 1: philosophy kind of course. In fact, this is something of
Speaker 1: a concentrated form of what I might offer on a
Speaker 1: fifteen week basis on campus when I teach intro to philosophy,
Speaker 1: although it is a very different dynamic here and that
Speaker 1: obviously I'm not giving you assignments you have to do,
Speaker 1: and also they're just a different dynamic when you know
Speaker 1: I'm teaching, I don't know, thirty sixty ninety students who
Speaker 1: have to be there versus you who chose to be here.
Speaker 1: That adds a new dynamic. And so even though it's
Speaker 1: a shorter time period, we can probably go perhaps a
Speaker 1: little bit further with the material and with the conversations.
Speaker 1: And so we'll be taking a look at major topics
Speaker 1: of conversation within the great conversation of the Western philosophical tradition,
Speaker 1: going from ancient Greece to the Medievals, to the moderns
Speaker 1: and to the postmoderns and the postmodern era in which
Speaker 1: we currently find ourselves. And there's really there's a lot
Speaker 1: of value in doing this sort of study. For one thing,
Speaker 1: it gives better context for the world in which we
Speaker 1: live right now. You know, I just alluded to this
Speaker 1: great conversation that's happening over time, and I think that's
Speaker 1: a good way of framing the epics of philosophical thought
Speaker 1: in that you know, whether you study philosophy or not,
Speaker 1: you probably heard the word postmodernism, and so you already
Speaker 1: know that whatever this era of philosophy is that we're
Speaker 1: currently living in, well it's a response or it is
Speaker 1: directly related to modernism, right which came before it, and
Speaker 1: then of course modernism in turn has a certain relationship
Speaker 1: with the medievals, who have a certain relationship with the ancients.
Speaker 1: And so this world in which we currently live is
Speaker 1: but part of this green conversation. And if you're going
Speaker 1: to really understand what's being said today, you need to
Speaker 1: know something about that broader context. And so my hope
Speaker 1: is that in this study that you'll be able to
Speaker 1: better understand what is happening today in the significance of
Speaker 1: the ideas that you've probably heard your entire life, but
Speaker 1: you know, maybe that in all entirely registered as to
Speaker 1: it's just how significant some of these ideas are, how
Speaker 1: jarring they are, how much of a break they are
Speaker 1: from the millennia of ideas, the millennia of years of
Speaker 1: ideas of discourse that's come before them. You know, I
Speaker 1: run to this a lot with my students, who who
Speaker 1: being raised within this postmodern climate, are conditioned to believe that,
Speaker 1: you know, really, all things are just subjective. There's no
Speaker 1: such thing as truth, there's no such thing as goodness
Speaker 1: as beauty, that these are all power plays or social constructs,
Speaker 1: or they come down to nothing more than an individual
Speaker 1: or even maybe communal opinion. But that's all that ideas
Speaker 1: come down to. It's mere opinion. When I start saying that, well,
Speaker 1: what if there actually is a reality, and that we
Speaker 1: don't contextualize reality within ourselves, maybe we can even contextualize
Speaker 1: ourselves within a reality that stands above and beyond any
Speaker 1: of us as individuals. I say something like that, in
Speaker 1: many of them, maybe even over half of them, will
Speaker 1: act like they're hearing something for the very first time.
Speaker 1: You know, a fish doesn't know that it's wet because
Speaker 1: it spends this whole life in the water. And so
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of value in studying what people
Speaker 1: have said in different eras, not because everything they said
Speaker 1: is right and everything that we say is wrong, but
Speaker 1: there's value because two heads are better than one. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you can look at the ancients and say that they've
Speaker 1: made some mistakes, but they're not the same mistakes that
Speaker 1: we're making today. And we can also recognize, I think,
Speaker 1: if we're reading them carefully for being them honestly, recognize
Speaker 1: that they got a lot right that we've lost along
Speaker 1: the way. CS Lewis makes this point in his introduction
Speaker 1: to Athanacius Is on the incarnationation, or you can also
Speaker 1: find it. I think a lot. It's like the value
Speaker 1: of reading old books or something like that in other collections.
Speaker 1: But Lewis makes this point that old books aren't necessarily better. However,
Speaker 1: the ideas, the books, the texts from antiquity that have
Speaker 1: survived today are probably the ones that are worth holding onto.
Speaker 1: They've been sifted through time, and so we can look
Speaker 1: back at the history of ideas and see what stands
Speaker 1: out over time in a way that we can't with
Speaker 1: the ideas that are supposedly new and innovative and creative today.
Speaker 1: So there's just so much value in getting this other
Speaker 1: perspective of other eras that were based off different presuppositions
Speaker 1: and that we're trying to achieve different ends and we
Speaker 1: tend to be today in our postmodern world. And so
Speaker 1: you'll be able to better understand the world than what
Speaker 1: you live. Also, you'll be able to better recover these
Speaker 1: elements of wisdom that have been left behind by the
Speaker 1: mainstream movement of ideas, of academic discourse and whatnot. And also,
Speaker 1: more than any anything else, I hope that through this
Speaker 1: study we all grow in our love for wisdom. That's
Speaker 1: what the word philosophy means phileiosophia. It's the love of wisdom.
Speaker 1: Philosophy at its root isn't about a knowledge of ideas
Speaker 1: in a purely intellectual sense. That you know, when Plato
Speaker 1: talks about philosophy, he means a love of wisdom. As
Speaker 1: much as he is a rational kind of thinker, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to find that more than anything else, he
Speaker 1: is driven by love. He is a philosopher of love,
Speaker 1: and all true philosophers are because we love wisdom. We
Speaker 1: want our lives to be conformed to the demands and
Speaker 1: the beauty and the goodness of wisdom. And so this
Speaker 1: is not only an intellectual exercise, but exercise of cultivating
Speaker 1: the right habits and cultivating the right appetites, because we
Speaker 1: do all have appetites, and some of them are good
Speaker 1: in accordance with nature, by which I mean that they're
Speaker 1: going to lead us to the fulfillment of our form
Speaker 1: what human nature is supposed to be. But of course
Speaker 1: we also have other appetites that are going to lead
Speaker 1: us in the direction of the beastly. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that dichotomy, especially in ancient thought, in the
Speaker 1: coming videos and discussions. But the point is that we
Speaker 1: need to learn discernment. We need to learn the call
Speaker 1: and to use language of proverbs to hear the call
Speaker 1: of lady Wisdom over the call of lady folly. And
Speaker 1: they sound very they sound very similar at first, and
Speaker 1: so you need that discernment. You need to cultivate the
Speaker 1: right kind of love so that you are able to
Speaker 1: recognize the appropriate voice and respond appropriately. And so there's
Speaker 1: so much value intellectually, existentially, there's so much value in
Speaker 1: studying philosophy, and I hope that a lot of that
Speaker 1: will come through through our studies over these next six weeks. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get into the flow of the course, I
Speaker 1: think it'd be helpful to give you just some basic
Speaker 1: vocabulary regarding the study for philosophy. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: overwhelm you now with a bunch of different terms, but
Speaker 1: I think that some of these major ideas, especially these
Speaker 1: major branches of philosophy, would be helpful. And so at
Speaker 1: the center you have philosophy, philosophy being the love of wisdom. Now,
Speaker 1: off of that you have a few branches. And exactly
Speaker 1: how these branches are labeled and constructed, I mean, it
Speaker 1: depends on who you're talking to, what book you're reading,
Speaker 1: But the general at least consensus regarding the major studies
Speaker 1: major branches of philosophy. On one hand, you have epistemology. Now,
Speaker 1: pistemology is the study of truth. It asked the question
Speaker 1: what is truth? And how do we come to know it?
Speaker 1: You know, is true something that we can reason to
Speaker 1: can we engage in speculation and logic in order to
Speaker 1: arrive at truth? Is truth something that can only be
Speaker 1: understood through sense, experience and through scientific investigation? Like these
Speaker 1: are the questions for pistemology. Ultimately, what is truth? How
Speaker 1: do we come to know it? Next, we have ontology,
Speaker 1: not think we've viewed with oncology. Ontology is the study
Speaker 1: of being or the study of existence, and ask the
Speaker 1: question what is existence? What kinds of things exist? And
Speaker 1: off of this we can branch off into a couple
Speaker 1: of major territories. On one hand, we have physics, right,
Speaker 1: the study of physical things. Now, why it seems kind
Speaker 1: of odd to put physics within the domain of philosophy,
Speaker 1: but I mean this is classically how it's been understood
Speaker 1: that what we call science, the study of the physical world,
Speaker 1: used to just be referred to as natural philosophy, because
Speaker 1: there's this idea that philosophy being this unifying field of wisdom,
Speaker 1: that this is the mother science. Well really, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're the medievals, theology is the mother science, right,
Speaker 1: and then philosophy is its handmaiden, and so underneath philosophy
Speaker 1: as the general love of wisdom. Now we yet, I
Speaker 1: mean anything that we can study, anything that we can approach,
Speaker 1: especially through reason, and that includes natural philosophy, includes physics
Speaker 1: the physical world. Right, Aristotle has a book called the Physics,
Speaker 1: and so on one hand, we have physics that the
Speaker 1: study of the physical world. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: this is actually really important that we reclaim natural philosophy,
Speaker 1: that we reclaim science for philosophy, because a lot of
Speaker 1: times science gets treated as if it is philosophy all
Speaker 1: in its own. You know, people say, trust the science.
Speaker 1: You know that I listen to science. My philosophy is science.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that science isn't equipped to do
Speaker 1: things like tell us how to live what the physical
Speaker 1: sciences do, or they tell us things about the empirical world.
Speaker 1: They tell us what is regarding the physical plane, But
Speaker 1: then we have to apply other things like ethics, to
Speaker 1: determine what we ought to do with it, how we
Speaker 1: ought to live. That there's no scientific experiment whatsoever that
Speaker 1: can tell you how to live. All it can do
Speaker 1: is give you data which then you utilize within your
Speaker 1: broader philosophical system. And so science is not a philosophy.
Speaker 1: Science is an empirical tool that is used within the
Speaker 1: study ofosophy, and so we need to reclaim it here.
Speaker 1: And so I think this is pretty significant that we
Speaker 1: maintain physics as part of ontology, which is part of philosophy. Now,
Speaker 1: the other domain which is going to take more of
Speaker 1: our attention is metaphysics, and that is that which transcends
Speaker 1: the physical realm, that basis whatever exists that isn't physical,
Speaker 1: And this can include ideas play doos certainly think so
Speaker 1: that things like justice actually exist even apart from their
Speaker 1: physical instantiations, that beauty actually exists, and so ideas can
Speaker 1: be metaphysical realities. Angels and demons can be metaphysical realities. Certainly,
Speaker 1: things like the existence of God is a metaphysical concern.
Speaker 1: And in Aristyle rather Aristyle has a book on metaphysics
Speaker 1: as well, and we'll be looking at that in week two.
Speaker 1: And so we've got physics, we've got metaphysics, and that's
Speaker 1: all part of ontology. And then the other major branch
Speaker 1: that I want to bring out here is axiomogy. Sometimes
Speaker 1: people just call us ethics, but I think it's better
Speaker 1: to treat ethics as a sub branches. Who get axiology.
Speaker 1: With axiology is the study of value. What are the
Speaker 1: things that we value? What should we value? And that shouldness?
Speaker 1: I mean that really comes down two ethics. Proper right
Speaker 1: ethics is the question of what is the good? What
Speaker 1: does the good life look like? How ought we to live?
Speaker 1: And then the other major branch here of axiology would
Speaker 1: be esthetics. And this is, of course the study of beauty.
Speaker 1: What is beauty? Is beauty objective? Is it real? Does
Speaker 1: it make demands on us? Or is beauty simply in
Speaker 1: the eye that beholder as we tend to say in
Speaker 1: our post modern context today. I can tell you that,
Speaker 1: at least for the most part, in the ancient world,
Speaker 1: they're not going to say that beauty is in the
Speaker 1: eye of the beholder. I mean, yeah, you have your
Speaker 1: your relativist, you have your sophist, and we'll talk about them,
Speaker 1: but for the most part they believe that beauty is
Speaker 1: something real, and that the path of wisdom requires the
Speaker 1: discernment to cultivate the right affections. That way you're able
Speaker 1: to recognize or respond to its call. I think a
Speaker 1: good way of getting at this is to consider the
Speaker 1: difference between the muses and the sirens. So the muses
Speaker 1: are the daughters of Zeus that inspire truth and goodness
Speaker 1: and beauty in the craftsmen and the poets and the
Speaker 1: artisans and whatnot. And so the muses inspired beauty. And
Speaker 1: what beauty is is beauty is what draws the soul
Speaker 1: toward what is good and true and life giving. That's
Speaker 1: what beauty is. It draws the soul toward it is
Speaker 1: true and was good and was life giving. Of course,
Speaker 1: that presupposes that there is such a thing as a
Speaker 1: good of human nature, something that we ought to aspire to.
Speaker 1: And beauty is what summons us up to that goal,
Speaker 1: that teilos that purpose that end. Now contrast that you
Speaker 1: have these sirens, the sirensho are really these monsters, but
Speaker 1: they would cast out these beautiful, these apparently beautiful songs
Speaker 1: across the seas that would enrapture unwitting sailors filling them
Speaker 1: with euphoric visions of the greatest desires and summon them
Speaker 1: to their location on the islands. And so then the
Speaker 1: sailor would follow this call, this apparent beauty, until they
Speaker 1: crash their ships on the rocks and then we're consumed
Speaker 1: by the monsters. The sirens here stand for seduction, which
Speaker 1: we tend to think of in sexual terms, and it
Speaker 1: absolutely can take that manifestation. But seduction is really just
Speaker 1: counterfeit beauty. It's anything that has the appearance of beauty
Speaker 1: but doesn't pull our souls, our psyches, our minds toward
Speaker 1: what is true and good in life giving. No, it
Speaker 1: draws our souls toward what is faults in life consuming.
Speaker 1: And so there are muses and sirens all around us,
Speaker 1: and we know that to be true. We all know
Speaker 1: we have certain affections for things that we shouldn't have
Speaker 1: affections for. We can all think of times in our
Speaker 1: lives where to follow the call the siren over the meuse.
Speaker 1: And so this viewpoint that beauty is actually something real,
Speaker 1: like there's certain things we ought to be drawn to,
Speaker 1: and there's certain things that we ought not to be
Speaker 1: drawn to. In that the right cultivation of virtue or
Speaker 1: cultivation affections leads us to be drawn by the right things,
Speaker 1: the things which are indeed truly beautiful. That even though
Speaker 1: that framing of beauty it's very different than how we
Speaker 1: tend to talk today, where everything is subjective. I think
Speaker 1: if we're honest with ourselves, it makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 1: And in my experience, most people believe that makes more sense.
Speaker 1: You know, whenever I do this in one of my classes,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll start off by asking the students what
Speaker 1: is beauty? And most of them are going to say
Speaker 1: something about it. It's in the eye of the beholder,
Speaker 1: its opinion. It's entirely subjective. But once I lay things
Speaker 1: out this way and say, look at your own life,
Speaker 1: do you really think that everything you're drawn to is
Speaker 1: actually beautiful? And you can be that simple like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I guess not. And so a lot of what we
Speaker 1: need here just to be disenchanted a little bit with
Speaker 1: the postmodern mindset and recognize that are our souls hunger
Speaker 1: for the real and we live as if the reel exists.
Speaker 1: And if we can cut through a lot of the
Speaker 1: propaganda that we've been bo against the reality of human nature,
Speaker 1: then it actually makes us more real. It makes us
Speaker 1: recognize our reality, and that gives us strength, It gives
Speaker 1: us purpose, and it gives us significance. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of significance that can be scary at first, because what
Speaker 1: it means is that what you do actually matters, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of intimidating, but also it's emboldening because now
Speaker 1: what you do actually matters, and there's joy and contentment
Speaker 1: to be had there in striving to fulfill our form
Speaker 1: as humans. Well, there's my broad introduction to philosophy. Now
Speaker 1: for this course. The way this is going to run
Speaker 1: is every week I'll upload some videos. I'll have usually
Speaker 1: one just really short introductory video that sets up the
Speaker 1: text that you're dealing with, just very low level introduction.
Speaker 1: And that's because I'm not going to give you a
Speaker 1: lot of historical context. Now, I'll sometimes i'll bring in
Speaker 1: or actually I'll often bring in some other ideas and
Speaker 1: other philosophers at play that we're not reading, because I
Speaker 1: think that's going to often be significant for what we're doing.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to give you a whole lot
Speaker 1: of historical context. I'm not going to go into a
Speaker 1: lot of things that you could just google and find
Speaker 1: out easily enough. I really want to suspend our time
Speaker 1: in the text together. That's our focus, that's certainly my focus,
Speaker 1: and so I'll provide just a short introduction to the
Speaker 1: text that we're dealing with that week, and then I'll
Speaker 1: provide one or maybe more extended videos that deal with
Speaker 1: some major topics in the text, depending on just what
Speaker 1: seems to make sense to me based off what we're reading.
Speaker 1: I might do a few shorter videos on, you know,
Speaker 1: one on each of the texts that we're reading. I
Speaker 1: might do something more comprehensive on all of them. But
Speaker 1: my recommendation is that you watch the intro video that
Speaker 1: I post, do the reading, and then watch the extended videos,
Speaker 1: because I think that there's a lot of benefit in
Speaker 1: just going head ahead with these great philosophers. And by great,
Speaker 1: I don't mean that they're all necessarily good, even though
Speaker 1: most of what we read I think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: pretty good, but I mean significant, and it's helpful just
Speaker 1: to jump right in and for you to go through
Speaker 1: struggling on your own to figure out what's being said
Speaker 1: here before having a guide. I personally find that very helpful.
Speaker 1: Some of my best philosophical discoveries, the best exercises. My
Speaker 1: philosophical reasoning came through reading a difficult text, you know,
Speaker 1: late at night. Expressive coursing through my veins is trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, like what is being said here. That's
Speaker 1: especially true when I was working on my doctoral dissertation
Speaker 1: on gearkey Guard that you know, he's not an easy
Speaker 1: to read, especially some of his more difficult texts that
Speaker 1: I was working with, But just pushing through and then
Speaker 1: looking for a guide I find it's often helpful. But
Speaker 1: even still, I'm not going to be exhausted by my videos.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you some I'll give you some
Speaker 1: frameworks for I think getting hopefully a little bit more
Speaker 1: out of your reading after you've already done so, and
Speaker 1: then we'll have our weekly Zoom meetings to discuss together.
Speaker 1: Just questions you have, thoughts you have, and you know wherever,
Speaker 1: you know wherever that goes, and if you've been through
Speaker 1: one of my courses before, then you know roughly what
Speaker 1: that looks like. And to me, that's the most enjoyable
Speaker 1: and probably the most profitable part of these courses. Though
Speaker 1: of course I hope my independent content is helpful for
Speaker 1: you as well. All right. So that's basically how this
Speaker 1: course is going to run. I look forward to where
Speaker 1: we're going with it, and I look forward to meeting
Speaker 1: with you very soon. All right. Until then, God speak,
Speaker 1: all right. I hope you enjoyed that, And if you did, again,
Speaker 1: go ahead and enroll today as the course is just
Speaker 1: about to start, as this is getting posted, and I
Speaker 1: hope that you'll consider becoming an annual Tier three patron.
Speaker 1: That way you can continue to move with us from
Speaker 1: study to study and just join part of this robust,
Speaker 1: growing community. I'm really excited about where mythic mind is headed,
Speaker 1: and I'm grateful that you and like minded or at
Speaker 1: least like inter listed people are coming around and helping
Speaker 1: me to continue moving us in in bigger and greater directions.
Speaker 1: And before we go, I want to thank all my
Speaker 1: current patrons, and by name, I want to thank all
Speaker 1: Tier three patrons and higher, most of whom by this
Speaker 1: point are taking advantage of that annual deal and so
Speaker 1: many things to Mark, Amanda, Chase, Chaz, Christopher Clinton, David,
Speaker 1: Aaron Hevy, Jamie, Justin, Justin, Kyle, Paul, Roger, Ross Tyler,
Speaker 1: and William. We have a great group that's growing up
Speaker 1: around these studies, that's growing around, honestly, the various things
Speaker 1: that Mythic Mind is doing. We're moving all kinds of
Speaker 1: really exciting directions, and I hope that you'll consider being
Speaker 1: a part of that. Find that link in the show notes,
Speaker 1: Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. I hope to see
Speaker 1: you there, and until next time, godspeed,