Huge thanks to Genevieve for posting, and to Dr Staloff for offering to talk with us at the RNCM!! 😊

This man's Hume lectures changed my life forever. What a legend.

Question Timestamps: 0:19 The Principle of Charity 2:50 "Steel-manning"; How to come to your own conclusions; "get on the inside of the idea" 8:14 Uncharitable reading; "I'm an archeologist of old thoughts" 13:01 Heidegger 15:40 How do you encourage people to argue charitably? 23:51 Mircea Eliade; Cyclical & Linear Time 47:43 John Vervaeke: The Meaning Crisis; "Serious Play"/Classical Music 52:50 The Rules of Art 1:00:33 The Future of the Arts 1:07:40 High Culture & Common Culture 1:11:13 Approaching Philosophy as Historians; American History in Cyclical Time 1:35:46 Jonathan Pageau: Spirituality Without Religion 1:39:05 Orthopraxy without Orthodoxy 1:44:34 The Parable of the Good Samaritan; Hosea & the Prostitute; Furnishing the mind with Beauty Please feel free to check out our Q&As with Joscha Bach, Jonathan Pageau and John Vervaeke! 😊

0:00/0:47 Understanding. Charitable Interpretation + Addressing Current Concerns. 2:49 Steelmaning: Making the opponents case stronger. 3:55 Were there other voices engaging in discourse? How did they understand? What did other people say at the time? What did [name] think? 5:52 Ok, how do I feel about this? 7:30 “Get on the inside of the idea.” 8:00 Do the charitable reading BEFORE critiquing. 9:21 Historian - Archaeologist of Old Thoughts. 11:20 Nietzsche, valorizing 13:03 What is a Dark Force that characterizes the 21st Century? 13:30 It’s too soon to tell what that might be. *Q&A from Zoom chat* 15:40 How do you represent an argument with authenticity? 17:12 Educated Intellectuals, sophisticated understanding. Many people don’t engage much with sophisticated ideas. 18:27 How do they understand the world? 18:53 “There’s something to Everything.” 19:48 The War has already been fought Cosmically. Yoga of Wisdom, Yoga of Action. Bhakti-Yoga(?) 22:11 Spirit Struggle. Loss of Core Spirit. 22:59 The Virtue of Cyclical Time. Mircea Eliade. 24:05 _The Myth of Eternal Return_ 25:37 Not everything is a nail and not everything can be hammered. 27:43 Every Year we celebrate The New Year. + Fresh Start 28:45 American Football 🏈 29:45 Johan Huizinga. _The High Middle Ages_ 31:29 Democracy. The Dream and The Reality. 33:12 Renewal. Spring Renewal. 34:42 Commitment to a Politician and viewing people who choose another politician. 37:22 Cycles. 38:38 Great Age, 4 distinct subages Age of Gold Age of Silver Age of Bronze Age of Darkness 40:45 The Kali Yuga. 43:30 Ole England by PJ Harvey. 44:55 Theophanies. Faith Endures. 46:22 Bearing. 47:43 John Vervake. 49:25 Serious Play. Distinct Acceptable Conventions. 52:12 54:04 Structure Order and Free Chaos. 56:04 Ex. Playing Cops and Robbers as a kid. 1:00:33 The next cycles of the art world. 1:02:49 Classical Music didn’t transgress the rules as much. 1:04:44 Cultivating your Pallet is a kind of play. It’s satisfying. 1:06:34 Snob Appeal. 1:08:22 High Culture, High Education -> Social Status High Culture Elitism -> Pride. 1:12:12 Cyclical Renewal. • American Revolution 🇺🇸 John Adams “I must study politics so my son can study philosophy so his son can become an artist.” 1:16:56 Andrew Jackson, Young America 🇺🇸 cribbed from Young Hungary 🇭🇺. It will become old and feeble and Dutch 🇳🇱. 1:18:28 Thomas Cole Art 🖼️ Circular Cycle of History Young Rome Vital Rome Aging Rome Collapse 1:20:15 Our Greatness, Our Mistakes, Our Rebirth. 1:25:22 The Age of Adley, Thatcher, Blair. “This is our moment.” 1:28:37 We need things to give us a sense of confidence. It’s natural to lash out when we are nervous and scared 😱 1:30:04 On Global Warming + Good for cold places - Bad for already hot places The World is indifferent People have to deal with the pros and cons. 1:33:03 “God is Dead.” “But I am Spiritual.” 1:34:03 Moral Projects. 1:36:57 Spiritually Without Religion. 1:38:48 “We’re all nutters.” 1:41:12 Sacrality of Christ and The Apostles. 1:43:45 “is that really _that_ important?” 1:47:17 Good part of Enlightenment. + I will not kill you for your wrong thinking/heresy. We call it voting 🗳️ 1:48:31 If you know the certain true answer, why would you put it in the hands of voting 🗳️? Best argument. Best guess. Best try. 1:50:54 Art in the age of Mao Zedong. 🔫 1:52:52 “No one has solved the cosmic problem of politics.” 1:54:20 Hollow WoMan Great Thunburg. “All she could find was Polar Bears”🐻‍❄️ 🐻‍❄️ 1:54:58 Unmet Spiritual Needs & Narcotics. 1:55:56 *The Distilling Revolution* Beer🍺 , Brandy, Wine 🍷 filling your belly. 1:59:33 Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy. 2:02:16 Religion; Today vs Ancient Times. 2:04:15 Nzies and Communists. Return To Glory and Global Proletarian Revolution 2:05:08 Modern Secular Historicist. 2:06:25 McCourt. (?) Young Crazy but not bad people. Not their fault. Have compassion. 2:07:27 “There once was a good English wine.”

YES GET IT DARREN DR D IN THE HOUSE

D Dawg in tha house! greetings from Athens, Georgia, USA peace be upon y'all

Fantastic. Thank you all and awesome seeing Dr Darren

Fellow Sugrue and Staloff nerds, welcome

Thank you Professor Darren Staloff, thank you Professor Michael Sugrue, thank you Genevieve Sugrue.

Absolutely incredible conversation. Reaching the end of my masters degree in early modern history and this truly reframed things for me. Dr. Staloff is such a legend, thanks so much for this to all who made it possible!

I was disappointed when I saw the thumbnail but I really enjoyed this. The discussion on cyclical time was outstanding! Great job all around

Thanks, Genevieve! The real MVP.

Prof Staloff’s not only perfect recall but also wonderful synthesis of Indian subcontinental philosophy really stunned the student posing the question, and me as well. Wow.

American history is important to learn on all sides. 1." Democracy in America," Alexis De Tocqueville. 2."A People's History of the United States," Howard Zinn (Many others) 3. Spirituality: "The Art of War & Other Eastern Philosophy," 4. Hindew, Buddism, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ralph Waldo Emerson and others. The translation of scriptures from Persian to Latin their effects on writers. 5.Jackson Pollard , his American artwork and history. 6.Basqiet and Andy Warhol, 80's 9.Philosphers: Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Ram Dass, Choundrey 10. David Graeber & David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything" tells the story of an archeological evidence that overturns Rosseau 'Nobel Savage' and the 'nasty brutish short' lives of Thomas Hobbes alike. 11. Music began with a flute centuries ago and music and dance flows and grows. 12. Classical, blues, jazz, hymns, hillbilly, country, blue grass, rock n roll, mixing, but it always comes back to Bach. 13. C.G. Jung: "The Red Book" Liber Novus, edited and with an Introduction by Sonu Shamdasani. (2009) I love Carl Jung. The political system in America and all over our world is exploding again on all sides of corruption with powers of greed. Human nature 101. Thankfully we have music and art and creativity to participate in, it is an individual choice, as it also is for those great journalists and writers who takes chances with their own lives to expose the corruption. It is an individual choice. Enjoy what you do!!! Passion.

Great video. The presentation and layout of the discussion is perfect. No agenda, no itinerary, just people enjoying a conversation in a relaxed manner. Thank you.

Amazing stuff! Loved the part on Hindu!

Hello Dr Sugrue 👋

This video is so lush with content. A real contrast to the fluff I usually watch.

Fantastic conversation! thank you kids And Dr. Stalloff 👍🏻

Finally someone who appreciates Eliade like he deserves. The only public figure I saw giving him credit and referencing him was Jordan Peterson. Eliade is so rich that I could never understand why he isn't more talked about

Now that is an audience Mr. Schopenhauer would approve of! Please Dr. Stalof can you direct me to your book on literature, history, philosophy and the world etc from which we can delve into your ideas? Charitably of course…

I would never be able to write my music without philosophy. Your lectures of Socrates have improved my art.

Brilliant conversation, thank you for sharing your time and perspective

what a wonderful talk. especially as a musician myself

This was great. Both of you present a lot of readings of things that help me rethink my own attempts at creativity and philosophy. This channel is a gift.

A very enjoyable and enlightening conversation, filled with great insights. It is wonderful to see respectful young people with a thirst for deep and profound ideas. Many thanks to Dr Staloff, Ms Sugrue, and the students of the RNCM!

Thank you music students for this!!!

Rugby + Space Suits = American Football! Perfect description.

“We can have an interesting question if we don’t get upset.” Bingo.

At 1:01:20 dr. Staloff mentions the fact that governments give money for artists to make a sort of eternal revolution that is not "nice to listen to" or look at, as he puts it. This reminds me of two things. First, of Eliade's Myth and Reality (which I read in Portuguese and was quite a pain to find the quote in English haha), in which at a point he says: "The myth of the damned artist, which obsessed the nineteenth century, is outmoded today. Especially in the United States, but also in Western Europe, audacity and defiance have long since ceased to be harmful to an artist. On the contrary, he is asked to conform to his mythical image, that is, to be strange, irreducible, and to 'produce something new.' It is the absolute triumph of the permanent revolution in art. 'Anything goes' is no long an adequate formulation: now every novelty is considered a stroke of genius beforehand and put on the same plane as the innovations of a Van Gogh or a Picasso, even if the artist only mutilates a poster or signs a sardine tin." The fact that this was published in 1963 kind of shows how stale the arts are nowadays. Everything is revolutionary, everything needs to be revolutionary. Is it really, then, a revolution? The second thing that it reminded me of was Frank Zappa. In his late career, in the 80s onward, he was mostly focused on classical, orchestral music (he was very influenced by Stravinsky, Webern and Varèse from the very beginning, and began composing classical pieces before he even had a rock band), and he famously published a few works while going negative on money. Knowingly, he published a work with the London Symphony Orchestra in a limited edition that materially only gave him losses since the orchestra was expensive, he paid everything by himself and less than 10 thousand copies of the album were even made. He's commented on that very same issue: "It's not easy to keep converting capital from doing other things into reinvesting into doing that kind of stuff. There's no way that the music I'm working on is gonna pay its own way. But I would rather do it this way than to rely on a government, or to rely on a king or a duke, or somebody who wants to take drastic action if he doesn't approve of your work of art. Forget that." "I spent money on an English orchestra to record my music so that I could take it home and I could listen to it. And, if somebody else likes that kind of stuff, I will make it available so they can hear it. That is my part of the public service of spending the money to make this thing happen. No foundation grant, no government assistance, no corporation, no committee, just a crazy guy who spent the money to hire English musicians to do a concert at the Barbican and make an album for Barking Pumpkin Records [his label]." I should also point out that Zappa dealt with people trying to interfere with his art on many occasions, a few of them pretty infamous (We're Only in It for the Money). Although in his time there was no Patreon or crowdfunding, he still did it through business outside of music. From seeing these three comments what I can see is that government assistance pretty much dictates what we see now. We will never see actual innovation from people who depend on institutions like the government or corporations.

Awesome video. Dr. Staloff’s concept of ‘circular time’ is so helpful.

Hi dears. Thanks Professor Staloff... Where was Dr. SUGRUE this week? He knows LITERALLY everything

Very good! I really loved that discussion on cyclical vs linear time as they enable different perspectives on suffering and meaning. This was especially fruitful for me as I am rereading Schopenhauer & Nietzsche, and comparing the two of each other. And it makes a lot of sense to take that into account when you look at Schopenhauers critique on Hegel. The cyclical aspect and his reading of indian scriptures makes it very plausible to me that this was another reason why he disliked Hegel‘s philosophy of history so much, because it was obviously so very much contingent that he had this particular perspective and not a cyclical one. In this sense it is (empirically) not even necessary to have a philosophy of history where you feel the need to deduce apriorily what to expect from the course of time. This is a very powerful critique, I would say. Furthermore: I never thought of this. Relating Aescethism to a cyclical perspective on time? I might have to revisit Oscar Wilde and look, whether there’s anything like that in his writings. Thanks for all that, Dr Staloff! It‘s been a pleasure! Edit: The longer I watch it, the more existential it becomes. Very good, and very impactful! It‘s good to have such an intense perspective on things. Very refreshing.

Wonderful discussion, thank you all

Do a Kant episode in your leather jacket.

I love how professor staloff's voice hasn't changed since the recorded lectures

Great questions. Thank you guys

yay!! thanks

What a blast, thanks!

Intellectual equivalent of expansive wine

Hi guys

Tell Staloff to come back please

Have we figured how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall ?

Why wasn't any lecture presented this week?

Staloff’s point that because we weren’t alive 400 years ago that those events in history have nothing to do with us now is… interesting. I’m finding it hard to believe that man is absolutely emancipated from all historical events and that social ideologies and behaviors don’t cascade generationally and take time and effort to shape.

I’m commenting to help the algorithm lol

I wonder what Dr Sugrue thinks of Mircea Eliade? Didn't they both go to the University of Chicago?

Abhishek K P. If you're reading this. i'd love to connect with you.

Dr Michael , could I put your video in my channel to share knowledge. Thank you for your hard work.

But wasn't Lincoln really a proto-Messianist? I thought he believed that if the Union prevail through the War - through America's national apocalypse: "the Coming of the Lord" which our own eyes have seen! - then a new destiny and a new divine immanence will be granted to America, one whose internal struggle will earn the divine gift of eternality. Wasn't his prayer at Gettysburg that our nation "shall not perish from the earth" both now and forever?

😝 "promosm"

Upper caste Abhishek whinging about RSS AND BJP is an expected behavior. If he moves to Pakistan, he will convert to Islam, support theocracy which it is now and still be in the ruling class without the freedoms that pluralistic India offers 😂😂😂

The Answer to question @3:50: "It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to the good, but, to be willing to descend again and share in the honors and misfortune weather they are worth having or not. And this they must do even with the prospect of death. They shall give of themselves to each other when a class is needed." - Plato's Republic If you think you're better than the other, in any way, you can behave like Hitler/Stalin and the likes, or, leadership by example; and the example is good behavior. You're gonna have to lead by example for those strawmen/steelmen arguments. And one example you must embrace is acceptance that an Atomic bomb is real, as well as, hate. Superman never kills. He learned after killing Zod.