Episode #074 - Transcript

Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday. And most of all, I hope you love the show today.

So, in the off chance the last few episodes of the show have seemed sort of like a departure from what we typically do on the show, well, you’re probably right. It has been a departure. And whether this was a welcome departure or an unwelcome departure really comes down to what you want out of this show in the first place. For the longest time, we’ve been talking about a single section of a single philosopher’s work. All of a sudden, out of the blue, we’re talking about things like veganism, insecurity, moodiness—what gives? And although there’s no doubt relevance between that stuff and what we’re going to be talking about today, I just want you to know—got to be honest with you—if it seems like I’ve been stalling, it’s because I have been stalling. Look, I feel an obligation to these thinkers to do their work justice. I don’t want to just give some biased, cursory overview of a cause that these people committed their entire lives to. I respect them.

Point is, I respect Hegel. And as I said at the beginning of our Hegel episodes, he’s notoriously considered one of the most if not the most—let’s be honest. He’s the most difficult read in all of philosophy. That difficulty extends to yours truly as I’m doing the research for this show. Basically, what I’m saying is, I’ve spent the last month and a half of my life rereading Hegel. By the way, it should be said, it’s not like these episodes that we were doing are useless. In fact, if anything, they opened my eyes to just how much stuff I’ve been neglecting about the basics of philosophy and how to be conducting philosophy in the first place. In a classroom setting, this would be very easy. If you had a question about this stuff, you could raise your hand; I could talk about it for five minutes, and that’d be that. But a little more difficult when the education is centered around episodes where each episode is focusing on one particular thinker and their work. So, moving forward you can expect more of those types of episodes just sprinkled in here and there.

This is a very longwinded way of saying that what I realized at the end of this long, agonizing process of sitting by the fire in my smoking jacket reading Hegel with my trusty monocle—what I realized is that the problem wasn’t with how well I understood Hegel. The problem was with when I first sat down to plan out all the Hegel episodes; I planned in the middle of them about three to four episodes that really went against everything that makes this show what it is. See, because as you guys well know, this show isn’t about just spewing a ton of random facts at you, right? “Hegel was born on August 27th, 1772. Dr. Hans Von Winklestein at Stuttgart General Hospital.” No, who cares about that? That’s not what this show is. This show is about giving context to information, so it actually means something to you. That’s kind of the whole thing about human beings, right? We remember what’s important to us, not random facts.

See, I got so caught up, so lost in trying to give you all this information about Hegel’s take on all these different things that we’ve talked about on the show so far that I completely forgot about why it matters, about the fact that there may be no one in the history of the world whose ideas are more responsible for the way that we look at the world in 2015 than Hegel. Kind of a big thing to overlook. But to be honest, it was eye opening for me. Here’s what I mean. As we all know, there is a direct connection between beliefs and actions. We act based on our best guess of what we believe to be true at the time. Look no further than reports on your local news. People do great things and terrible things because of beliefs that they hold.

And in a weird way, people love to study the darker side of humanity, don’t they? At least that’s one of my favorite things. All my favorite podcasts have to do with some dark element of humanity. We love to marvel at what human beings are capable of at their worst—at their extremes. We love to hear about great battles where millions of people die. We love to hear about serial killers do horrible things. And we wonder, how could they ever have brought themself to do that? We love to hear about evil tyrants subjugating people. And we wonder, how could that have ever seemed right to them at the time? But make no mistake, go down to your local library; sit next to the friendly homeless man reading the USA Today; open up every history book they have. And what you’ll find is that if the thing in the book actually occurred, it occurred because ultimately somebody had a belief about what the right thing to do was in that given situation. In this way, this teeny, tiny subbranch of philosophy is indirectly responsible for all of it.

This process—this process of arriving at new ideas and then analyzing what makes them worth believing at all—it really is the one thing that affects everything. And in this way, I don’t like to think of ideas as these fixed things that we can analyze. I think of ideas as seeds, seeds that have the potential to grow into something bigger. Look at a seed. Aren’t seeds incredible things? I can’t even fathom how this works. It’s mind-numbing. Look at a seed. Somewhere deep down in that seed is a ton of information that we’re not seeing on the surface. It’s a programming of sorts. In that seed, before it ever touches dirt or a drop of water, in that seed there is the potential to become a giant tree. And in this way, I think there’s ideas all around us that we could look at in our society today that are kind of like saplings. If they were taken to their full potential, if we nurtured the positive growth of them, they would fundamentally transform the world. It’s just a matter of time before we learn how much water and sunlight they need.

But just consider that. Consider the power of ideas in that way. Consider the fact that, you know, some guy named Professor Hegel back in the early 1800s is probably sitting in his front room using his trusty monocle. And he had an idea. His neurons fired in a particular way at that certain moment, and this caused him to have an idea that he would eventually write down, eventually disseminate throughout the world. And it would eventually go on to change the entire political landscape of the 20th century. Think about that. If his neurons had fired even slightly differently, we may be living in a completely different world right now, maybe tens of millions of people don’t die. Maybe the atomic bomb is never created.

One thing’s for certain, all of this started with an idea—an idea that was in response to a question. And the question was this: what does it mean to be truly free, and what are the natural implications of this? Now, it’s been a few weeks since we talked about this, so I just want to clarify a few things. To understand Hegel’s answer to this question we need to understand what he’s responding to in Kant’s work.

Kant talks about human nature. He sees it as a very static thing. Kant thinks that it is an inescapable aspect of human nature that we find ourselves constantly in this state of being pushed and pulled around between two things: one is our faculty of reason, and the other are the animalistic desires that we have. Sometimes we give into those desires. Other times we’re able to use reason to overcome them and do the moral thing. And by the way, Kant’s position is a little more nuanced than this, obviously. But the main point is that there is an internal battle between reason and passions that is a part of our human nature.

Well, Hegel looks at that and goes, what are we even talking about when we talk about human nature, Kant? Is human nature some fixed, unchanging, static thing that we can look to to explain human behavior? By the way, people do this all the time. People say, “It’s human nature to be warlike. We should just accept it,” or, “It’s human nature to be selfish.” By the way, I’m not criticizing these people. Even I do it sometimes. I’ve said on this show, “Humans by nature take the path of least resistance.” But it’s one thing to say that this is usually what most human beings do when faced with a situation, and it’s a completely different thing to try to etch that theory into stone and say that it’s somehow part of the very nature of being a human being. That’s a very different statement.

So, Hegel, understanding this, starts thinking about human nature. Now, obviously there are things that are true about every human being that has ever lived. The question is, is Kant right? Is being in this battle between reasons and our desires one of those things? Is there maybe a different explanation? So, what Hegel does is say, look, if this was truly a part of human nature then, one thing’s for certain, we should see it across all cultures and all time periods, right? And when you do that, when you examine closer, what you find is that no, it’s not. There’s exceptions to this rule all over the place.

Hegel uses ancient Greece as an example, well, ancient Athens pre-400 BC, part of Greece. Very unique time in the history of Athens, though. He points out how, before Socrates came along, people didn’t have the same sort of individual moral compass that Kant is talking about here. I mean, think about it. The very fact that Socrates was trying to get people to ask these questions about individual morality—the very fact that that came across as abrasive and eventually got him sentenced to death—remember the charges? Corrupting the youth. Well, corrupting them from what? Now, Hegel takes a pretty interesting position here. What he says is, maybe instead of us having some sort of fixed, internal nature that positions us at the center of this constant battle between reason and passions, maybe many of the things that we commonly attribute to being human nature are really just values, values programmed and conditioned into us by whatever time period or culture, even just what city, state, or neighborhood we live in. Maybe so many of the beliefs that we have about the way that things should be—so much of our identities as people—maybe in a strange sense they were completely out of our control from the beginning.

So, Hegel even plays out this Socrates example to explain how this individual sense of morality may have come about. He says, so Socrates bursts onto the scene in Athens, morally accosts people in the public square. Eventually, people get kind of annoyed about it, and they sentence him to death for corrupting some aspect of their culture. Now, many of us hear this story, and we hear the word “corruption.” And we’re like, “No, that’s not corruption. Socrates wasn’t corrupting anything. He was just asking questions. What, you can’t handle your beliefs being challenged? What, you’re just going to crucify your problems?”

But what Hegel says is that, no, the Athenians were perfectly justified in sentencing him to death. If a death sentence was a just punishment for corrupting the youth back then, then Hegel points out, Socrates was guilty of corrupting them. Now, we may not see it as corruption in today’s world. What Socrates did may have only brought about something that we would see as a better world. But Hegel points out that in the context of that culture and time that Socrates was living, bringing about the change he did required this sort of abrasive corruption, this conflicting interest with popular opinion.

You know, in one of my favorite John Locke quotes he says, “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.” I just hear this quote so much when I read Hegel. Hegel extrapolates here, and he says that there was a way that things were in Athens. Socrates comes along—the conflicting interest—in opposition to the way that things were, and that the result of these two powerful forces meeting is a synthesis—big word for him—of the two in the middle somewhere: a combination, a composition, if you will. This is what Hegel calls the dialectic. Thesis: that’s the way that things are. The antithesis: the thing opposed to this way that things are—Socrates. And the synthesis: the meeting of those two in the middle.

Now, we can see how this works on a cultural or political level, but it’s actually funny. It even describes the ways that we oftentimes make individual changes in our lives, right? Like, why do you eat what you do? One week you might eat 100% for taste. You might go on vacation, stuff your fat face with food all week long: greasy French fries, rubbing them all over your face. But then a competing interest might arise, right? Oh, well, I feel miserable. I’m getting fat. I’m having trouble sleeping at night. This week I’m not going to eat for taste. No, I’m going to eat 100% healthy.

But then that goes too far in that direction. And you end up eating something in the middle like a Lean Cuisine. So that would be the synthesis—Lean Cuisines. And then, inevitably, some other competing interest arises. Like, say, you go down to the store, you go to the frozen food department, and Lean Cuisines are not on sale. They’re like five bucks a piece for 250 calories. Who wants to spend that much on something so mediocre? But what I’m saying is that there is another competing interest that just arose—cost efficiency, right? This week I’m going to eat not in terms of what’s healthy, not in terms of what tastes good, but the cheapest way possible.

Is any of this making sense? I don’t know. For me it’s less confusing to think about it this way than to try to fathom these large cultural shifts with it. But as you can see in that example, the process does not start with two competing interests ending with a synthesis, right? Because what always happens—it’s the nature of the world—is another Socrates comes along, and then another Socrates. Figuratively speaking, there is always another Socrates that’s going to come along. That synthesis becomes the new thesis, and it’s, figuratively speaking, always going to be challenged by the next antithesis. Hegel talks about—sure, there may have been some sort of paradigm shift towards a more individual approach to existence at that point, and that throughout the years this individualism grew and contorted and shifted due to these conflicting interests. He even talks about how the French Revolution, and just that age of revolutions in general—that may have been the point when this individualism pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and now we’re living in a world that’s the synthesis of the two.

Either way, the root of what Hegel’s saying here is this: as human beings that are trying to figure this crazy world out—you know, we’re trying to find out the way that things are so that we can make a difference or at least find out what problems are ailing us—Hegel says that usually what we do, the usual approach in that endeavor, is to analyze the way that the world is right now. We run experiments. We figure out how things are right at this instant. And if our research is good enough, we write books about it and people read them.

And this approach intuitively makes sense. I mean, it seems like a good place to start. But what Hegel is saying is that, maybe in the same way we don’t have some fixed moral human nature—like the one Kant was pointing at—maybe the world is the same way. Maybe the world is too complex and constantly under the influence of outside interests that it too could never be reduced down into that sort of absolutist way of thinking. Maybe understanding the world only can come after you acknowledge the fact that it’s constantly changing. And Hegel says that maybe a better tactic at getting to the bottom of this stuff is not trying to understand the way that things are right at this instant, because by the time you’ve understood them, they’ve already changed into something else. Maybe the key to understanding it is understanding that process—the process of constant change.

I’d compare it to trying to do an analysis of a very slowly moving thing—a target, right? You can go up to the target. You can measure the dimensions. You can find out what material it’s made out of. You can write down what color it is, what shape it is. You can carbon date the thing, everything. And you might go back to your workstation and get typing on your typewriter. And you might write an entire book about this target, telling the world about your findings. And it may be the most illuminating account of that moving target that has ever been written. But what Hegel would say is that that target has moved since you last saw it. It’s a different thing now. Look, you may have done great research—so much research that you can look at that target now, and it hasn’t moved much, so it looks like your analysis of it is accurate. But eventually it will change, and it will have changed into something completely different.

What Hegel’s saying is, if we know that the world is this way, why haven’t we ever tried to understand that process of change more? in other words, by understanding the process in which the world changes, we might be able to understand better the process by which we can change it. But even that’s kind of pigeonholing Hegel. To Hegel, the implications of this fact are much further reaching than just being able to go start a Super PAC and fund a political candidate, alright? There are deep moral implications here for him as well.

See, because the very first question that you probably have for Hegel when he says this is, “Okay, everything’s changing. Everything’s moving, Hegel. Where is it moving to? You said everything was moving. Where is it all going? Is it just random? Is the world and everyone in it, for that matter, really just randomly meandering around at the mercy of these competing interests that we have little or no control over?” Well, Hegel would probably say back to that, we may be meandering. And many of us may be at the mercy of them. But one thing’s for certain, it isn’t random. We are going somewhere. And Hegel says that that ultimate destination that we’re going for is mind’s total understanding of itself. And that, to Hegel, is almost synonymous to total understanding of freedom. All of these changes—all these changes throughout history have ultimately been heading towards mind’s total understanding of itself and a total understanding of freedom.

Actually, we should slow down because this is yet another really interesting position that Hegel’s taking. And it’s far from a given. I don’t want to gloss over it. How in the world is total self-knowledge practically synonymous to freedom for Hegel? How is that even possible? The two definitely don’t seem like they’re the same. Well, think about it from Hegel’s perspective. What is an average person like most of the time? Most people don’t go around thinking about their place in this process of constant change consciously. They don’t go through life actively trying to figure out which of their values are really just conditioned into them because of their particular culture and time period.

No, that’s not the way it works at all. Like the people in Athens in 400 BC in Hegel’s example—these people didn’t go around thinking that something was wrong with their approach to morality. And in that sense, think of what that means for us. The reality is, you only have access to the ideas that are around you in your culture and time period. These people living in 400 BC, they didn’t have the luxury of living in a post-Socrates world. So, in a weird way, they never had the option. They never had the option to adopt a more individual approach to morality. It was impossible for them to.

Now, look, I’m not saying that the laws of physics were preventing them from ever arriving at a different conclusion. Obviously, Socrates did. But given the tools that these people had, effectively it was impossible because they would never feel the need to question any of this stuff because they didn’t think it was wrong. What Hegel’s asking is, can that be said to be total freedom? Or is this just you living your life in a very, very large cage that you never go on the extremities of and see the bars of? You know, on that same note, it’s so easy for us to go back and denounce the people that owned slaves in the 16- and 1700s. But consider for a second, how many of those people were just kind of going along with whatever was socially acceptable during their culture and time period, not really thinking about it? How many of those people—it’s not that they were some evil dude twirling his mustache. “I have slaves! Isn’t this great?” It was acceptable back then, so they just never questioned it.

Now, I’ve said on this show multiple times, look around you right now. How many things that we just take for granted, 100 years from now, people will look back at us like we were tantamount to the slave owner in the 1700s? Hegel would want us to realize, the interesting thing is, they’re there. They’re all around you everywhere. This is a process of constant change. We are constantly in a state of change to Hegel. So, it is inevitable that there are things all around us right now that are going to appear barbaric to generations down the line. Most of us just can’t see them because, much like the slave owner, it’s socially acceptable to believe this, so why question it?

Think of the implications of this. How many beliefs do you hold right now—even down to the things that make you think you are a special, unique person—how many of these things are just values that have been conditioned into you? And look, you’re not a bad person for having them. It is an inescapable part of life. What Hegel would say is, shouldn’t we at least be aware of that, that that’s the world you’re living in, that that’s where those values come from? In other words, if we don’t understand why we hold the beliefs we do, can we really be said to be totally free?

This is the connection of total self-knowledge with freedom to Hegel. To be totally free, it’s not enough to just go throughout your life passively and allow this process of constant change to dictate everything we do and then just never question it. We need to understand this process of historical change, understand that we exist in a constantly moving target. And when you understand that the process of constant change is ultimately heading to a great place, what it does is, it brings you a sense of calm. It brings you a sense of peace. Because even if in the short term something seems to be contrary to what you value, ultimately, now you see everything for what it actually is: one brick in a long road towards total freedom. In that world, nothing is contrary to your interests at that point. It’s all part of the process.

Now, it’s easier said than done, but truly understanding and accepting this fact is a state of total knowledge. And at that point, Hegel says, it’s really tough to get mad about anything that happens. All the things before that we took as hostile and exterior to ourselves, we actually realize they’re a part of us. They’re a part of that process of constant change towards total freedom. Every nation, every government, and yes, even every cable news anchor has been a part of this process of change. You know, it’s funny, Hegel truly thought that by writing these things down he was giving the world total self-knowledge. In the same way that the Athenians didn’t have the luxury of living in a post-Socratic world, lucky us, we have the luxury now of living in a post-Hegelian world. We have access to this idea.

And in a way, the big question at the root here, the one that I started all the other Hegel episodes talking about, one that is very closely attached to all this stuff that Hegel’s talking about is, what is freedom, exactly? And what does that mean? See, because a traditional definition of freedom—we’ve all heard it before, right? What do I want in life? I want to be happy. What would make me happy? No restrictions, freedom to do anything I want any time I want. If I want to go jump on a plane and see my sick granny on the other side of the country, I want to be able to do it. If I want a day off of work, I want a day off of work. Most people think, how do I get this sort of unbridled freedom? Money. Sure, money doesn’t buy happiness, but money is freedom in paper form. Freedom is just being able to do anything you want to do without restrictions.

But Hegel’s making the argument—like many of his contemporaries, by the way, but it’s his work specifically on this question that went on to be incredibly influential—is that definition enough to be considered truly free? And that just like we might be conditioned to have the values and beliefs that we have, and that part of being totally free is understanding why we have the values we do, not just blindly going along with them—part of being totally free in other areas is not just being able to do whatever you want to do. It’s understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s that self-awareness of what it means to be one aspect of this process of change. It’s that that’s liberating.

There’s tons of examples of this. I mean, take anything. You could be sitting on the couch all day long watching TV, and you could get bombarded by the exact same Burger King commercial over and over and over again, right? And this ad could have everything: Freudian psychology advertising, subliminal messages; Tesla doing mind-control stuff on you, digging his way into your brain, burrowing in. And you may stand up from the couch later in the day, feel hungry, and it may feel to you like it’s a totally autonomous, free choice that you’re making to decide to go down to Burger King and get a cheeseburger. But unless you’re aware of the fact that that’s the reason why you’re going to Burger King as opposed to the countless other options you have, you are enslaved to a certain extent. Your behavior is being controlled. And Hegel’s asking, can we be said to be truly free if that’s the case with our thinking?

This is the million-dollar question. This is the million-life question. His work on this question was the idea, the seed that was planted that eventually went on to affect Marx and countless other thinkers. Because one big thing that arises naturally when you have this discussion long enough, which we’re going to continue to expand upon, is another big question. Given the way our lives work, given how at the mercy we all are of these competing interests, and given how easy it is to insulate yourself off from all the possible options out there out of laziness—to only expose yourself to a few different options and just try your best to stay comfortable with whatever you’ve already been exposed to—maybe, although we think we know what we want and we would like to think we know what would make us most happy, maybe, maybe we aren’t the best ones to decide what we should be doing at all: what career we should have, what marriage we should enter into, and yes, even what cheeseburger to eat.

Lots of big episodes to come.

Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you next time.