Then & Now: Philosophy, History & Politics

Humans love to fix things, to find the cause of a problem, to probe, tinker, and mend. We ask, in many different ways, Why does this happen? What’s the root cause? What’s the origin? What or who is at fault? What or who is responsible? But there are three subjects that have intertwined with the topic of responsibly more than others.The idea of responsibility has many forms both historically and culturally. Philosophers have debated whether we can be truly responsible for our actions in the context of discussions about free-will; theologians have wrestled with the idea of taking responsibility for our sins; scientists have joined the discussion by searching for causation and exploring the psychology and neurology of our brains.But today, the idea of individual responsibility is often invoked in discussions about welfare, poverty, and enterprise. Increasingly, throughout the liberal and neoliberal periods, we’ve – in politics and the media, at least - emphasised ‘responsibility for ourselves’ at the expense of other types of responsibilities, moral obligations, or duties.Is poverty a personal inadequacy? A problem of persons? A problem of character? A problem of culture? Or is it a problem of place? Of systems? Of society?The particular form ‘individual responsibility’ has taken today – atomised, asocietal, ideally self-dependent, culturally ‘backward’, genetically limited – is a relatively new historical and political concept which is used to justify the dismantling of welfare, the rejection of altruism, and the unravelling of community.Any cultural interpretation of responsibility is bound-up with politics, language, culture and society, and, has a history that’s not simply progressive and linear. Instead of being responsible for ourselves, the concept of 'mutual obligations' or duties includes the responsibility to work hard and improve ourselves, but can also better accommodate contributing to the world, aiding others, remembering no man is an island and turning our gaze not inwards but outwards. I look at how this idea of individual responsibility developed in parallel with the history of poverty, looking at Edward Banfield's The Moral Basis of a Backward Soceity, Oscar Lewis' Culture of Poverty, Daniel Moynihan's The Negro Family, Charles Murray's Losing Ground and the Bell Curve, and George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty. We look at poverty and responsibility from the Middle Ages, through to the Poor Laws, to Kennedy, LBJ, The Great Society, The War on Poverty, to the Reagan and Thatcher era and to Obama and Fox News today. Of course, Jordan Peterson also makes an appearance. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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In this video, I look at the first part of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. I takes an introductory look a the first three parts: The Concept of Enlightenment; Excursus I: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment; and Excursus II: Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality.The first part, through some general reflections on Enlightenment, reason, mythology, and totalitarianism, poses that all four are already intertwined. For Adorno and Horkheimer, ‘Myth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology.’In the two ‘excursus’ they interpret the Odyssey, Marquis de Sade, and Nietzsche, as backing up this claim. What makes mythology and enlightenment the same? Odysseus is the proto-bourgeois individual using his logic to manipulate nature through instrumental reason so he get home. De Sade uses his logic to get what his passions desire. And Nietzsche is famous for his ‘will to power.’ In all of this, we can see the philosophical roots on totalitarianism.Both enlightenment and mythology attempt to naturalise the universal rule – attempt to dominate the individual based on an eternal rule of instrumental reason. Even magic was an exchange – a deal with nature, with the gods, to preserve man. All are based on the same logic.Whether its the codified myth of Scylla and Charybdis. The rationality of working out your desire and convincing others to follow it – if objects are valueless – to be used for the purposes of self-preservation – why would this not apply to people too?Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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I look at the history of the Spanish Flu of 1918 - the worst pandemic in history - asking what lessons we can learn. Avoiding a traditional approach to the story, I look at history’s worst pandemic from a number of perspectives. As a preface, I think about the memory of the flu and remembrance of World War One – why was the Influenza forgotten, while the war memorialised by poets like John McCrae? Then, institutional, looking at the two main institutions involves in the response: the military and the bacteriologists. Then, material, looking at the ways it spread and how quarantines were attempted to stop it. Third, ideologically, how did ideas of the time distort the response. I look in particular at cinemas, religion in Africa, and apartheid.Ultimately, there is a theme that runs through memories of the Spanish Flu: Failure.The historian Niall Johnson sums up Britains failure like this:‘the perception of disease, the fact that it was ‘only’ influenza, the relatively mild nature of the first wave in the spring of 1918, Imperialist or racist views and the ‘superiority’ of the English, the confidence in scientific medicine to find a vaccine, the quest for professional status of the profession, the power of ‘scientific’ medicine prevailing over preventive, and the rejection of state intervention. Many of these contributed to a delay in the reaction and recognition of the existence of a problem, particularly when the second wave arrived in the autumn of 1918.’Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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In a follow up to the Fist of Modernity I look at the history of the police in England in the nineteenth century, particularly at David Churchill’s critique of the State Monopolisation Thesis which was influenced by Max Weber and articulated through the work of historians like V.A.C. Gatrell and his concept of the policeman state.Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018

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