The Wes Cecil Podcast

In a very simplified version of the famous Yaksha parable from the Mahabharata, we encounter the strangely rich and human nature of Hindu stories. In the original, there are something like 30 different questions so I have just mentioned a few of them here.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

READ ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA"So we now get to the point Kant has been angling towards the whole time. What do we gain from all of this thinking for metaphysics? Answer, we gain insight into the entire possible range of human understanding - only granting that the range is quite limited. He begins his argument by refuting the two major approaches to science and thinking generally prevalent in his time; idealism and empiricism. I find Kan’t powerful critique of these two outlooks helpful to keep in mind when encountering arguments that just assume the relevance and correctness of their world view and then prove something - empiricists are particularly guilty here - with little or no reflection on the often shaky foundations of their assumptions.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

CAPITALISM: EP. 3The need for revenue and the fracturing of the European social order that accompanied the Reformation led to the slow development of a new vision of the individual and of trade and markets that launched the capitalist world as we know it today.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the great moments of human compassion and expressions of the utter waste of war. While Achilles is often raised as the symbol of the ultimate warrior, here he weeps and acknowledges the pointlessness and painfulness of war.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

READ ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA" It turns out that Science is possible! That is the good news. The bad news is that what science actually tells us is not what we might hope. The limits of empiricism and logic are explored and the foundations of what gives science its power to analyze the world is completely re-defined in this section of the prolegomena.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

CAPITALISM: EP. 2As a Political Philosophy Capitalism contains a theory of the individual that includes the idea of natural rights - most importantly the right to private property. However, in practice, what this amounts to is the inalienable right to sell yourself into the marketplace, an opportunity resisted by people for centuries. It is the double step of creating a private space, and then creating an idea of people and citizenship that forces people to fill that space that shapes the Capitalist world today.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

READ ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA" As we dive into the foundations of natural science, I pause for a moment to consider the power of Kant’s argument relative to the foundations of mathematics. His arguments have proven pretty much correct relative to the foundations of mathematics as accepted today and so I think we should pay special attention to how he understands the foundations of the natural sciences.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dive into the intriguing evolution of capitalism, where private ownership shapes economic realities. Discover how historical contexts like ancient Rome influenced property rights and market dynamics. Explore the competitive illusion by examining monopolization in industries, using coffee shops as an example. Unpack the essential role of government in protecting individual rights and challenge the notion of private property as a natural right. This journey through capitalism's complexities sets the stage for deeper discussions ahead.

It seems so simple, and yet this story from Ancient Greece captures many of the problems with time, identity, and meaning - a kind of one paragraph version of Heidegger’s Being and Time. It also brings into focus, at least for me, how thinking slowly about simple things can really reveal how tenuous our grasp on the world really is.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Perhaps the most influential philosopher of the 20th century, he defeated Russel’s attempt to provide a perfect foundation for mathematics and elaborated a linguistic approach to philosophy that dominated English language philosophy for decades. His gnomic writing style and the existence of most of his work as lecture notes compiled from his students make his published legacy quite problematic. Nonetheless, a crucial thinker in the history of philosophy.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.