Speaker 1: Another edition of Jay's analysis. We're going to talk about
continental philosophy this time, and we've done so many talks
and so many discussions that dealt with analytical philosophy and
empiricism and what characterizes the West generally in our day
and has sense the scientific revolution, Enlightenment and so forth.
But there's also the European continental tradition, and so we
want to look at those, and we also want to
offer a critique because they're also very inadequate in what
we're going to find out. As is often the case,
there are dialectical tensions. Usually philosophical schools like to try
to boil everything down to one single simple solution for everything,
and some philosophers trying to make his case and sell
his theories as a means by which everything can be grasped.
And that is characteristic of analytical philosophy, with say bertrand
Russell and the methods of quantification, and everything being encapsulated
under numerics and tabulation and logic. That's characteristic of existentialism,
and everything being somehow explained according to the Unwi, and
the difficulties and malleability of man's existence. It's in any
of these schools of philosophy, really pragmatism. Everything can be
boiled down to the pragmatic and common sense.
Speaker 2: Philosophy or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's always an attempt to have everything explained in some autonomous,
rationalistic or irrationalistic way. And that's across the board, and
that's one my philosophy ultimately is inadequate. Just reasoning about
the world and about man's affairs isn't enough to solve
man's problems, to give man hope, to give man a worldview,
to give man a template or a means by which
to understand and interpret the world. So what we see
is that it's kind of a a disparate, broken up
pieces and fractions of the truth that are in these
various schools and philosophers. So sometimes you know, if you read,
if we think about, say, the analytical tradition and empiricism,
is it all wrong? Well, no, we use the scientific method.
It's a great tool for understanding the natural world. Nothing
wrong with that, but it's not in itself a grand narrative,
and it can't be. If we think about the continental tradition,
is existentialism, Well, there might be aspects to which it
holds true insights into you know, man having a context
and man being.
Speaker 2: Part of a larger.
Speaker 1: Situation in which he finds himself as an existing being
that informs who he is or determines or limits his
freedom or whatever. The different existential philosophy might be. There
might be aspects of truth to that. Sure, So it
really just depends on the philosopher and what the claim
is and what the propositions are and so forth. And
most of the time, when you put a lot of
time and effort into philosophy. I've been studying philosophy for
about twenty years, you'll notice that it has fragments of
the truth in these different positions. Now, that doesn't mean
that every one of them is true, and certainly many
of them are closer to the truth and others much
further away from the truth. So if we want to
think about the Continental tradition, the first thing that we
want to point out is that there are a lot
of good critiques and insights in the Continental tradition, particularly
in the way they approach and criticize the Western analytical tradition. Now,
these two guys are of the left, so I'm not
advocating this.
Speaker 2: Those of you who take.
Speaker 1: What I say and run with it to the extremes.
When I cite this in one of the things you
learn in philosophy is how to deal with other conflicting
ideas that are not your own position, and how to
interact with them, how to critique them, how to adequately
understand them, ideally to the satisfaction of the opponent if.
Speaker 2: It were in a debate setting.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of hotheads and candy asses on
the internet that like to talk a lot of crap
and take what you say out of context and then
run to the extreme, as if, say, citing laboratory life
and the construction of scientific facts for example. Oh, that
means I'm a Marxist, because these guys are leftist, probably
Marxist professors.
Speaker 2: No, it means that I'm pointing.
Speaker 1: Out the insight that they have in this book where
they show that a lot of science is constructed in
a corporate setting for example. Now, corporations and professors at
universities need money and they want they have a certain desire,
a pre planned outcome, So the science that's done is
not objective. That's a great insight. Has nothing to do
with their Marxism per se. Now, Latour and vulgar may
go too far that I think they do in constructing
the idea that that science can't I mean, really, if
you run, if you run too far with this, you
would get the idea that that really science and engineering ultimately,
which I think is a better form of science to
hard sciences. You know, obviously they produce things, so they're
not inept. It's not all class warfare or some crap
like that. But it's also partly true that science is
not objective and neutral because nothing in our life is
objective and neutral. We all have our preconcy, biases and misunderstandings,
perhaps which informed the way that we interpret the world.
That does not mean that everything is relative. It does
not mean that there's no correct paradigms. It just simply
means that we come from a paradigm. And what do
we mean by a paradigm a worldview? We have basic
assumptions and presuppositions about life in the world that we
haven't most of the time questioned. And if we have
questioned them, most of the time, what we find is
that we can't empirically verify them. So does that mean
that they're irrational and we can't hold to them?
Speaker 2: Or shouldn't hold them.
Speaker 1: No, it's just the way that we are, It's the
way the world's constructed. It's unavoidable. And so how do
we know what's true and what's false. Well, that's why
I believe in presubpositionalism, or the comparison of systems. And
if you compare the systems as a whole, what you
look for is what's coherent and what is consistent and
what is contradictory. Now, ultimately, no one has availability. Nobody
can omnisciently determine for certain how correct someone else's entire
worldview is because we're finite. However, that does not mean
that you can't say, consider relativism. Relativism would say then
anything goes, and you can't lay any you know, limitations
or binding truths upon me or anyone else. Now, the
problem with that is, of course, as we've used as
an example many times, it presupposes the thing that it's
trying to refute. So at the basic fundamental level of relativism, right,
using objective truths makes saying that there's objective moral standards
while at the same time you're saying that no such
thing exists. Is a fundamental contradiction, fundamental flaw at the
presuppositional worldview level.
Speaker 2: So in that regard, we.
Speaker 1: Would say that system of thought, even though you might
not think of it as a system of thought, it
is still it is a worldview is incoherent. And so
when it tries to express itself, which contains within that
action of expressing and explaining, of course the logos has
that presubposition of order and rationality and meaning it cannot
do that. So there's a dialectical tension, there's an irrational
rational tension in that worldview at its most fundamental level,
and that for worldviews and philosophy is very self destructive
and ultimately probably one of the strongest arguments against the
position that you have if you're relativest So you know,
that's philosophical nonsense. It falls apart. And on top of that,
it's not just theory. No one can actually hold to
that or live that way. So it's an armchair sophistry
that no one in the real world lives according to
or expects anyone else to live that way, right, I mean,
the person who's the sophistical relativist generally speaking, gets mad
when somebody steals their money, right, which they shouldn't do
if they were consistent with their position, because that guy
was just living according to whatever he wanted. So in
the same way, we look at other world views and
we look for the internal contradictions and inconsistencies, and I
think that that coherence theory is a much better approach
to philosophy into world views, into analysis of these kinds
of things than it is the older empirical models or
the older medieval models of the West with a quinas,
where you do what's called classical foundationalism, and all that's
kind of been more or less tossed away and deconstructed
by modern philosophy. So we're at we're at a post
postmodern state, and so what do you do then, how
is it even possible to critique worldviews?
Speaker 2: Well, most professors would.
Speaker 1: Inconsistently say, no, you can't do that anymore. That's all
old school stuff. There's no more grand narratives. Well I
don't believe that. So, because I'm orthodox, I do believe
that there's a worldview, a basic pattern of living that
informs how I read the world, and it does inform
my presuppositions. And in my view, the reason I believe
it is not just existential but also logical and rational.
I believe that it's the only logical and rational position
that makes sense of my experience, makes sense of history,
makes sense of the future, makes sense of meaning, makes
sense of most of these philosophical questions that we raise.
Doesn't provide every single answer. No worldview out there is
going to provide every single possible answer. And if they
try to sell you that that's probably some kind of cult, it's.
Speaker 2: A good red flag for a cult.
Speaker 1: But I believe that the answers in the anthropology and
the metaphysics and on and on and on that we
find in this worldview make the most sense. And the
other ones that attempt to do that, you know, whether
it be naturalistic materialism or something New Age or some
sort of cult or Islam or whatever, generally tend to
have pretty big difficulties.
Speaker 2: At a fundamental level.
Speaker 1: Now that's not to say that there's nothing difficult quote
unquote in the theology that I hold to that doesn't
have to kind of be examined and dug into. And
you know, even on a certain level, it's mystical.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: If you think of the Great Book by Vladimir Lawsky,
which I highly recommend to people. Mystical theology of the
East in church. You'll notice that in our view theology
and the ultimate big questions in the final analysis, they
transcend purely rational analysis. Now that does not mean that
they are quote irrational or incoherent, because God is not
irrational or incoherent. It just simply means that His ways
transcend our ways. And so there are at times paradoxes. Now,
if you're the atheist or the materialists, you hear that,
you say, ah haha.
Speaker 2: We've got you.
Speaker 1: You admit you have no doubt, you can't answer these questions.
Therefore you admit that there are paradoxes. Well, the thing is, though,
if you read Bert and Russell, he'll talk about paradoxes.
And even Berg and Russell will say that there's a
difference between a contradiction and a paradox. Now that's a
very difficult philosophical question, but and that we're not going
to go into that today. But I'm just making the
point that it doesn't matter what worldview you accept, there
are going to be difficulties and problems and serious questions
that require.
Speaker 2: An attempt to answer it. You know, if you care
to do. So you may not care.
Speaker 1: Maybe you just want to eat hot pockets and play
World of Warcraft. But if you want to be a
man and put away childish things, as Saint Paul says,
and engage in manly disciplines such as philosophy, which is
a manly discipline, then it's time to get serious and
dig into these things. That's what Sam Basil says. Theology
is not for everybody.
Speaker 2: It requires a lot of work.
Speaker 1: So I've spent twenty years in theology, and the only
thing that you come to learn I'm speaking rhetorically here,
is that you there's so much more that you don't know.
So there's kind of a paradox there involved in the
fact that the more that you learn, and you do
learn things, I'm not saying you learn nothing. The more
that you learn, the more you realize, man, I really
miss that. Oh crap, there's a whole thing like this.
Last week, there was a whole mystery regarding the incarnation,
and this is a subject that I've spent ten years studying.
Speaker 2: There's a whole new subject.
Speaker 1: Sort of side, very very deeply difficultly debated issue that
I wasn't even aware of. So you're always going to
find these kinds of things. Now, that doesn't mean that
every one of these issues is paradigm wrecking, that it
makes you completely destroy your views. It just kind of
forces you to answer deeper and more difficult questions. And
I think in the mystical experience, as Losky is kind
of trying to get at in his book, is that
there's kind of always going to be this this greater
and greater progression up into the truth, up into philosophy,
and up into God. And that's the way Saint Gregory
of characterize it. You're always going to be learning more,
and then that's a grading more, is what I'm trying
to say. So a lot of times there are apparent
dialectics or contradictions or tensions in a philosopher or theology
or whatever that that just seem maybe irreconcilable at times
sometimes they are, but in other times you realize maybe
five ten years down the road, as you progressed, you
gain more experience, some life experience, some wisdom, and you realize,
oh that that's a whole new way to see that
problem in philosopher theology that I didn't know about five
years ago. So you know that's just how we're made
as humans and how we're constituted to experience the time,
space realm, and as we progress and mature throughout life.
So I'm going to recommend first this is a good book.
Speaker 2: It's a good ass.
Speaker 1: There's some good essays in laboratory life that will again
show you how science is not purely neutral and it's
not purely objective. Now, again that doesn't mean that I'm
saying there's no truth.
Speaker 2: Or that there's no objective truth.
Speaker 1: I'm just making the point that truth, in my view,
is not determined just by reading off a list of
facts or presenting a bunch of things in front of someone.
It's really a deeper question of world views and paradigms,
is what I'm trying to say. So that is the
first text that comes to mind when we consider the
bigger questions and characters that will make up continental philosophy
in contrast to the analytical Western tradition. And next I
want to call your attention to Structures of Scientific Revolution
by Thomas Kuhn. And of course this is very famous book,
award winning book. Not saying that makes the truth. I'm
just saying it's very well known, and it's well known
for a reason because it makes a damn good point.
Kuhn makes the argument that the times in him that
we've had these giant paradigm shifts, you know, out of
say Renaissance Platonism or medieval theology and Platonism, into Descartes
and scientific revolution, and then into Newtonianism. There were big
scale political and monetary banking, etc. I'm adding that part
from like tragedy, No, there were other events that played
a role in quote science, and so science is not
just this thing where oh everybody's just you know, salivating
and licking their lips.
Speaker 2: To be wrong.
Speaker 1: And that's how it's presented. It's like, oh, we just
all we want is to be wrong. We can't wait
to be refuted, which is total nonsense. I mean, that's
just not human nature.
Speaker 2: For one.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever wants to be wrong. Everybody wants to be right,
nobody wants to have egg on their face. It's just
not human nature to be so quick to admit wrong,
and especially when it's egos and so called science and big,
big scale issues at work here. And so Newtonianism, I
believe was a very fraudulent, partially correct worldview that was
foisted upon the world at the behest of the Royal
society and the Anglo American establishment, particularly for the purpose
of promoting Eventually it would become Darwinism and scientism, materialism, atomism.
That's all nonsensical. And even if you don't buy into
quantum physics and all that stuff, it's still I think
historically accurate to point out the errors of the resultant
materialism that comes out of all this and absurdity. On
top of that is Newton and all his buddies were alchemists.
I pointed this out for years many times. I watched
when I was an undergrad, I watched this documentary that
we had, the Library on Newton. I couldn't believe it
because it was all about Newton and his obsessions with
alchemy and magic and all this stuff. And I really
think he believed that. He wasn't just faking it or anything.
He wasn't just a secret spot. He really believed that stuff.
He's got volumes of writings on it that are I believe,
housed in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or somewhere, and the
Newton Library, and so he really thought that stuff was
how you understand the world, and so many of those
guys did Kepler.
Speaker 2: You know, they're all into you know.
Speaker 1: Playtonism in alchemy, Paracelsus. So again, the point being, the
paradigms don't just happen because one guy comes up with
the best argument.
Speaker 2: That's just not how the world works. If it was,
I mean, why would you think that.
Speaker 1: I mean, do the best movie stars get their job
because they were.
Speaker 2: Just simply the best actors? Of course?
Speaker 1: Not I mean who was screwing who to get what job?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Who was willing to go to the eyes of white
chup parties and be the you know, be passed around
at the party. That's what gets you the acting jobs,
not just being the best, right, Like who's the best guitarist? Oh,
it's whoever can play at the best. No, that's not
how the world works. So it's really stupid and naive
and obviously some sort of just dumb pro pop propaganda
thing that you see in these Daniel Dennett and Sam
Harris and Dawkins and Tyson and Bill Nye and all
these characters. And there's no better example than Bill n
I of course, being the totally reversing his position on
chromosomes determining the biological sex because obviously he was paid
to do that, and Bill ny it was on.
Speaker 2: A sketch show. I forgot about that too.
Speaker 1: Somebody pointed that out and I used to watch that
Canadian sketch show that he was on. So Bill Nye
is a comedian. He has no actual training in science,
aside from whatever kind of engineering he's done, which, oddly enough,
I mean, in a way, engineering is kind of science,
depending on what it is. But you know this guy
gets up here and tries to talk to you about biology.
Well I thought, I wait a minute. I thought, you
can't talk about something unless you have a degree in that.
That's what the scientist and proponents are always saying with
their esoteric religion of Darwinism and scientism.
Speaker 2: But Bill ny doesn't have a.
Speaker 1: Degree in anything related to biological life sciences, So why
is he talking.
Speaker 2: About it now?
Speaker 1: Kun is wrong in his piece his famous work to
ultimately fall into the trap of well, if we admit
that things are determined by paradigms, does that mean everything's
a paradigm and we're stuck in the paradigm box?
Speaker 2: Will never get out.
Speaker 1: No again, because apparently wasn't aware of presubpositional philosophy, transcental
arguments and coherence theory of truth, or comparing world views
as a whole to look for the internal inconsistencies. But regardless,
you can still gain a lot of insight in terms
of understanding the critique of scientism, even from characters within
the establishment. That's what we're trying to get out of here,
just like we would read Tragy and Hope to understand
the inside ce farview of the twentieth century. You know,
here we're looking at guys from within the Western academic
establishment kind of saying, hey, this thing doesn't work. A
lot of this stuff is nonsense. So, as mentioned, one
of the great books that deals with breaking through the
barrier scientism is Wolfgang Smith's Cosmos and Transcendence. It's in
my recommended reading list and I mentioned it many times.
Very good book, and you know, he goes back to
the new Tonian period, especially early on in the book
to critique that dogmatism and the flaws in it.
Speaker 2: And if you want more.
Speaker 1: Of that kind of material relating to what I was
talking about earlier on in the first section of this talk,
I highly recommend that book.
Speaker 2: But we have to kind of go back.
Speaker 1: To Kant, and Kant really leaves us with anarchy in philosophy.
Now that's not CONT's goal. He's not in any way
an anarchist. Kant was actually one of the earliest forerunners
of globalism and promoting the idea of a global government,
believe it or not. So we're going to get into that. Actually,
I'm going to show you. Let me show you that
really quick. Kant, of course wrote the famous essay perpetual piece,
philosophical essay. What's funny is that I found this on
whatever this libertarian website is, is that they lawed and
praised us.
Speaker 2: Is how about how great it was?
Speaker 1: I thought we were against global government. Wait a minute, Hey,
what's the deal here? Oh no, this is the good
libertarian global government where oh, it looks like in order
to have the free market globally, we're going to have
to have a global police force to enforce peace so
that we can have the market god dominating. So this
is once again testament to the absurdity of libertarianism and
classical liberalism as the means by which to achieve the
utopia and the global government. It's a scam. And that's
why von Hayek says the exact same thing in his
book Road to Serve Him.
Speaker 2: He has the.
Speaker 1: Appendix on how to create the Global Government. And I
don't know why you libertarians can't get that through your head.
It's just stupid and you ought to know better by now,
because we've talked about it and called it out so
many times I have, and I mean, you know what
you know, Just stay stupid, stay in your idiocy, and
forget about it. So next, though, but the reason we
bring up KNT though, was not just global government, but
to show that it's connected. The economic theory of KANT
is connected to the economics of Newtonianism and what spreads. Again,
this is in my essay that I've shared many times.
I've been shared hundreds of times like others, the metaphysical
implications of nominalist economics, and it shows how the philosophical
theories inevitably invariably affect the economic theories. That's why man
becomes the unit that is consumed and traded. So what
we're talking about, though, is continental philosophy. I'm just trying
to point out. I want you to understand that continental
philosophy is just as riddled with contradictions and nonsense, as
the American analytical logic mathematics obsessed traditions are, because they
of course have no.
Speaker 2: Place for God or objective truth. Ultimately.
Speaker 1: Now they may profess something like, oh, math is ultimate
truth or something like that. But you know, it's like
Bert and Russell thinks mathematics can explain everything. When will
you get down to the brass tacks. He's a relativist
and a global government you know, madman. But I just
again keep this in mind Emmanuel Kant Perpetual Peace Philosophical Essay,
because you got all these guys at this time who
are really promoting global government back then. So the modern
notions of globalism, and let me show you this. There's
even a well, I did have a.
Speaker 2: University of Chicago work. Well, crap, I've already lost it.
Speaker 1: The University of Chicago has a book that deals with
early notions of globalism, I think is the title of it,
and it of course contains contest. But he also missed
He mentions Rousseau and the French revolutionary characters obviously right,
because they're the fathers of internationalism, right with the communist
Marxist movements. So internationalism is just another flavor or version.
I mean, the Communist Internationals is just another flavor version
of the international market guys like Kant and Adam Smith
and all those characters. So that shows you again just
making the point that this spills out, this philosophy spills
out into the rest of society and the rest of
thought in the West, and so they're not isolated. The
philosophy of those days is not isolated in having basically
nothing to do with you know, what's going on in
the marketplace. It's directly related because these guys, these scoundrels,
are the ones who are giving the philosophy the the
the basis supposedly for how there can be the one
world order.
Speaker 2: I'd love to.
Speaker 1: Hear the whoever this whoever is the Online Library of
Liberty how they explain that. But I don't think they're
going to have any explanation for that. So let's look
at a couple more books before we get into more
of the the critique of continental philosophy here, And as mentioned,
you definitely want to if you want to start, if
maybe you have a kind of a basic idea of
theology processent or Catholic, if you if you want to
start in terms of orthodoxy. You don't want to get
into heavy dogmatics. A great place is mystical theology the
Eastern Church. It's one of the best books that I
read ten years ago when I was starting to look
into these things really and definitely, and I think Lawsky
presents a very readable approach to most of the questions
in terms of mystery. So this is not directed at
the questions of science and empiricism, but it is relevant
to all this because you know what we have in
the rise of rationalism in the West, and then hyper
rationalism with the analytical tradition, and then it's reactions with existentialism, romanticism,
German idealism. Those right reactions are oftentimes grasping for the
realms of mystery. And so when analytical philosophy gets into
the arenas where it can say no more like Gridell's
in completeness theorems, or you know, philosophical or mathematical problems
dealing dealing with different infinities and notions of zero and infinity,
then it's in the in the category of you know,
issues that are just no longer rational because the human
mind is again finite. That's when the solutions are ultimately,
I think to be found in Eastern theology. And so
this is definitely definitely one of the one of the
books you want to have in your library, especially if
you're starting on this track. It's definitely I must read
for a new newcomer, so to say.
Speaker 2: Uh, And even if you.
Speaker 1: Are pretty well read in theology, maybe you read a
good bit of Eastern theology. If you haven't read this one,
it's it's still one that you've got to read, just
very good overall. And so that one is something to
keep in mind as we plumb the depths of all
this rationalism and emotional based reactionism and things like anticism
and so forth. So we're going to look into more
of the the continental guys here, and we mentioned Kant,
but there's.
Speaker 2: Quite a few that we're going to look at.
Speaker 1: So I don't I've got quite a few notes here,
and I'm not sure how many hours this is going
to be, but a lot of people I get so
many book recommendations, and I am building up the book
recommendation section of the site. But these, you know, these
some of these are on here. But for those interested
in the books want who want to read more those
are the ones that you're going to want so far.
The things that we want to consider, as we've mentioned
many times, is classical apologetics, and one of the best
examples of this, of course is the Summa Contridge and Telays.
The first book, which is the Aquinas, is famous apologetic
work that seeks to establish first and foremost a generic
first cause, and from a generic first caused so called
God Little G. Perhaps what we would get is by
extension tacking on the other arguments for Jesus and the Trinity.
So if we can establish that little g generic idea
of God first cause, whatever it may be, through natural
theology in the tonistic sense, then we can tack on
the other stuff. Now, the problem is that this dominant
apologetic methodology falls apart. It ends up failing, It doesn't
work because of the theological problems and missteps in the West.
These go back to the philioque. You can read the
many articles I've done on that. You can also read
the different books that we've mentioned in the recommended reading
list that deal with this. We're not going to specifically
treat of the philioque and a critique of Continental philosophy,
but we do want to mention that a lot of
the reasoning behind the rise of these faulty philosophies is
because of the faulty answers and questions in traditional Latin theology,
and that ultimately revolves around absolute divine simplicity, which is modalism,
in which is eunomianism. As I've said many times, it
doesn't mean that Thomas Aquinas was or Augustine or any
of the Western theologians that they were consciously trying to
be eunomian. It just means that they adopted presubpositions about
what divine simplicity means, such that they're the reasoning for
the rest of the system because it's grounded in God.
Their first cause is thereby affected by.
Speaker 2: The starting point.
Speaker 1: So you can again many books on that, go through
my recommend reading list if you.
Speaker 2: Want to get deeper into that.
Speaker 1: But what happens is that this generic idea of deity
that we have assumed here, and you can read my
essay from Tomism to Enlightenment Deism to get a better
picture of all of this. What we have is the
West reacting to the ina inadequacies and unanswered issues in Tomism.
Now that is all part of the precursors to the Reformation.
So nominalism and we am of Oakham and all those
kind of Gabriel Bile and the nominalists, they end up
raising all of these issues that are attempted to be
answered through what you get in Aquinas or what you
get in and some of Canterbury, all of which is
either Aristotelian Neoplatonic, or an attempt at the synthesis of
the two. It never goes to the point of questioning
the presuppositions of what the monad is or what simplicity is.
And those issues were already solved in Eastern theology. They
were already dealt with. And that's, by the way, why
we don't have the filioque is because the essence of
God is not at what spir rates. It's the Father.
It's the hypostatic person, the Father who spir rates the Spirit,
and the Spirit is not love. He's not one attribute.
The Godhead has all of its attributes in unison, right,
So the Father has love just as much as the
Holy Spirit has love. If we said that the Holy
Spirit has love, then we also can't by extension, say
that the Holy Spirit is love. That's stupid because the
attributes are not persons, all right, Justice is not one
of the persons in God.
Speaker 2: It's it's just foolishness.
Speaker 1: And all the Eastern father have already dealt with.
Speaker 2: Those issues, so they come to the.
Speaker 1: Four and the again go read my other many articles
and talks on that. The first question that gets posed
in is in the Continental tradition, with you have, well,
in Kant's Continental tradition, you have the question of causality
in the world, and how do we know that causality
in the world actually is a thing? Now, this is
an important question because this is a big part of tumism.
Tumism is based on classical apologetics and the so called five.
Speaker 2: Proofs, which are all about arguments.
Speaker 1: And one of those is the cosmological argument, the argument
from a first cause. And Kant raises a different question
and says, Okay, you've got all these points about causes,
and yeah, it looks like there's causes in the world.
Speaker 2: But the question is, how.
Speaker 1: Do you actually know that there's a thing called quote
causality out there in the world, because you don't actually
observe causality of one event and then an event that
follows that event, and you're calling that quote causality, But
how do you know that the thing in your mind
that you're interpreting as causality out there in the world
actually corresponds to the phenomena or event of causality out
there in the world. And because, as I said, atomism
and Thomas Aquinas is based on the idea of foundationalist imperis,
empirical foundationalism or classical foundationalism, that was not a question
that had arisen in Aquinas's mind. It never it never
occurred to people in the Middle Ages to raise the
question of the psychological divide of the Enlightenment period, you know,
about how do we know that what's in our mind
corresponds to the external world? Because they were working with presupposition. Now,
I'm not saying that Aquinas is wrong when he says
that thoughts in the mind and correspond to the external world.
Speaker 2: Of course they do. I believe that they do.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is that Kant is asking the
question to a quit us on his bases. Right, if
you're an empiricist, how do you know, and Aquinas ultimately
is an empiricist, how do you know that there's this
thing out there in the world called causality because you
don't ever, you don't ever empirically experienced causality. And guess
what CONT's right about that? And he got that from
David Hume. And why is this correct? Well, because these
guys are taking the empiricist position to its logical conclusions,
and they're saying, if this, then this right, and it
follows it follows that if we begin with sense experience, right,
you don't ever observe causality. And you don't. Now I
believe that you do. But again, what I'm saying is
that if you but I don't start with imperio. I'm
not a a naive empiricist. So this is not a
problem in my worldview. It's only a problem in worldview
that begins with empiricism, as tomism does. So you don't
experience causality. So how do you know that the event
following event B, following event A was caused directly by
event A?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So just think of the idea of quote causality itself. Right,
We're not talking about experiencing the phenomena of the billiard
balls hitting each other. No one is in these different
schools or ideas here denying that you do experience billiard
balls hitting one another. There's a different question being asked,
a deeper question. The question is, how do you know
that when that event happens, you're experiencing quote causality. Put
a big circle around causality and say and explain to
me where that phenomenon is. And you'll say, what's when
that ball hits that ball? But that's begging the question
because we're asking We're not asking about the balls hitting
one another, We're asking causality. Where does that come from?
And again, of course, on an empirical basis, you can
never answer that question. You can also never know or
answer a whole bunch of other questions. And this is
what will give rise to kant asking how do we
know about the self over time? Since you know, this
is an older philosophical issue of the question of you know,
how do I know that I'm the same me over time?
How do I know that the chair over there is
the same chair over time? I mean if I knock
one leg off of the chairs at the same chair.
How do we know that there's a unified mind over
time that has a unifying experience of the external world
or the self? How do we have this self over time.
In other words, well, Kant realize that there wasn't an
answer to this in the kind of Humian empiricism, and
there's not. So what con said was, well, there is
a transcendental category of this self, right, transcendental category of apperception,
transcendal unity of apperception, by which we can presuppose that
there's a self, because if we were to deny the self,
we would immediately be caught in a nonsensical contradiction.
Speaker 2: Now there's a bit of truth here, right.
Speaker 1: So again, as we've said, not every one of these
philosophers is wrong.
Speaker 2: Not every one of them is right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And transcendental arguments already have a tradition in Aristotle and
in Saint John Damascus.
Speaker 2: So we're not, we're not.
Speaker 1: This is not completely new territory. So Kant is kind
of right that a self is something that is that
it underlies. It's a precondition for experience. So you're never
going to directly experience your own self. It's always part
of the act of experiencing. It's it's what undergirds it.
It's the presupposition of experience. And so how do you
prove it? Well, it's not proven the same way that
you prove there's crackers in the pantry. It's not empirical,
it's proven by the impossibility of the contrary. And in
every act of trying to prove or disprove, you're assuming
a self. Therefore, that's the strongest proof for it. And
anytime anyone tries to prove it doesn't exist, they're already
caught in the dilemma the contradiction of assuming the thing
they're trying to disprove. So the transcendental ego or the
transcendental self, right, this is something that he calls the
transcendental unity of apperception. And Kaunt.
Speaker 2: Would then go on to.
Speaker 1: Say, well, human is right to say that there's no
external order in the universe, right, And that's because, according
to Kant, there's no order in the world itself out there.
Rather order is what is the faculty or of the
template of human the human mind. Because there's no God,
we're not starting with God, we're starting with the autonomous
human mind here, which is ultimately the problem for this philosophy.
Kant doesn't ground his transcendental arguments in the ultimate transcendental God.
He grounds them in the finite mind of man. Which
makes them all sillipsistic and relativistic in the long run,
and that's why cont fails. However, there's insights right, there
is a transcendental unity of apperception that we call the self,
and we know it by the possibility of country or
a transcendental argument. But Kant's a big problem is that
he's split the mind of man off from the external world,
and this all ends in syllipsism. You have these transcendental
categories by which we interpret time and space and so forth,
and again, those are insightful and they're true. They're part
of the transcendental arguments that I make, which are not contient.
Speaker 2: By the way, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Arguing CONTs because there's some people misunderstand that and think
that I'm a kantient. No, no, no, I am not a sillipsist.
I do not believe that everything is ordered by the
mind of man.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: I know there is order in the external world absolutely,
and the mind of man directly perceives that.
Speaker 2: There's no question.
Speaker 1: But when we ask the question of how do we
know that there's a self, well, you can't really beat
this argument. There's just no other way to know that
there's a self, because it's not by the very nature
of what it is going to be proven empirically. So
the post Kantian absolute idealism is what arises in the
German guys that succeed him, and they have various lights
in the school ficta Shelling Hegel. Hegel of course kind
of stands out as the big figure as an absolute
idealist mind spirit geist is what is the real reality
behind everything, And really Hegelianism is just kind of falling
back into an almost mystical Some people argue a times
Cabbylistic or or Platonic scheme, uh, and that's that's true.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I think that in fact, some academic has written some big,
gigantic tone which I never to get my hands on
because back in the time, at the time I was looking,
it was really expensive and I didn't want to pay
the money for it. But there's some giant tome about,
you know, Hegel and Hermeticism or something like Hegel and
Cabala or something like that. And yeah, I've always thought
that there's got to be some connection there, because it's
just a hop, skip and a jump from Neoplatonism to Cobbylism,
and there's a lot of affinities in those positions with Hegel.
Speaker 2: So Hegel is an.
Speaker 1: Attempt to respond to Kant and to the relativism of
the empiricism of Hume. And so there's some insights in
Hegel as well, because he actually notices a lot of
these problems. Does that mean that we're going to jump
all the way in Hegel's boat and go off the cliff,
off the waterfall with him. No, because Hegel, unfortunately, being
a descendant of all of this Western philosophy, is also
enmeshed in the problems of absolute divine simplicity. The absolute
in Hegel is really just the monad of Plato or
the one which is again ultimate divine simplicity or absolute simplicity,
And in Hegel it's not really I mean, there's like
this loose Christian baggage, but it's not the God of Exodus,
it's not the God of the Psalms, it's not Jesus.
So we're looking at absolute impersonal philosophical philosophy god, right,
not the personal God of the Bible. And again that's
the point there I'm making is that these are clearly distinct.
Even if you don't believe the Bible it's stupid to
try to make Hegel into some sort of Christian philosopher.
He's not, but he is insightful in that he does
notice a lot of these presuppositional problems in the previous guys,
in continent and in others. So let's look at a
couple of the key problems here in Kant and his
excuse me, Hegel and his his dialectics. He too understanding.
Hegel is dialectics, and Hegel believes everything is in dialectical
process in a very metaphysical mystical way. Absolute geist or
spirit is actually working everything out towards its t lose,
where everything will become geist or spirit, and every consciousness
will become self conscious of self consciousness. Basically matter will
achieve or attain a kind of consciousness. So it's a
kind of panpsychism in the long run. And history is
this entire dialectical process of the working out the cunning
of reason or absolute Spirit, and so everything that happens
within history is the will of absolute Spirit. Now this
is all heretical, This is totally anti Christian.
Speaker 2: It's not biblical.
Speaker 1: So I'm not really sure why so many people have
such a obsession and fetish for Hegel. I mean again, yes,
there are insights here, but if we think about it,
that's not history is not dialectics and Orthodox theology, particularly
in the way that it's argued in the Concilier statements,
for example, Saint Maximus of the Confessor, the Sixth Council,
they're very explicit about the rejection of dialectical tensions, and
all of those things relate to what we're talking about.
And you can read to doctor Farrell's Volume two of
God histrom Dialectic where he deals specifically with this topic,
and then into volume three as well where he deals
with Hegel. But for my purposes here, I'm going to
talk about the fact that absolute Spirit is not the
divine person of the Bible. It's impersonal. So we're back
to Platonism or Aristotle's thought thinking itself, right, that's not God.
God has not thought thinking in itself. If you say
God has thought thinking itself, you are heretic, and the
Orthodox theology that's heretical. So there's no way that's biblical.
I mean, what is Exodus does not present God is
thought thinking itself.
Speaker 2: That's false. That is a false God.
Speaker 1: But so again Hegelianism is all based on absolute divine
simplicity and then everything in history working itself out to reunite.
Speaker 2: With the one or the monad.
Speaker 1: So it's a kind of neoplatonism, kind of repackaged and
that's all it is, really.
Speaker 2: And that is not our view.
Speaker 1: And it also doesn't make any sense because in Hegelianism
the will of absolute spirit, I mean, it's not personal.
But how do you have a will without a person?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just just just stupid.
Speaker 1: It's like saying it's as dumb as the Darwinian view
that you know, natural forces select the best. Well, that
again presupposes an active subject or agent to judge and
adjudicate between best and worst. So but that's not what happens.
It's blind process. Blind process doesn't have the ability to
choose anything. So it's just nonsense. But you know so
much for being consistent in terms of Darwinism that there's
no no concern for consistency and Darwinism. But Hegelianism, which
by the way, can fit well with Dorwinism or some
kind of Buddhism or any of this, it just falls
back into the same old nonsense of Far Eastern thought,
and that we're actually going to see that. By the way,
some of the guys like Heidiger and Hussarole will in
their later days of philosophy verge on Buddhism. But Hegelianism
has this kind of millennial aspect to it, which also
maybe that's why it seems to appeal to people at times.
But the problem again, what is the ultimate issue?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might be putting out in the notion of
a purpose to history and a final stage and that
everything's under divine providence, but it's not divine providence. It
is thesis antithesis and thesis antithesis synthesis working itself out
in the mode of being throughout history, and all events
are part of this process. And ultimately, again, if all
things are one thing monism, uh, then why are there
different differentiations? And oh, well, that's why there's all the
dialectical process that's taken everything back to ultimate unity. Well, no,
any minute, Why why is their division to begin with?
And of course this is the perennial problem for all
the Platonists and Neoplatonists. Why was there a schism to
begin with between the monad turning into the diad and
the triad and so and then into the tractors. Right, Uh,
there's no explanation. Oh, it's just well, then it's chaos. Ultimately,
it's chaotic. It was accidental. And to try to paste
all this stupidity into theology and the theology that's presented
in the Bible is just a waste of time and
its foolishness. And the history of the West of Western
thought shows that that, by the way, is what Saint
Gregor palm Is told Barlon that it's a waste of
time and at least to atheism, and that's exactly what's happened.
Speaker 2: So the individual, by.
Speaker 1: The way, is sto fold as an individual in Hegelianism.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: He loses his identity because if I recall exactly, Hegel
has his position that you're not a self until like
the community makes you a self.
Speaker 2: So that's very dangerous.
Speaker 1: This is why Hegel believes that the state is the
march of God within history. And so when you look
at these, I think the Prussian king at the time,
who was this high level Masonic character.
Speaker 2: He was he.
Speaker 1: Viewed himself as this sort of the great Hegelian dictator.
And again this is not the orthodox view of emperors
or monarchs. They're not absolutists. They're not the march of
God in history. The Church is the march of God
in history. The state serves a function subordinate to the Church,
and that's why the church is who anoints rulers in
the history of Christendom. So because the spiritual, of course,
you know, is what's above the material. Now, in Hegalianism
there's all this talk of spirit, but that's not what
he he means like pan psychism, he means that at
base everything is psyche, which, in a way that might
be true depending on how you mean that. I mean,
if you mean by that that atomism and quote materialism
is not true and that reality is spirit. Yeah, But
the problem is that for Hegel, distinctions are what's the problem.
So Hegalianism fits into this sort of globalist glob philosophy
that everything is turning into one giant heat glob blob heap,
you know, the Altis Huxley idea that we've got to
get rid of all distinctions, which is ultimately the Far
Eastern view that man's problem is particularity, individuality and distinction. Right,
this is the hallmark of the Far Eastern philosophies. And
that's why you got to get out of this reality
through meditation and achieve usness, because you know, the problem
is that you think you're distinct. Now, wait a minute,
what if this is dialectics right, and this is the
Orthodox to you, there's a die, there's no dialectical tension
between the one and the many. But false philosophies and
false world views always want to interject that dialectical tension, right,
and the heresies is too right, the great heresies of
Nestorianism or Arianism or mono Thelicism. They always want to
interject these dialectical tensions between one and many, between God
and man, between grace and nature, whatever it may be.
And in Hegelianism it's all based on exactly Hegalianism is
like the ultimate version of dialectical tensions and philosophy.
Speaker 2: So this is not something that can be.
Speaker 1: Cut and fasted or grafted onto biblical theology. And you know,
I've done this for a long time. I know, I've
I've just I've seen all this. I've been in the
academic realm, I've been in the theological realm. I know
I see the people who try to Charles Taylor, who
try to paste this crap onto Christianity and it's just
a big, garubbled mess and it's a.
Speaker 2: Waste of time.
Speaker 1: So if you want to go waste your time with that,
if you're in the academic realm, have fun.
Speaker 2: It's a waste.
Speaker 1: So next we're going to look a little bit at Curecredguard,
who is interesting in many ways himself. But that's going
to constitute hour two. You've been listening to Jay's analysis
as we dive into a critique of the continental tradition
with you know, beginning with the Enlightenment and Kant and Hegel,
and we're kind of doing a survey here. Obviously a
lot more could be said. Both Hegel and Kant's books
are gigantic tomes, very technical, very dry, very boring, very
difficult at times, almost impossible to interpret what they're talking about,
especially Hegel.
Speaker 2: But they still need to.
Speaker 1: Be done, and there will be in depth you know,
analysis of each of these guys I plan to do
in the future, so you know, don't think you're getting
short short change here. We will do in depth analysis
of these individual characters. But I think we got to
start kind of looking at the big ideas first before
we really dive into the technics, because we need.
Speaker 2: To see the.
Speaker 1: The milieu in which they're situated, right, what's the zeitgeist
to use Hegel's favorite idea, you know, the spirit of
the age in which he comes right, And you know,
these guys, these are kind of arrogant weirdos that think
that they're at the end of history, right, like because
Hegel's philosophy came and because it's the great ultimate grand
narrative of the history of spirit, it must be the
end of the age, which is just nonsense, because you know,
we're what three hundred years later, So no, hey, Gold,
you're not the t los of history. However, many insights
you might have had about presuppositions and universals in particulars.
But we're going to look at Careguard next an hour
two and I've got a lot more notes, so I'm
not sure how far we'll get up to maybe Desartra
or Heidigger, but that's what we're going to look at
an hour two. For subscribers, if you want to hear
the second hour, subscribe to Jays Analysis for four ninety
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maybe you hate me out there, that's okay. I'm putting
out stuff that nobody else is doing. So I'm not
saying there aren't philosophers putting out ideas, but are they
talking about Tragy and Hope?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: So thank you for listening, and also check out my
book as it's her Hollywood sex Calls and Symbols in film,
which you can get a copy at my site, signed copy,
by the way, which has a lot of philosophy. So
it's not a dumb movie book. It's not a sex
scandal book. It actually deals with semiotics, with philosophy, with geopolitics, history,
the esoteric, all of that in one book, three hundred
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So definitely check out my book, and if you want
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Cuker Guard critique