Hello and welcome to season for episode. Forty eight of the Jordan Be Petersen Podcast in Beside my dad host in two of the UK, finest scholars in philosophy and religion, Doktor James or Doktor, Nigel bigger they discussed, identity, focused culture, nationalism, human rights throughout history, ideology, theology and more also, things are going great, in the Petersen Household, I dont think I have been able to say that for five years things are going crazy, this year in a good way. I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode has brought you buy helix, so sleeping comfortably is so important the key to setting a good time for your whole. Damn I just moved to Nashville, I'm so excited Technically Franklin Tennessee, and I need a new. He looks mattress because the one I had in Toronto, I loved it. He'll sleep has this code

Did you taken about two minutes and it matches you with your perfect mattress, depending on your body, typing needs. He looks knows that everyone is different. So that's why offer. Variety like soft, medium, firm, mattresses, mattresses, gratefully when you down mattresses, great the spinal alignment to prevent morning aches and pains, and even mattresses, four plus sized sleepers. He likes was awarded the number one best. Overall, mattress pick up twenty twenty by G Q, wired magazine he looks, has been right. mended by multiple leading chiropractors and doctors of Sleep Edison as a go to solution for improving sleep. Also, the mattress is shipped to your doorstep, selling off the brutal mattress store ship for free there, a ten year warranty and you get to try it out for one hundred nights risk free, though even pick it up. If you don't love, it ex even has financing options inflexible payment plans to a great night. Sleep is never far away. Just gotta helix sleep, dot, com, Slash, Jordan!

take their two minutes. The quiz and no match into a customized mattress. He looks is offering up to two hundred dollars off all mattress orders and to free pose for our listeners at hillock, sleep, dot, com, Slash, Jordan. This episode, sponsored by relief band, check out relief, band dot com. You may be living in places where it's getting warmer and because your areas have been reopening, hopefully you're, going to finally be able to start doing things with your friends and families, swimming camping, water parks, maybe even amusement parks naga in any one of those, circumstances will ruin your fine. It ruins everything our producer recently used it while flying its all natural and you just to use it as a wearable device. No sedating anti, not Ahmed's necessary silver. Those view who worry about Naga. I have good news. It's called relief band relief, ban, dot com, how it works is really

fan, stimulates a nerve in the wrist. The travels to part of the brain that controls nausea that it blocks the signal. Your brain is sending to your stomach, telling you that you're, sick or nauseous really fans the only over the counter wearable device. That's been used in hospitals and oncology clinic to treat nausea and vomiting relief, and is the number one after you cleared, and he knows a wristband that has been clinically proven to quickly relieve and effectively prevent nausea and vomiting associated with motion, sickness, anxiety, Migraines hangovers morning, sickness, chemotherapy and more. If you know someone, who's suffering from David are going through chemo or morning sickness relief and can make a great guest people don't know about it. It's really useful. The product is one hundred percent drug free non drowsy and provides

leave with zero side effects for as long as needed. Right now, relief ban has an exclusive offer. Just for Jordan, be pieterzen listeners, you gotta relief, ban, dot com and he's promo code. J. Bp, you receive twenty percent off, plus free shipping and a no questions asked thirty day, money back guarantee so had to relief. And our com are either. I e f b, I, indeed, dot com and user promo code J Bp for twenty percent off plush free shipping. Hopefully this helps people here suffering from Naga follow every I am pleased to have two of the UK. scholars here with me today

James Organ Doktor, Nigel bigger doctor? or is university lecturer in philosophy of religion at Cambridge he's director of did form Oxford and Trinity. Form. Cambridge and rigour a contributor to the Times literary supplement and the critic magazine, formerly Mcdonald Posts, doctoral fellow at Christ, church Oxford Doctor or holds a phd in and fill in philosophy of religion from Saint Jones COS at Cambridge and the double first in classics from bet. Balliol college Oxford he's the author of the mind of God and the works of nature. two thousand and nineteen in tow editor of Neil Aristotelian Metaphysics and the theology of nature, its twenty twenty two Rutledge published that Doctor Nigel, bigger the Regis professor of moral and pastoral theology at Oxford, where he also, Extra Mcdonnel centre for theology, ethics and public life. He's also and anglican priest and is profit

Ariel Sharon Oxford is tied to a Canonbury in Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford, he also be Ba from Oxford. A masters increased. studies from regions, college Vancouver and an MBA a Phd in christian theology and ethics from the University of Chicago before his current Post York. Cheers in theology at the universe, you have leads, and at Trinity College double among the many books are the recent. wrong with rights. Oxford. Twenty twenty between can impose marvellous an ethic of the nation two thousand and fourteen and in defence of war, Oxford, two thousand and thirteen as Alice behaving in public, how to do christian ethics two thousand and eleven provocative titles. Well, thank you very much for agreeing to talk with meeting James. Why did you want to have this discussion? Will my first reason for

to have a discussion with you and and together with Nigel, is that I felt that you have done. Having a boy cinder a kind of acuity in the public square, on questions of religion, meaning of transcendence the kinds of questions that drew me. First to the academy, the law, but the kinds of questions that I think have been more urgent, almost say and to to vigils in the West to society in the West answer I thought this is an extraordinary opportunity to talk with you. Bit about your views on religion. to night, just too, of course, what we ve done. The view that we have many conversations over the isn't night has been a great mental to me, and I had to of you happy as with him in in Oxford butter

this is a it's an amazing platform that you ve caught out for yourself, and I am really looking forward to the conversation show what makes you think it so urgent and salient now. Well, I think the questions identity. Questions of belonging questions of significance, both as It is a kind of answers to them. A kind of positive Express, but also negatively express the sort of sense of crisis seen in the west, at the kind of the level of individuals Bruce tried, work out where it is we're doing as a society, particularly now that we ve slipped a lot of our mornings. That used to Ankara's in stable, normative universe. We told sudden stool worries about web come from where we're going.

speaking. We're not believe by everybody, but, broadly speaking, gave us the kinds of parameters, the kinds of God rails- the kind of coordinate mechanisms, even the kind of, stigmas that helped us to pursue The common good together for all of our different disagree, You sure, wouldn't you offered an implicit description of identity, their essentially an that's quite into because so much of the current Paul political discourse, measures on a theory if identity, but it's theories, identity that based on identification with the central set of stories or or and so they are not something, that's very, very different, and you also mentioned a call in some that's a collective view of the future. Does yes, I mean, so I think the fact that we are all talking about identity now in a way that we simply want before not a sign that we all know what it means actually a sign that there is a kind of dislocation,

it, didn't it ass in Latin doesn't mean anything at all. It just means it means openness, and I think you don't really talking about something until it starts to disappear. I think Hey glues, as at one point that these the out of Minerva spreads. Its weight is at dusk. By which he meant Missis the introduction of, but must be a bright by which he might well lots of disagreement about exactly what he what he meant, but it seems to be the case that it was followed. The fear only starts to take proper appraisal approach, diagnosis of what happened after it's happened, ready the point it's too late to do much about it right now, western doesn't arise when everyone is an implicit agreement, I think right I mean this is the old David, thus to Wallis Commencement Address joke of the goldfish going for a walk one morning in the Poland, now the goldfish damn it says, the water- and Alfred says: what's water? Well,

we now say what what's your identity, even thirty five years ago, that would have been in a sense sitting question? What are you talking about? What is identity? I student, the other day who came to me and said I want to look at identity, in August in an unacceptable what do you want to do that full and he said well, everybody talking about it. The universities talking about the culture is talking about it. I thought I could go in red. The confessions in that data, today in the city of garden and trust, look at what Augustine S to say about identity. and I had to tell him that Augustine would have been mystify. If you'd asked him what he meant by identity, it meant something technical and really rather trivial, and an empty

but so these new ideas, but I bet they're, very dominant ideas and that ideas that we don't really have the answer to but we're happy too projects onto the cannon where projects to project back into the past reminds me. I need your statement about the question of morality said that. Well when you are embedded in a culture that has a single morality. The question is what right and wrong within that structure, but then, when you're subjected to the onslaught of many moralities the question of what is morality per se, starts to arise, and so the questions get deeper and maybe that's a consequence of No, the intense cultural intermingling that characterises the world now and then- and I mean that's affair. Rich and in its enriched all of us but is also deeply unsettling and it raises questions and, of course, technique, people transformation does the same, not least when it involves reproductive technology he lets say and changes. The relationship between the sexes, I'm gonna, switched to doktor rigour.

and ask him missing due to the gallows. My comment on on this. This is a density Jordan, because I I mean I I do think certainly in some cases, identity is hooked into some kind of grand narrative the night, I guess I think of human beings is as We live a little lives in and we often need a bigger story to identify wished to give ourselves. The significance that by ourselves, we just don't have now that be the case. Everywhere, but I'm going to kill off of nationalism. I'm scottish born, I identifies british libels English in Scottish open. The scottish operation from the UK. but when the wind salespeople saying I'm I'm starting to scottish identity. I want to save all. Ok, that's fine, but can you give an account of it? seems to me that

One cannot one can hold agendas to account in this sense, the wedding and an identity. I'm I'm identify muscle myself with something So when I say I'm scottish British, To my mind, a sensitive stories certain set of heroes, a certain set of values that I claim as my own and identify with seems to me that insofar as the stories in here and the values moral content, they are more accountable and can be more than criticised. Identity is not a kind of but there's a bedrock. Ok. So that raises another question. As far as I'm concerned, couple is, first of all in all we might not identify with whom we are we might identify with. Who we would like to be or what the idealism when you talk about in our final mortality and are longing for something greater in, I would Think of that is part of a prime of of

religious impulse. Essentially that guides us to toward the ideal that were attempting to manifest, and so there to be something beyond us that we identify with and then I would wonder if its, if it's not absent. partly beyond, let's say in the form of of they just notion. Then it gets. truncated into something like nationalism or something political. That's that that get that then, gets inflated in to divine status, because the proper time of identification, is locking. What do you think that I think that's that's a dangerous, and it that day the grand narratives we identify with? but we do have a nice and we give them an absolute statism and nationalism at its worst. Does Of course, certain Venetian becomes God and the fact that was was it Colonel talks, was no fixed. Her I think talked about

the nation being immortal but remember the nation was is not, but you gave a kind of vicarious immortality by belong donation, which always continues which actually doesnt but never mind. There is a close link really really religiosity to that. But I don't think that's but what it did have to absolute eyes themselves in that way, so I didn't british american I reckon I could have lived, worked in November and all my life I chose not to cause, I felt commitment, to this country does mean that I think that the UK is eternal and absolutely not at all. I mean you didn't exist before sending a sudden it may not exist. You ve gotten separate, so you unless you have a place for the relationship with the absolute in your life, and so it is conceivable that the nation didn't have to expand for you to fill. That gap will mean. I know in Quebec. There is very interesting Paul. You know. Quebec was the last western country, in some sense to undergo the

transformation from deep religiosity, almost feudal, religiosity to second or status that didn't have until the nineteen fifties and then come back again Catholicism enough, at a rate that was just absolutely staggering, but the girl organization indicated that fewer lapsed Catholic. You are ten times more likely to be a separatist home right right. It, piece of information. I was looking for four years just on that's all I've noticed under this there's no proof yet, but I've noticed a job The rise of scottish nationalism is correlated with. They persisted the decline of membership in the church to Scotland. Now, Well, I'm wondering is our common transference here from from

president religion in discussions and I suspect the reds, because it reminds me of the another central Nietzsche, an idea which was that a couple of ideas was that, as a consequence of the death of God, which is, of course, something Nietzsche Dick, I'd. He thought it was a murderous act that we would become prone to either nihilism or a form of radical communitarianism. He identified that with essentially with communism or at least with the spirit of communism at that point. I would say that the right Fascism. These are my mom interpretation. These are fundamentally replacing religions, except that they have passed call Jesus associated with them that a genuine religion, and we can talk about what that might be. At some point, it was one of the questions you guys proposed. They have petrol she's the genuine religions, in some sense, managed to skirt. Do you think that, two viable hypothesis. It itself

predicated on the idea that we do have a deep religious instinct, that's associated with with our within this ass. It is for us to adopt an identity, yes, I was one will be able to mainstream convention engine that they can live with that that the religions it gets displaced and some indications of Nazism most obviously you get causing religious rituals. Fascists were particularly good at knows where Nonverbal, so they were hard to critique. But other than that they created a sense of the transcendent yes, I think that that is up a plausible hypothesis. The question of What kind of religion resists? That is an interesting one! May I guess I guess what religion has always had added and problem with with degenerating into idolatry pesticide identification of

something. Human adhesive sculpture, Temple and they should, in concrete action, the time and that's that better courses is a former religion that monotheism, be a jewish Christian, or Muslim. as has been against because God done, is done, God has transcended, and God is barely understandable by beats and the debate in Asia. Assistance are not as part of the insistence while the present day, insistence in Islam of not making images is, I believe it's it's ETA variant of the same doctrine that you see in the old testament against making idols, and I think it's attempt an attempt when its working, properly to protect the concretization of the absolute, and that is this, this site logical barrier against idolatry, which I think is the ology, is a form of, and I suspect, although dont know that it's at animals, equally related as well, and so you know you pay.

right at the beginning, Nigel that we're we're were destined in some sense to search for something beyond ourselves that that's part of our actual nature. I guess I would wonder too, if that you know page the developmental psychologist, positive the existence of a mess I annex stage in adolescent development and he didn't believe everyone hit that stage of cognitive development, but that many people did and that that was the point at which right Article in cultural action should take place, but it was in it was it involved the turning outward, to broader world concerns, and and the desire to join the cause in May you can see that really intensely between the ages of seventeen and twenty five, something like that and then show unity, these students or primed for that, and then their offered any ology now think instead of what instead of what it is that we're trying to lay out what what

alternative to that might be so so I wanted to Ask you guys James. Did you have something to say about all that? Well, I mean to say that you know this. Does it have obviously good good nationalism and bad nationalism, and often the distinction is made between patriotism and nationalism- Nigel written, very well this, but is often overlooked. I mean, I think that other problems today, such as we have been found, The debate in the in the UK in the last few years has been this this question of dig Are you a citizen of any were, or are you a citizen of somewhere and a lot of the divides in our society flow from that basic distinction that distinction that turned the sociologist and get hot drew a few years ago and lot of the lot of the differences that we are having a but apparently trivial.

I would really downstream with that of of that basic distinction. So there's There is an idea that merchant Ellie I have about the continued disappearance of God, because he looked at natures pronouncement, said well, God has vanished into the stratosphere of abstraction many times throughout history. This isn't a one time. Only danger of an abstract god that can't be representatives that he becomes so detached from human affairs that it's as, if he's what there and so the catholic church we produce a saints as intermediaries and priests to sort of linked the absolute to the to the proximity. But I you're, too, is what happened with blue sit in the? U K mean I thought of that in some senses. A tower of Babel phenomenon is that people felt that there representation in Europe was so abstract, they were no longer connected to their land, to their town to their community, and so the disks between them, and the Central Authority became

too great, and there was a longing for return to something like the concrete, which I have some sympathy for, but it begs equal You're too, is like Maybe there's a rank order of identity, and so you are hatred to your land, but that's nested under under, an affiliation to something, that's absolute, that isn't associated with nationalism, and I talk Stephen fry a little bit for, people about the utility of having a monarch it sort of another. an analogous to that is that the them work is an abstract figure but but but exists and you can have affiliation to hurt, like the Prime minister does and It will be in charge of the state and its it's like There's a hierarchy of identities in the hierarchy has to be structured properly or the parts start to contain. The whole in a way that pathological? Yes, yes, I'm at night

I was just thinking as you were speaking that certainly the way a lot of the arguments for thinking of ones. Love of country as a form of of piety envy. traditional moral theology from the most internet under the most immediate? So it's love, love love, apparent Yo Yo, YO, biological parents. You didn't choose your parents, it says it while you were thrown into this relation within, but it's the most intimate relationship there is. And similarly the thought is that you, oh your loyalty. You love your factions to your community and so on, and so on and in an ever expanding concentric circles, but I think the quietness and somebody very different. Somebody like David Tomb later on in the in the eighteen, Century stress that does, as it were, gonna be but there are diminishing returns as the concentric circles move move outward and then suddenly a limit

It is not it is it worth, maybe not an ideal limit, but simply a function of our fine achieved da fragility and and and in the christian traditional foreignness that we can't, as it were, every single human bit. We cannot love humanity in the abstract, and nor can we every some single human being with the same sort of intensity, so the damage a more positive way of thinking about why we ought to oh what a guest in calls are common objects of love. We treat our common objects of love is as broadly process. but but organised by the horizon, other transcendence orientation towards tool, The source of love, which calls into question tradition, is: is God himself Your honor I, but I do agree with you that we will have it arrange identities, some local, some real national global.

and then religious and each then let each thing we identify with gives us a meaning to our lives. Sunset insignificance just wondering in terms of you encounter with young younger people, at what point the does religious identification begin to gain traction. While I think there's there's a variety of answers to that one. Is that one pathway in his? Is the diagnose, is that the desire for deep meaning and also deep responsibility. Is there and valid and in every one- and two be encouraged and recognised. So there's that and then then that there is a serious discussion about, I would say about love and truth and the end pragmatic utility of both and and both expressions of faith. You know because

you can't say, while there is evidence that love in the broadest it is the most effective manner in which to work, yourself in the world you could make it a case that its power, for example- and you can't prove that speaking the truth is for the best and partly that's because people get into trouble for speaking the truth all the time. You can say you can stick your life on those two things and see what happened in that an adventure in that and that appeal to adventure that that's really attractive to your especially the young man, but to young people in general, and then there is one other element which is part of it: has to be the removal of rational objections. It's like When I did my biblical lecture series, I said I was going to stay psychological about it, except when I had to become metaphysical because of my the limitations of my knowledge and so on. was trying to make sense of it like how Can you have a relationship with this book that makes, since so that you're not that you're, not

crucifying your reason, but using it alongside of you and so that its not mirrors, let's say superstitious, foolishness with regard. Your axiomatic presuppositions of the form that the rational atheists criticise so well, let's say so effectively. So I you know I said well, I brought reverence to the too generous. said this books being around a long time in theirs possible. There is the possibility that there's something in it that that I dont understand that's appealed to people across the history and let's approach it from perspective and see what we can make of it and that that seems to have extremely popular likes, a sort of unbelievably our popular. the German you mentioned this desire for deep desire four cents for poorer, so the Z responses yeah foresee at Essen and the truth with both of those cannot to me as it were, something that is given an objective to which we are a country.

reminds me of what your compatriot Charles Taylor once wrote in his best shortest four hundred to say the ethics of authenticity. He said reflecting on authenticity is being the kind of you know, so popular value will recognise. He said, it only makes sense when there's a wider given arise and gives it significance so choice. Only significance within a context of gives it significance, otherwise, choices. Caprice between say it, it doesn't matter at all. and so I suppose they Seeing saying this through christianize as I do what we have here, is the recognition of the need for it a given moral order within which we are, we have freedom and freedom is what makes us responsible and and

makes all our decisions and choices really heavy, with significance, but the result is given and we didn't created and and large formal they only put a launch folded. The affirmation of the big one God is there not just a physical coherence to created reality, but also a moral guidance. so that everyone God ok, so a couple of things. I won't talk about there, so you know, if I look at anticipate intensity from the psychoanalytic or the psychological perspective. Talk about costs Rogers and humanists now, Rogers, who I am. I greatly in who taught me a lot about listening technically was a humanist, but he was a christian seminary to begin with, I want to be missionary and his his cycle. G of human possibility is set rise, Christianity right to the core. Now it's

his talk about authenticity, so he thought, if you wanted to be a good therapist that you had to be into aided, and so he talked it he's making a case for something like this hierarchical identity that we just discussed to imagine. Your identity is probably properly structured, hierarchically with the utmost out the top. it's supposed to be in with everything in its proper place. That constitutes you the broadest sense and then use, in some sense, from the centre of that and so there is a kind of alignment that goes along with truthful speaking. That's that presence that authenticity and, I think, that's equivalent to quality We want to trinitarian phenomena. In my estimation, no went there is the emphasis in the gospels on the possibility of the Spirit of God inhabiting a group or an individual. It finally in terms of their relationship with one another, their dialogue, equal relationship with one another and is really something to that. Like it's, it's not an idiot

seems to be you. You can enter that space when you're authentic in this, Logical sense, but it also means that the words that you're using spring up from the depths from the integrated depths and that is associated with. that's associated with, with with with possessed by the ideal at that moment, if something like that, and you can call that force out of people right. If you are engaging in a serious and dialogue with the men, you trust and you want to from them, then they start bob, and then you can have that kind of conversation and it's a ennobling for everyone and everyone experiences it that way. But money just suggested me. We were using the word authenticity, but as listening to Nigel in listening to you now, Jordan, it seems to me that you ve actually expressed to two very french and opposing sides how one understands with authenticity, so Nigel offered the idea that authenticity. Does it work requires presupposes.

It requires an author with it to a shall we say some sort of given object to framework that we don't we don't script terrain narrative. We have two as it were, do with a wild as its given the you have, aberration Beethoven, I'm not saying that the two copy book there. I think this could be very interesting. Next phase of the conversation you drawing on Rogers and talking about the second reservation, the sensible than anticipated and asserted that the current new mythology in Spirit and in the new testament as being of acts. I take him a more she's, say self, scripting self authoring idea to both anticipate- and this goes right- I suppose so I spent some ideas about how those might be mediated mean. I dont think yours, speaking with your own voice when you're authentic, in some sense, because your proxy We're concerns are not relevant

you're trying to do is to state what you believe, to be the case at that moment. In an honest response to the surrounding it. Agenda driven, except at the highest levels of that hierarchy. So the agenda might be love and truth, but it isn't anything proximate, it's not like. So for it, but if I was trying to our you against you, a defeat you that's final nickname here, which are just learned, the love of victory. If I was possessed by this of the love of victory and was attempting to defeat you then I wouldn't be speaking in a fully authentic voice at might be worth and voice than being cowardly, but it's not is authentic is one that we would be. Spired by the highest possible motivations and and My senses been it's it's something like tat nested inside love that constitutes the highest level of of ethical. living in so that speaks from with it within you. Perhaps

strange that that would also be associated with authenticity, because in some sense it's not you. It is a good pictures Then we need a new definition of authenticity which really incenses it, expressing your, spoke the truth that is not just you expressing yourself whatever. That means the common understanding, Israel is self expression. Whenever someone. says that I think More Europe How do we know your father's was expressing myself as was expressing, but you were putting it time. is authenticity to my grasp. of the true. So there's something apart from me. Which, on relating to which gives it a kind of poverty and seriousness and lack of caprice Ok, so a couple of things off now mean this. In

since by the radical left on lived experience. And its validity. What might be a stumbling towards something like that or go right, ok abundant the next thing, so, let's lie I'll put out up at the next thing. I'm thinking about it. I've really been struck constantly, by some of young descriptions of Christ as a member of the trinity, because crime young, makes much of John Sense of Christ. The logos that's their across time, which I read something as something like create the creator, consciousness that's involved in the bringing to awareness of being something like that. It's maybe identical to call justness itself, at least in its higher stages, very abstract, but then there's the carpenter, who lived in a particular time in place, which is kind of amiss, because everyone asks like in the moon Jesus Christ superstar, you know why time in that place, and the answer is what

to be some bounded time in place. And so, if were if, if Christ is, is a representative in some sense of what a human being is. Is that there's a divine acts aspect to us, which is this creative consciousness? That's very abstract, but also localised intensely, you know historic in an arbitrary thrown to use the existential phrase, historical context and then each of us is unique in that manner, but there's thing universal about each of us to that enables us to reach out to each other and I also use each individual lives a larger significance that otherwise the dismantle well yes and the significant you know. One of my students once asked me brilliant question is like, while I think, if all lorries have the architectural structure. Why not just tell the same archetype over and over, and I thought you wasn't it Interesting? Because what you want? You want

old wine and new skin. So to speak right, you want. You want the universal story, particularised then, I thought well, that's exactly what you said about the figure of Christ. Is it's the universe, historic Particularised and and what are those like both the particular realization and the universality, it's the intersection of those two that produces the meaning. it also produces you say, meaning outside human dignity, on the one hand, the is individuality, no one. Quite SK the truth or speaks the truth in my time and place like me since everyone is a unique profit You didn't think responsibility, but We're we're commonly subjects to, a universal order, universal obligations, universal calling with which indeed, I was a little lives route with a larger significance. I mean

This is also elation that you ve been describing so beautifully between the universal and on the concrete that that the general and under particular, you started earlier Jordan when you were talking about the iconoclasm, its Judaism and Islam relative to be the shocking. sentence, and indeed embracing a particularity in the form of of The second person, the trinity Incarnate as a human being and the suited the sort fucking christian claim is the golden gives his authenticating signature on. Not just the processes of history, but on this particular this particular carpenter in first century Palestine is just what I get it gets. Poland and others just so excited that it seems to be the final sentence, is where everything could, as it were, come come too. two arresting point, but as us as well as Nigel, says it also underwrites the the dignity and, and is it

whether that devalue, the intrinsic value of human beings and some others have written about the that's. That's another major question. You know- and this is something I think the new atheists don't take into account at all, because they have this enlightenment orientation and they a tribute. The idea of human rights, its like their historical sense, is truncated at four hundred years ago, and that's really odd, because so many of them are biologists. You know and they should be thinking across the millennia. Another can be a problem for religious thinkers too, because it isn't obvious that The world view of the Bible is thirteen billion year old Cosmos, but you know don't believe that our notion of rights is an enlightenment product I think the enlightenment articulated an implicit judeo in view of man and and expressed it broke, Thirdly and in many political documents, but that the rule of that explicit, comes action were mythological and

ritual and centuries or millennia or orthe or or more far, pass that old are they actually don't think? That's debatable. I think the idea that you know that the here dignity of the human being and the rights of man emerged. in the renaissance, let's say in the enlightenment, and out of nothing is completely absurd proposition, it's much more, Reasonable, historically, to look at the at that narrative precursors to that idea, I agree entirely with that. I mean this. It has been established. It then the notion all Natural human rights can be found in the thirteenth century, invariable periods. a low receiving tall recently wrote a book called. The origins of individuality were locate the notion of the day, the value of the individual. In

biblical Christian, nor do they think they can archetype of individual is the problem the one who yes, spoke to the call of God is called out from the mass of people and indeed Pearl Jeremiah is is is called out to speak his people alone and it's it's that it's a wretched between the individual and they and the call of God creating the jewel and draws on that, of the mass right one. You see that so often in the Genesis stories I mean Abraham, the classic example. Of that, too, I mean he's, he's a failure to begin with, I mean he's like eighty years old and still living in his dad's tent call it by God, and so this lowly guy who's, a non starter, is called by God and all that to him for the first set the story is one bloody, awful catastrophe after another? You think we'll do you believe these stories, while here is the question, is what to believe about that.

It's there, you are you're a dismal failure and you're not living up to your potential and then some you're inspired by something that forces you outside of your of your proximate herself and makes you feel guilty and ashamed if you dont manifested an enthusiastic, which means it possessed by God. If you do matter and then you do and then like it's one catastrophe after another, Who doesn't believe that? How is not life It seems like the release of the three possibility. There's a kind of Lighten meant creation. This, too counted dignity, just coming out of Ex nihilo coming out of nowhere with the whip with cancer and others. That says which gives a kind of universal list bases to rights and a kind of cosmic hooliganism that is based on pure rationality and nothing else. you don't believe the city stories anymore, cases this, here's accuse something, that's interesting James, so, let's say

that's true. Well, then, why not postmodern critique that rationality out of existence. If there's thing behind it. That is more fundamental than a mere proximate european, rational construction. Why can't we blow it away. First of all, a tribute to the west, which I think is a big mistake, because I dont believe that's true, but then also just replace it with another rational construction. If there's nothing transcendent about it, nothing deep! Well, I think, The answer to that is to say we didn't need to wait for the post botanist. We simply need to wait for the seventeen nineteen in the reign of terror that was orchestrated caused by Did eighteen of the cult literally devotees of the cult of reason that was set up in it. Not today, proclaiming my liberty, equality and fraternity, even as the blood on their heads worth. What what running in the streets right ending on cathedral, as you point out, which is so symbolically relevant indeed, indeed,

This episode has also brought in by basis, if you guys have been listening to the podcast for awhile. Oh you know basis by the company. Elysium is a perfect way to save at a time of an eighty infusions and the cost and stuff The benefits and eighty is found in every single, solve your body and is responsible for creating energy and regulating hundreds of small functions. Doesn't have an endless supply of energy thou and the levels decline. As you age basis, also works on biological factors such as enhancing mitochondrial function and agent. Improving dna repair, many basis, customers also report experiencing higher energy less fatigue and more satisfying work out. You could also Greece and eighty by eating healthier to more meat down Iris any the increases in the past when he was quite ill and I saw results like improve mood and energy levels. The drawback was that the infusions took eight hours and they were kind of physically painful the eyes

version anyway, the pills are way better basis works by increasing your any levels. And activate something known as sir twins or our longevity cheese Which scientists say optimize the way we aids getting more and eighty is pretty easy. Just take two capsules a day to promote healthy aging listener. Can get one month free on a subscription to basis does the equivalent of forty five dollars off by visiting the Tri basis, dot com, slashed Jordan and using the code J Bp Basis, that's try basis, dot com, Slash Jordan, Promo Code, Jeep Bp Basis for one month, free so great, Deanna, groundbreaking supplement. This episode is also Actually, my camera my go to for social media posts, I'm not a graphic designer, but I love creating there's a lot that goes, behind the scenes of my dad social platforms and podcast a lot, but when it comes to creating Ethics or visuals is tricky without a good up. I found it,

but camera prowl and has been saving our team so much time they can create anything they want using whatever device there on it. recall, design platform that helps you create content in a few clicks. Instead of spending I was on a computer candle problem has a huge variety of was in their library. You can find Anything you need to create the perfect content for you or your brand features like premium funds those videos creating things with Canada, prowl has never been. This fund and you can create whatever you want from scratch. Really simple: two years you ve also work on time. projects are no more losing files since everything in the same place it gets better, though you and forty minutes can unlock everything on cam probably just one thousand two hundred and ninety nine a month allowing you to share at it and comment in real time design like a pro with canva pro right. Now, you can get a free forty, five day, extended trial. When you use my promo code, just go to canva me

Petersen to get your free forty five day extended tile, that's a envy. A dot am EU. Slash Petersen Canvas taught me slash. Petersen enjoyed a rush, the opposite, So so the question, then, is that you know what we now call take seriously the Kantian Planes Teton the two universal reason- and we can't really take seriously that- and I think the boys madness would have some of. Does it is forced to do what they have to say that dear ass reason, but tells us away from any kind of locality, any kind of This would have messy contingency off developments in human upbringing. I've been is not max into some people like to point out that count. Children and another went further than ten miles of Koenigsberg and and yet

had this this this this extraordinary impact. I think it was the german per Hyena who said the count was bar more deadly than Robespierre, because, whereas wrote simply decapitated, king can't decapitated that is to say they would be helpful. I think for the audience, for you to talk a little bit about count because they're not going be familiar in that way, so out solely on average just a ninety second digestible can seventy twenty four. No food aid is the kind of the sage of context which is Kaliningrad now now Prussia. Only speaking, he has had an enormous impact as subterranean influence these days. I think, because he's just so dont difficult to read German is really any just becoming a philosophical language, a lot of his early writings or in our in Latin, but the beat the explore Angela occurs in seventeen eighty one with the critique of pure reason. I want fascinating about that. Is that it's a critique

the over reason, that is to say it could he could reasons tendency always to ever reach itself beyond what could possibly given and be given incense experience and say he's got the critic met of positions in the rationalists lightness and and take out and so on in his sites, there is now a live Milton's mountains warning about the dominance of Satan. Just out of curiosity, as I was saw, said mountains eight and is always trying to transcend God, yes and he's light bring your right in the spirit of rationality. In some sense, yes, yes, well but there are some who would characterized cans impact like that suddenly, but did not pay one thousand seven hundred and eighty one to one thousand seven hundred and ninety he's just while these bits the critical philosophy he get stuff to get more interested interest in seventeen. Ninety three with the notion of evil and some the evil comes back in something that was inexplicable within the terms of the critical philosophy he suddenly realises that. But there's something that

car be reasoned and it's interesting. We know it's not the good which is tended to occupy, Plato asked on clinical minus its. It is evil, and perhaps he was it Patsy was affected by it and reports of what was going on in in Paris in the early some tea. Ninety schooners, but is in is enormous. If, when we talk about the turned to the south and the enlightenment period, there are many and Norton figures, but I think can't is dead. As the paradigm, he ease the archetype, he's the point of no return. There are very You philosophers in the history of philosophy where which is it worth? You can describe it the adjective pre and post that Socrates. Everyone comes in for socrates- is a pre socratic, even though the very fine philosophers before socrates- and similarly we talk about. Ray Kantian, imposed, Kantian, also be so. His impact is enormous in terms of this turned to the south, the private, the reason, confidence in no politician and a certain

very coherent account of the role of subjectivity in aesthetics and aid to the moral life and ethics, just the not the good. That is timely. sealed in to the sphere of practical reason, ethical reason and He then we go there. Ok, ok! So you know you started this or at least to some degree, with disk of what happened in Amsterdam Cathedral with the elevation. Of reason and so and I thought both Milton at that point, and so is this: is it reasonable to Point to count and say TAT is the philosopher. Who, in the west and the enlightenment figure who elevated reason to the position that God once occupied, I think that's. Of a fair summary able how a lot of people will would interpret cans impact somewhat, take a puzzle the of that young yeah? It's the

secularism we don't at an and it's not they much and until an antipathy to religion to God. There is also a sense of hope and optimism. Well in warranted, I mean look what happened when everybody became able to Think I mean that our technological mastery is is. The parcel of that process. It's it's not all negative, but It's still a matter of getting everything in its proper place in with me, I read Miltoners warning I as a warning that, when reason is elevated to the highest place that hell follows quickly behind then. I think about that, for example. Theirs thing more rational than Marxism. the axioms are wrong, but The logic that flows from the axioms is perfectly rational, perfectly logical enemy that's, why Solzhenitsyn was able to make the case that what happened under Stalin was true communism. It was the seems playing themselves out. They were arrayed. Logically in so rationality, I've been talking to some

cognitive scientists recently till you know: they're interested in artificial intelligence in the development of independent thinking, machines and the people who are really working hard on that are very, very interested in the idea of embodiment, because there convinced that intelligent systems, abstract systems even can exist in the absence of embodiment. That embodiment is I too, and so there is a theirs element of embodiment, that sort of something like the pro some concerns that you were talking about the sea necessary for for proper cod. Of operations to take place one of the interesting things about candid were, and I think he's he's he's onto something here- is that one of the things that home to him was the idea that what can be given incense experience and understanding what was then a nuke need new, fully newtonian physically the bus didn't fit in wouldn't accommodate what really matters Rationality, the sole freed and God and this week,

Reed him. He was trying to develop a wave of understanding and making room for these nation, and I think, with whither I and positive signs, and so on. My worry is always well but festival. I want to ask the committee signs. The scientists. Have you cracked mind body problem, that is to say do you write hard there. Try and monitoring and went in this affair, decayed way, you know, as far as we can see. Well But the question of the of the mind body problem is whether or not a complete science the most this decade, signs that it was possible to generate could follow, the mysteries of consciousness, that is to say, could purely physical the process is generating reason, intelligence and consciousness. It will. I think the answer to that is yes, when that happens, our notion of matter will be radically transformed right, because

that sort of assumes that we understand matter- and we don't understand consciousness- is like no. We don't understand either and when we stand both both will be radically different. Well, it it certainly the case, in in anglo american philosophy. It's the beyond what was unthinkable is now alive option in the philosophy of mind, and that is this doctrine of pants. I guess the idea that the concrete me- Cyril Universe, some exhibits, mind like a conscious properties and that's ok. Ok, so I'm gonna make a safe way from that. So I had been playing Some ideas here recently that, if you guys don't mind, like to run by you, a beatin. I've been king about what people might mean they talk about God and to tell you how I got to this point first, so is this idea, that's coming out of this post, modern and marxist critique of the asked the

primary organizing principle of West US first of that social institutions in the West are strong, according to western axioms, that's the first one and then one is that there are structured according to the arbitrary expression of power and will start with the second one. I think that is antithetical to the truth and the reason I think that is because when I ve met men of goodwill, who are successful in functional organizations, their creative. productive and honest and generous and kind and mentors, and they deviate from that when their design, for power, overtakes them, but that's a deviation from the genuine spirit, so then I was thinking. I had this vision at one point and it was a negative in central vision. It gave me some insight into ancestor worship and,

vision of all these men that had had an influence on me and my life I could see them all in and it was like the poor developments of them were the same, that sort of extended back into history a bit. I was thinking about historical figures in this sphere. it shining through, and I thought well that the Spirit shines through the ancestral figures, that's equivalent to the old testament, God the animated spirit of civilization. Now no, I'm not making a metaphysical claim here and now I'm saying that you know already talked about the fact that, when we're in a deep conversation, this thing the same about us. That's operating and I would say it like a biologist like Eu Wilson, would agree with that. We wouldn't better communicate with one another. If we were talking about something that was fundamentally human, because we wouldn't understand or axiomatic presuppositions. So we have to be speaking from the particular to the universal. In order for us to communicate the question is what the nature of the spirit that inhabits you when you're doing that, and then I think of it

as this benevolent spirit that operates through history, its responsible folder for the gold the threat of philosophical conversation down the ages and that wording dispirited rate that road and arranged the Bible. operating indifferent human beings and that's it. That's nod to the notion of its divine inspiration and so was thinking needs. These aren't attributes of God that that the atheists consider, because they reduce it to a set of relatively absurd axiomatic presuppositions, but they Experience shows elements to this, and so I think we exist within a hierarchy of values and that that Select our attention can you pay attention to what you value and there's a unifying tendency in the hierarchy of values. Has it has to be unified, because otherwise you exist in contradiction with yourself and everyone else. So there is a tendency towards unity. So that's part of this paternal spirit. I think

the merger, Elliot, made much of the war of gods in mythologies, it's very, very common theme and what happened is the gods war in one God comes out as superior he's. The dome with God and I, well that's associated with the move together of tribes, each tribe has its own narrative and its represented by a set of deities and when the tribes unite in conflict and cooperation, their religious stories fight in abstract space and there's. This proclaimed across time for that organise itself into something like a unity that that's the origin of monotheism and that's the Spirit God is well, and then I thought I won't. For all these attributes, but because I can bring them up one at a time then another one is. I was thinking about this common trope in american sports movies, I am pointing to them for a particular reason when you're in sport you trying to hit a target and if

do it. Well, then everyone celebrates you and that's the opposite of Hamas idea. That's the opposite of missing the mark, and so there's this guy, active celebration of the tendency of excellence in cooperation, addition to hit the mark and everybody celebrates- that's worship, everyone worships, that they don't even notice, it the same spirit and then there's this move. theme and Americans are very good at mythology, All things are you imagine that the the victorious quarterback is carried out of the stadium on the shoulders of his team made supported by his school and the town in triumph. and the cheerleaders are waiting for him and you think what I would men elect one of their members. To be the most attractive and that is because that's how you see the path at something like that, and that's a manifestation of the same spirit. That's not power.

And so this thing that we read and then ask close with this one of the things that really hit me when I was doing my genesis. Lectures was the realisation that the word Israel meant those who struggle with God, and I think that the way better definition of belief. True belief, then reliance on an axiomatic set of explicit presuppositions. It's like this is something you contend with right cycle The ideal is there an ideal if there is an ideal of what? nature is it. Is it a personality? How does it matter its across time. We don't know the answer to this, but we can definitely wrestle with the we wrestle with the we wrestle with that and that's that's. The right pathway, I think, is the hustling, rather than the dogmatic insistence that a particular sorry, that's a lot junk I can. I can. I want you back to talk to you early earlier that statement that I am not making this minute metaphysical came here.

because it seems to me that that the phenomenon pushes in a metaphysical direction in the sense that you talking about these people who have shaped to fully for the good and in a sense it is if they ve been animated by becomes a benevolent spirit. well you ain't gonna as it were, remain strictly secular, secular, restore naturalists than innocence. There. It is simply a product of these people, but bit by bit, I suggest that day, they lived experience. If you, like all all the phenomenon of the state as experience by these people is did they possess it? this is absolutely obliges them. So in a sense the phenomenon pushes something that is metaphysical, So let me ok so that let me out another wrinkle today

that's related to something that James, the Jameson while we talked about consciousness per se right in, and this is where the metaphysical starts to become interesting. Is that this spirit that calls and impels and judges as well. An end is in part the voice of conscience, and all of that I can't distinguish it from the active action of consciousness per se and Weed understand the metaphysical status of consciousness. Now one of the things I ve been thinking. For example, I wanted to talk to Richard Dawkins about this and I am afraid, its last meeting to ribbon. So I'm I'm somewhat hesitant do it, but you know are. We talked about natural selection, a lot, but he also talked about sexual selection. A lot and until recently, thirty years or so, biologist tend to concentrate more on natural selection, but

in a women are had programme is in the extreme they made up and across hierarchies of competence or power. I think competence fundamental Lee, and that means that our whole evolutionary history was shaped by the selection of consciousness and so like the the the mechanism that generates random variation and allows for the menu from which the selection is made. That might be random, but the selection process is very well not random, and it looks to me men's consciousness, elevates men to positions of status and women's consciousness, selects those man and there selected on the basis of power. That's not true that's not even true chimpanzees, by the way and their more violent and much more primitive than we are so like that deep ethic that we're

Talking about that doesn't run itself out. Even it, certainly not only western, it doesn't even looked like it's only human and the wall, who I'm gonna be talking to at some point on this part. Gas is made very much of that. You know that there's this natural at that you see emerging in chimpanzee behaviour in there in their hierarchical behaviour within troops. so he said the tyrannical chimps get torn to shreds by their support to ban together, you can dominate the group with power, but its very unstable. What if you just did chip in here I mean what, if it's obviously the case that there are behaviour patterns, can be described, is certainly out altruistic and that we as it work and describes as ethical and it certainly the case, Jordan, that you can you can, as it were, fear arise that what's going on in say, sexual selection is the operation of consciousness, but forget that somebody like Dawkins is going to say that the

simply is no such thing. There is no such thing as consciousness if, by consciousness you understand some, element of reality. Some ontological ingredient of reality is somehow not fully reducible too underlying neurological. Was I then it's book on consciousness, which was aptly criticised as consciousness, explained away its by no means the best book I read on consciousness because I dont get wrestles with, because the the ontological significance of consciousness, is equivalent to the ontological significance of being because the mystery, the mist, The question is how Is there anything without awareness of it and good luck? Good luck! solving that issue in any If it is reducible to the material. My answer to that is well that'll. Just material transcendent in a way that we don't understand. So you can I'd say you have omniscient knowledge of the structure of Matter

consciousness is reducible too. That is like. No, you, don't you don't know anything about matter at the fundamental quantum level? Let's say it, so serious and peculiar absolutely but we can at least say- and this is a very kantian thought that it- condition of the possibility of any successful, empirical or scientific inquiry into the way the world is that we are a subject. We exercise our consciousness? We exercise our reason and we exercise that the laws of thought so, so I agree with you. I mean I think, those that the problem with a new atheists is not so much better atheists. Amidst the a priori commitment to that doctrine, metaphysical naturalism, which is roughly the idea that all trades, scientific, trades or reducible to scientific trades, and it's a non starter. The far more interesting golden thread that you talked about earlier

sometimes known as the perennial philosophy has exactly that is it is the two, but that being capital? be being is, is the v fundamental metaphysical question I want you stopped approaching deep philosophical problems and in way than you do. to see a remarkable convergence between April monotheism Don T and punish, adds the question of whether Brahman an admin, a one that is still being in mind in the South South, a one we see it there those sorts of questions are already so no particular to religious systems. I think, if somebody like Heidegger, you know Heidegger, supposed to of sport, the kind of the great atheistic turned season and twentieth century existentialist phenomena, logical philosophy. He says:

The fundamental question is: why is there something rather than enough action? Why be lily? So ok so so. There's the metaphysical so part of what this hinges on is the metaphysical status of consciousness and and- and you can make a case that that equivalent to two this question is well what David Chalmers, whose maybe the most the most well. Don't call me inside is studied consciousness. You know he's he he has one set of the hard question. You know the hard question about consciousness, but for me the hard question is the question of being itself because I can't distinguish between being an awareness. You can think mothers and objective world without subjectivity. It's like we'll try to think that through and see how far you get it. Just did you just into problem after problem with it and- and I mean there's technical problem, at the level of physics as well, but there certainly metaphysical problems, and so so then the question is what what is the? What is

Cosmo, logical significance of consciousness and and that that the central question right, maybe that's the central question and when I look at the inside of a Christian, cathedral, and I see the logos spread out against the sky, because that's what the dome is affiliated with the sun. There's this proposition consciousness is what engendered reality itself and that we partaken that and let's say we abandoned that notion. It's like ok! Well, then, do you have any dignity as an individual and we get into the post question is: what are you there isn't individuals or at all or you just this, part of the identity, assure you just one of your immutable physiological characteristics: right, you're, sexier, gender you're, race, that's matter man and there's no individual soul there. What? Why can't? I just reduce you, did that What are you gonna use as an argument? Well, I just have just a very exhausted by mad. I dont want to add to the keep putting into too much better.

a very good line, Dawkins and others to remember. You should remind him that if he comes on your broadcasters is metaphysics ways, berries its undertakings, that is to say, every time there is an attempt to say we can all of that mumbo jumbo. That was being talked about by those clever philosophers, all those stupid religionists. That's all! That's all done now. That's that's a warning. Sign, it's a sign that best actually total total confusion and all sorts of a kind of fragmentation the quest for meaning in the quest for the answer to that the question of the meaning of Billina indictment of the perennial philosophy. I it's an attempt, certainly to reject it- and I mean, if you lookin, say pedantic systems. You look look an indian philosophy. There were materialists at that was a school of materialism, but it was, but it was that it was a relatively small and short lived, a belief system.

See materialism in the Greek Harriman. Well, you Satan Democritus Democritus his optimism. You see it The curious, of course, but it is. This- is a minority report that there is it's a Quintus. It's a strange superstition in an ancient thought, but let me just take it apart a bit James because you mentioned earlier that, among I think, is cognitive scientists that you are discussing that discussion of pan psyche is amiss, become non heretical because the notion that there is a mystery in matter see, but it isn't materialism exactly that's the fault is perhaps perhaps it's it's determined The clock, work, materialism, that's essentially newtonian and ride. We, that's not right. I mean it's proximately right, but but but but beyond. It's not right matter is very deep mystery and can't see how you can get rid of the problem of consciousness by

positive materialist substrate. When there's no way that you can get rid of the metaphysics of matter. Very quick you mention David Chalmers, as you say here, this brilliant young philosopher who had ninety ninety four publishes Phd pieces, the conscious mind, which brought back in onto the table that what he called hard problem of consciousness and he paused start in different ways that this sum thing absolutely irreducible about qualitative experience, but the poor that opens up that heat. That then, I think, leads him towards taking pants he's very very seriously. This is just really in the last ten years I think the idea will okay, we ve got consciousness, it's a hard problem. We just can't get rid of it, and yet we get rid of matter either. We can't get rid of the truce. The physical science is a week, but we can The work out how enough these bit together. it: couldn't be laws of nature, they couldn't be

cycle analytical psychological laws. The laws of thought are fundamentally different from the laws of nature. So how do we fit these two together and cycles and at that point, though, it might seem crazy to the person on the street suddenly, to seem quite an attractive an attractive? I counted the name, trip ultimate reality, and I spoke just it just as it a quick footnote to that once you there terrorism do Kinsey materialism materialism is, is, is dickensian, long gone and the dialogue between the parties, needle philosophy and anglophone philosophy, pan cyclists is back on elaborate on that. That's would stop me exact, because now I'm trying to figure out well there's this what we should do, pan psyches him again for the audience, but then ok so what sort of dialogue does that open up? As far as you are concerned? Well,

my view is that sounds like it's. It's it's early days and at least in its modern contemporary adoration. I think you can say that I was told that if you read the day on embarrassed of his treatise on the soul, that's sold over the place that the plants have a nutritious. It's all. Animals have sexual so and human animals have both of them and irrational fuel cells as it were. All of organic life is minded. If you move to the basic framework of Abraham monotheism. Then, look if it follows very naturally that if you ve got an axiomatic they want to mind at the bottom of the universe, as it were, the Mai the creator is, it is a minded being is ideal is not material and everything. all of reality, distinct from God is created. and including as it were space time, then the idea that its

The universe. Is we discover it as we come upon? It is shot through with mind. Is legible, just to mind to turn to the minded inquiry that happens covenanted scientists are trying to rabble the mystery of the brain in itself the wooden isomorphism that between consciousness? So does that mean? Does that mean that is this insistence in in the judeo christian tradition that God is outside of the material world an outside of time and space, and that what does in some sense, is dead and material. Didn't matter, and then, when God disappears, were left with dead matter, so so Here's the dialogue between the the advocates of the judeo christian tradition and the pan, cyclists well there's only one time that Aquinas ever loses his cool in about ten million words that that that he right, but one is with this poor guy called David Dino who dared to suggest.

that God might be a material being which which appointed said? Clia Eddie Otis, which is simply stupid bit the idea that the crew? Asia could be somehow bound up with his creation was simple logic: cooling impossibility within Abraham, Well? Isn't there any difference between the mind body problem and the guy the Spirit and the material world problem? Are they the same problem? two different planes that's an extremely acute question. it's one. That is puzzled me for for for a long time, or at least attracted me. I think you are absolutely right to say that there are also of interesting, structural, metaphysical and theoretical parallels between standing in front of me, the God well relation and as it were,

the mind well relationship the human mind. This is all: are the sole world relationship right because absolute know it it. I mean it. It could be that were the contact point between God outside of time and space in the material world, but then that does big the proper quest The pan psyche is a question which very interesting one. So that precisely the guy movie, oppressed ology I do not know what to say to this discussion, but just just two points: John a moment ago, you talked about in the EU. Vision this is another and absent in matters I didn't cause. It does not quite true. Is it because in Europe's judeo christian tradition, fear of God, present in the world. And also you have the inclination. So so even if one does want to say

What one is one of the stupidest as Aquinas thought and say: God is material, don't say that certainly It is not true to say that that God and the material world a divorced they're, not there is one I wouldn't say. I wouldn't say that I wouldn't say that it's I'm thinking about it, I'm I'm trying to think about it with regards to the idea of this Anna mating spirit, the let's. Let's say, let's say that part of, see. One of the things I ve thought is that minimum. What Christianity is thousands of years long discussion about what constitutes the human ideal at this point psychological viewpoint now I understand the metaphysical implications. You know that and I dont want to dispense with them. But it's best to start with what simple there's this discussion of of of what kind due to the ideal and were or were were expelled.

bring discussing it and when we explore discuss in all sorts of interesting ways right, because it's not merely rational. We bach rights. This soul, inspiring music, and that makes feel a particular way and that's a hint ass to the nature of the ideal and then there's great cathedrals that are built all across Europe and their on wiring masterpieces of stone and light right, so opposites conjoined and they bring the primeval forest into the city, and they prefer color in the music is set in there and then the invocation of the ancestors and and and and and the dogmatic formulations that that Christianity consists of that go back centuries as well and at all of that- and that's part of this exploration and to me the expiration of that central animated spirit and when we debating the postmodern is to say everything is power, this

is this sort of thing that needs to be pointed out as rejoinder. It's like no, its, not we're doing our best to manifest this ideal that were discussing we're flawed and fragmented and ignorant, and we don't know so. For example, you asked me earlier Nigel. What sort of thing I had to discuss in order to make people attracted say, it would discussion of Genesis and what it is the guy. I try to get the wheat from the text and and in chaff. I think a lot of that's my ignorance, it's not necessarily chaff, but I'll leave me because I can't I don't have the intellectual wherewithal to make sense of it. So I just leave it be without despising it because I can't To stand, it doesn't mean there isn't something to it. Now. You know what we're still because we have problems like well the idea of the resurrection you know which. Is obviously very big problem in in in a very fundamental censored. I leave. be, except to say,

I have seen no, studies of mythology that there stories of dying in resurrecting gods throughout history and died. of course, seems to be of that although its not only that, but it something can't touch and that's a problem, but that doesn't mean that there isn't, This investigation that we're all undertaking, including us in this conversation of what constitutes the ideal and how we could manifested if we could only understand it and I think that's all leave ably compelling to people and its it's, it's, not only compelling they die without it is, We can't live with only knowledge of our limitations, which we have to be moving towards an ideal when Emily, just it just a quick, quick thought there I mean sending within it. christian tradition. The claim is that guy The decision to become incarnate is not accidental. He chose this.

the a human being, not just because he had to choose some human being in order to become a human being, but each There is a human being and, as it were, exhibited the qualities that he wanted to, as it were disseminate as a kind of moral, an exemplar that would profoundly culture. To cultural, too the values and the examples of the time, so you think of the kind of that the weakness of Christ and some contexts deserting the that obviously sense of self sacrifice, the radical openness to those, on the margins, the bore, in particular the sir, mainly on clean and, of course, to two to women, and so it's as if the this is completely subverting the kind of the sort of power narrative, the dominated for faster Palestine predicting the format that that it does.

the wrecked the roman legions and and the roman impairing him as it. So I think that said I too quickly Could I say something very quickly on the the rest correction and dying and rising gods, he's doing, I mean it's it's. I am not a specialist initiative, the history of the kind of mythology, but I think that you know a lot of those myths are in the first instance, I think, to be met, and understood as myths by devotees of various mystery counsel of the period, so there are certain claims made a bow. A serious and others and this summer that they are kind of fertility gods. But if I think, if you dig deep into the into the store the very, very different from the kind of narrative rather shocking narrative, but you have in in the gospel That stress the

the quality of the resurrection Union like if you look at the story, the story of OSIRIS is one. That's really fascinated me because you are so the Egyptians. This goes back towards this goal about rationality so that Egyptian? we're trying to understand what the most fundamental principle of sovereignty they were trying to understand. The fundamental principle of sovereignty, so That would be something they were trying to understand in opposition to the present that it was merely power. So say you were the Faro well what John defied your existence as the Faro and answer? Was you the reincarnation of the union, of all Cyrus and Horace, and so then question is what were those things while Horace isn't Horace is more like Christ, more like the individual or Cyrus, the father or Cyrus's the state. In fact, the provinces of regarded as parts of OSIRIS body, so it's the body of the state like the body of laws, that's another way of thinking about it

and oh Cyrus was wilfully blind, archaic, anachronistic and what he was particular wilfully blind to wear the machinations of evil, and that's why he died, because this is evil brother over threw him and so that that's it that's a cautionary story, the consequence of the blindness of the state, now he's a reanimated by Horace and horrors logic or rationality. Horace is the eye and the eye pays attention, and so there something different. Do something very radically different between attention and rationality, like attention is allowing is in some sense right. It's opening yourself up to the world Horace is, falcon, who can see everywhere. Falcons have extremely acute vision and he journeys to the underworld world and our Cyrus's down their dead and reanimates him. So choruses, the hero who risk

is the dying father from the underworld and they're. So that's part of the birth rate, the reader, resurrection story there. It says what is the resurrecting principle and the resurrect principle is live attention, acting on dogmatic certainty if something like that theory of consciousness, in some sense it is, I mean, of course there are lots of different versions of the story and desires, starting, I think the most popular one has it that he's getting ripped into fourteen pieces and is the rice is tries to do to put him back together in it, but buddy you're right. It does not end with him, in the underworld in this sort of shady shadowy semi conscious realm he's here demonized, and this generate all sorts of fascinating mystery, cults, thereafter and and interesting is that you couldn't, you can do that sort of mythological psychoanalytic analysis quite quite easily that that the stories lend themselves to that kind of analysis. Where's, I think,

you're getting with the early christian attempts to grapple with this extraordinary and actually offensive scandalous claim is pull books. Let's get scandal to the Jews and and and create as Maria Madness to the Greeks is not that a truly. This wasn't what was supposed to happen. He was simple to come, along and and and and throw off the roman yoke notice die and is horribly ignominious way, and then some suddenly coming back. This was not one second uncle. Judaism was expecting that some evidence that there was a there would be a razor reaction at the end of time, but the idea that goal would become would be in and is it? Why would what what emerged and, as I said earlier, leaders authenticating signature through this very dramatic and is it plainly, historical event was play no, not part of their declarations at all. so I just sitting there very ignorant, clear differences, between the two- and I think a lot about that

in relation to see parallels really comes from its Its Fraser, really it's it's a James phrase in the late nineteenth century and and that gets picked up by some french dollars, I think in, but I think that the parallels with those stories of absolutely fascinating in the area parallels with the new testament? Don't really stand up to scrutiny? That's just my view. Don't you can I can I take us back a little bit. You talk again about the the importance for payment trigger young people of this pursuit of the ideal and way back. You mention Pierre Giant their development and at the stage of development you call him the messianic stage, I'm thinking about a lot of contemporary young people. who are party to they crusade for Social Justice over gender, anti racist, colonial and On one hand, I want to pull them, I want to say,

you even deciduous, often in because of justice in that's, that's a worthy investment. And then I observe it now as my own diamond as an undergraduate they did the adolescent it crusade is of course, its option, that is, it, is intolerant. Its combined its own whiteness, its intolerant of those who will get impatient with them, nowadays that social Justice benighted suddenly roused and gradually it was Marxism, but what strange strange, I think is that It's not as adolescents were invested in this social justice crusade, it seemed as if the means than this one there, the millions just as zones or who are they who's driving, isn't and also as a christian movie on this

It's us. You know it's our failure to have conversations like this. It's driving it really right Is it why things so if we are offering a sufficiently attractive alternative than it wouldn't be so powerful because otherwise we have to point to someone. You know him. Doesn't seem that useful to me I mean it's industry to take two to give some credit. Let's say I speaking broadly the hard problems. like the answer so obvious, but but I think it's best To take it on is a failure of the academy. does it does the Congo's wagging now is not the kind of conversation haven't university classroom as a rule? Yes, it's. Certainly not. The kind of conversation that I was allowed to have at Cambridge, let's say so as a consequence of what we ve been talking about. So Let me ask you a question guys. This is part of spirit idea, so

thinking about you is power, the central organizing tendencies and does not imply that power is the central ambition of human beings, and then I thought well, let's thing but the people that I know and admire. Ok, so there I think maybe about my graduate student mentor, Robert Peel, and so in very even know anyone in graduate school? When I went to graduate school, I didn't what it was about at all. You know, and he took me under his wing, I would say, and treated me, as I wouldn't say, as an equal, but as someone who had valid things to say always had time for me and he allowed his administer native acumen and his wide range of resource is to unite with my ability. degenerate creative ideas and we can operated and it was great and I never felt like. I was an exploitative power relationship. I felt

that he was a mentor and that and then that I have already got me to think, because all the people that I admire, I think one of the things that I found that so characteristic about them is that they love the opportunity, people who are talented and worthy, let's say and vied them with opportunities in education and advantages and a pathway. Two further realization, and then I thought I don't I think there is a more fundamental pleasure than that and that part of that, estimating spirit and that's it. Power, it's like it's the delight in I tried this. Testified. Technically, it's the delight you take. the best you can serve the best in someone else and that in that. My most was the Jordan is No, when, when post modernists talk about power They will talk about cynically. oppressive pirates, unjust power, son and I want to say, there's nothing.

With power, since you even describe the influence of this man on you wasn't exercise of a certain policy of neutrality, authority fishing areas and we need we need to get past the notion that power or even hierarchy or of themselves we'd things when they can be, but the needn't be and migration to the did the post modern this view is it it's. It's it implausibly cynical supplies that eats unbelievably cynical it couldn't. I can't see how you could possibly generate a more cynical theory about what concept due to the automated spirit of civilization. Then it's the arm hurry expression of power, We will want to power nothing wrong with that but whether the trick is to use it well at everyone. What spoke? No one likes to be powerless,

and why should we, but we need the right kind of power for the right countries must begin when you speak about power. In that sense, you want to be free, at least to some degree of the arbitrary expression of power on the part of other people. right and we need to differentiate what power means. That means authority. It means competence. It me a wider range of knowledge- means wider access to resources. It means wisdom like those it means it means competent chip, productive generosity and those are much more powerful forces than the arbitrary expression of power and that its own, people who are failures. Morally, that default to the use of our two structure, their social relations. But I can't see when I haven't seen this argument put forth in a particularly coherent way. What are you saying? It's arbitrary power like per hour power is actually a weak force in

Harrison to these other modes of social organisation and somehow we in taken aback in the academy we haven't been able to make were guilty. I think we're Guilty and that's part of it and so the quest. is then well. What are we guilty about in one that undermining our moral authority. as does that law, old latin tag, abuses known Tal. It uses that abuse does not invalidate use and that just seems very obvious that there are no power free zones and bit be wary of the person who claims that they are setting up by a power free anarchy. There. Often most tyrannical and and and power hungry kinds of people- and I certainly I tried with my first undergraduates. We worked through Platos Republic, the neck and one of the ways tradition. Is understood. Of course, it is a dialogue about justice, but it's about also the proper dispersal, an arrangement of power

you get this power hungry guy at the beginning of the dialogue through Simancas, who is, only interested in brute strength, and that is the only account, just justice he will give as it were, the power of the fish and so I tried to say that, in fact, this is the kind of idea. of power that is Anna mating figures like Fucker, but I try to also underlined that this is does. This does not eradicate the proper use of pouch, and I make this slightly Give the slightly silly example of going to the dentist. When I'm met the dentist than I mean the dentist check I do now accused my dentist other pressing. My email is, there is an appropriate asymmetry in the relationship between me and my dentist, and just as there is in its voluntary, riding on a huge part of it. They might be involuntary to say. One of the irony is, I think, is where we are starting to talk about the university, always starting to talk about war sort of hard left.

thorough, Terry and ideas of the market and The state you are produced, quickly getting antidote to the abuse of power that are in extremely constructive mechanisms so This is it. This is a critique that comes up again and again, but whether we are talking about them gets in the way the higher talks about whether we talking about the english common law or whether it p about the free pursuit of truth in a three having vibrant intellectual culture? This cannot be imposed from the top, there must be one hi talks about its mechanisms of spontaneous order period makes the same case, and so did the biologists to study the emergence of morality from games, the same idea. We bank seppy our banks, up, showed that if you like rats, wolves drive to juvenile rat strive to play. They worked rough and tumble

why would you take would be an expression of power but and if you air, a raft with another it's ten percent bigger the ten percent, bigger rat will pin the smaller rat, and so you want at once and you think power, but then you, air them repeatedly and the next time they meet the little rat asks the big rat to play in theirs. as they do that the kind look like the way dogs invite to play, and then, big rat will deign to play but if he doesn't let the little rat win. One third of the time across repeated play about little rat won't play in that like. That's rats, you know and our way of complex social hierarchies, but that's like that's a major league finding right, because even rat hierarchies and they're not known for their moral nature, rats, there's more this element of play and end and play

is actually a specific mammalian circuit, and you know in a conversation like this there's plenty of play too. That's one of the things that makes it extremely and so that Anna Mating Spirit is also the spirit of play right and plays is the manner in which we experiment with manifestations of the ideal. That's what play is not an point. Is that it's it's organic? Its? Is it why it's good spirits driven it's not rationalized is not imposed as it were from from the top down, as a kind of organs is chaos as it were, chaos permitted within certain parameters, and I think that's what any good that diversity. That's what you are used as it were, That's what organised gardeners is US branch is exactly that. It's the bordering of a zone where chaos can Joanna fist itself. Equal It is right

it will then another way think he sang. It would be that the walls of the university of the walls of any any thriving intellectual culture should be the walls of of old garden. As it were that the chaos is who were has parameters, but they should be complete pre even for the people who the university is entrusted with research, and teaching to testing to pursue their ideas, some of them, may be disastrously wrong. Others will end up being brilliantly right and they will, over time, be a kind of a through precise, through this freedom. Precisely because its implausible I suppose that any threat to guess that three or four brilliant academics will will have all the answers to all the questions that there's a kind of I sort of spirited intellectual inquiry that that automates, that seemingly quite chaotic process, but it wont what yields river or meat I've had a vision of the proper father with, the family, as he

sets the parameters within which play can occur so when children develop its there, their play is unbelievably important, mean that's how they found that's how they structure themselves and their social relations, and so, if there are deprived of play, pangs of gin judge demonstrated this too rats that are deprived of play. They prefrontal cortex is don't mature properly and you can use attention deficit disorder, drugs like redolent to combat that behaviorally and then, if you like, then play they have a burst of play in their brains, develop and so the proper paternal. beer. It sets boundaries which wall out too much chaos and allow playful endeavour to manifest itself within that world enclosure, and that's that of this animated spirit is well. That's not power. and it has this spontaneity and this capacity four spontaneity generation spontaneous order that you described,

I think that's also where belief systems can can help that is but belief, systems that are not too prescriptive and so on, looking for a certain norms, God rails, coordinating bet that help to animate these these coordinating mechanisms that are not too too prescriptive, so. These are not only want to talk to both view about this, then. So you know, if you look at how people described the religious belief now they're not going to church and they d admirers of dogma, but they described themselves in the majority of spiritual, so there's Spirit dogma paradox now, problem, and you see this even in people like SAM Harris, because he's technically atheistic, but he's very interested in spiritual pursuits does wanna concretize that and maybe that's because it would be then become prone to rational critique

and you don't want to lose it right. But the thing is is that you need dogma They, like, oh Cyrus and Horace their part part of the same thing, and you can't move ahead without axiomatic, presuppositions bs, because they have to be its. seems to me, and maybe this has to do with the eye. The christian idea that you're supposed to look for the evil within in also ear destined to operate with a set of axiomatic presuppositions. You can't help it. You can't make a move forward without it, but you be cognizant at the same time that in many ways that you don't understand that your radically wrong and play than is something like an exploration of that. Yes, absolutely I didn't, even if not you wanted it at any thoughts on that, but you yes, I I think come. I think. That's that's all

slowly. Right, I mean I think it was just agenda once said that the only alternative to the doctrine of original sin is the doctrine of original perfection. It's a kind of its it. Isn't that what what? What what Do we have a tendency towards tendency towards the good that has been corrupted towards towards the bad guy? I think or that there is a sense that suddenly, with most established religions that there's a kind of a generally speaking count of human nature, but story to tell about the evil within us is, and what that tendency is, and I that injects? Even in its even look at worst chapters in the history of institutional religion, a certain humility, a certain healthy, pessimism in the in the the possibilities of human beings at a certain kind of an estimation that but there's gonna be.

virginity, there's got to be it's gonna be a lot of mistakes and, as is very, very different from the kind of jewish I'd optimist. Optimistic, account of human nature that we get, that we get from four from the enlightenment that all that needs to be done is to clear away superstition, and then we can look forward to as it were, that the sunlit uplands other of a perfect utopia where everyone is is kind a nice to each other. Well enough, It is that the graveyards, an undue concentration camps, the twentieth century, is certainly an undue come under cut back. So you? Yes, I mean. Did this idea of a region tea and that sense stood society somehow needs those sorts of God rails. Those sorts of those parameters, the wolf, anticipate

mistakes and inhuman priorities is. Is crucial governments struggled to deliver that word, Let me ask Nigel question here that comes out of this discussion. Nigel. You talked earlier about the idea that that a religious belief in some sense could be it inoculation against idolatry and ideology. And so I want to ask bit more about that, but with a twist on this idea about evil, because one of the things that I dont like about the claim of oppressive patriarchy, is that it it identified. as evil externally in the social world right, it's that malevolence exists. So that's it that's kind of an original sin variant. You know the idea that there is in fact malevolence and evil. Well, where is it? Ok? which in society, and then it is patriarchal spirits like well, that's really dangerous as far as I'm concerned, because well If it's someone else and their evil, then all the

restraints are lifted and we ve seen that many many times in the twentieth century is there's a christian the christian idea, I believe- and I dont think its limited to chris- DNA, but very well developed and Christianity is that the best placed to search for evil is within an ear, pull your define plenty of it as well and keep you occupied? If you want something to do, and this is that art of inoculation yet the other? It is me just going back to you as it comes about postmodernism struck me When does not say that everything around as it is about power and the abuse of power, It gives the postmodern this life to abuse power in the treatment of all people. So, for example, because I'm I'm white privileged in God, help me in Oxford

nothing. I say about: let's say: colonialism is taken seriously because of causes on their rationalization of my mind. My social political interests, and so my critics Take what I say seriously, don't listen to what I say Mr President, what I say constantly. Do me injustices about it. Its justified, because there in the right- and I'm really, motivated by unjust power. Ironically, of course, they are abusing power themselves, but they don't see it so it struck me that that's one feature of foreigners more scientific term. There, the social justice, crusade is that it is a kind of christian heresy, I want to be a kind of unbalanced form of Christianity because, on the one hand, This only doses warrior has certain they got a bit about that, they d, the more

while the old testament profits they got that bit and any better. nickel concern for the dispossessed and indeed absolutely absolutely so that's about that's all right, but what will they lack is a a christian sense of compassion for, week, feeble humanity which we all are Crooked and then the sense foot, but the line between good and evil that runs right down the middle of every one of us, so so four christian can regard as someone who done wrong as simply sub human or of of another kind than themselves, because we're all sinners and its sense of all the universal common syn that generates the obligation of compassion even for the longest. How does that? Does that mean? Does that mean technically, then, that you judge someone's character by how they treat their enemies,

only legs- are fundamental christian claim it's in and because I do believe very frequently that people who say that central automating spirit of Civilization is power, is a confession and a desire both at the same time, that's right. I really believe that an end, and in any case, so so the issue of the enemy so do the couples that are jumbled together, my mind and I saw was thinking. One of the things I tried to figure out for a very long time was why this making the garden of Eden was associated with Satan So very, very weird thing, and it's it's it's outside the domain of rationality. It's an intuitive leap of unbelievable magnitude, its it when I think I figured it out it just about flattened me. So, there is an idea that this It is the enemy of mankind and that's a biological reality serpent than the devouring.

Serpent is the enemy of mammals. We could say that its very old idea so then Question is where we have an enemy that we have to contend with right. That's that's an adaptive question. We What is the enemy? What's a snake? What's a snow, in the garden and that no matter how well, build walls in and how carefully You aggregate the territory there still that possible. The malevolent, and so then the quest It is well, what's the malevolence. Well, it's the same. Well. Maybe it's the existence of snakes, but then then it gets. ecologist. It's like well, it's! snake in your soul, could be the snake in your enemy but then even more sophisticated, not know the ultimate enemy is the snake in your soul, and you see that right away and Genesis with the story of cane enable because Kane is possessed by the enemy, the adversary right. It's it. It's an analogy of distort it's an The law of the relationship between Christ and Satan, more concretize, but

so sophisticated right because the whole one of the things humanity has to figure out, is what's our enemy. What what can destroy us? It's like well the snake that that's natural world in predation its law? What about that and other people? Why? Yes, what about that? We can demonize! The enemy in no time but If we really sophisticated, we think no, no, no that's most. Mental adversary is the one within and then that also it offers the. Opportunity of something like a romantic adventure, because You can tell young people. Overthrow the oppressive patriarchal tyrant, you could say no, you should seriously contend with the evil within that's a far more depth called Endeavour and a far more noble endeavour and end it Seems to me that that something A religiously inspired humanity's would make that a central issue and that's part of the building of character,

do you know about this negative is well taken. On the one hand, it is a kind of objects vacation at work, as they. The equalising the snake right at bought. your point, is well taken. The stake is in the garden, explain how it got there. He just didn't it's on the inside, not the outside, so is it wasn't you that will make sense, and what that means is that no human enemy can can ever be entitled the enemy because they always also us. That's a restraint on on The way we treat you. That's what you're trying to weaken, trying to lecture to my students about nazi fascism and particularly the concentration? situation that the best way to understand that is as a perpetrator, not a victim area Do you have students, you shouldn't

this, because they make us offers them a tariff of doses, worries dancing to get. It their natural started? There never told it. They don't take this. like. I took the idea that there was something to learn from Nazism and what happened in in the communist state seriously. It's like. The idea there's an idea of its propagated for promoted, in particular by a jewish people, and rightly so that we should never forget what happened in Nazi Germany, but then think, what what do you mean? Forget you mean remember what what do you mean? Remember you mean understand what what does it mean to understand? That's easy, you're, the perpetrator, so you have to think well Would you have been a Nazi concentration camp Guard that possible that the answer is no, but also possible that the answer is yes, because they were people and there isn't there isn't at much evidence in the oven, that they were all psychopathic. That's That's pretty slim there. There were certainly pass among them and so

That's a terrifying thing to contend with. It's like you, weren't, the victim you weren't the hero who rescued the Jews or maybe you're all of those you know and fair, if we could investigate all those possibilities, but perpetrator, that's right up there, man, and then you could see whether social justice worries are insisting upon that in some sense, too. as they say, will look at the evil. It's like fair enough. You know who can do who can dispute that, but but it's the locale. It's because did not the responsibility isn't within it becomes too easily pathologist it it that's what it looks like to me and it and it takes way the adventure mean. This is one of the things that I've been trying to talk to christian professors. I dont mean professors technically, but about the fire this the adventure. That's part and parcel of this ethical process is not sold enough to young people because they would buy it if it was

it was as romantically portrayed as the opportunity to participate the self righteous Riot. I think you're you'll, both onto something very, very important, that the as soon as we start to accept project a sin and comparability onto systems and structures, raw and away from from individual agency things start to go. Very, very badly wrong. I know that desert Maybe there's a tradition, indignation, catholic spirituality at school, the contemplated lucky, where you aspire to The counter reformation idea away, you're supposed to read the gospels very, very carefully you're supposed to imagine yourself. That's why, common theme is the aspires to imagine yourself at the at the foot of the. Ass, not as it were, a friend or as a follower of Christ. As part of the mob

I'm not leaving our likely statistically right, I seem to remember that in the filming the passion of the Christ in two thousand and four Gibson the hands that you see hammering the nails of Christ to playing cries- Jim cabin zeal into the cross- one male gibsons- answer his point was that you you, that that scene is not how the people and soon by the way, is not a sin. Drawers sin is an assumption that its other people right I think in credit increasingly now the idea that it's that it can be outsource, not justice systems and structures. But two. Pathologies all therapeutic conditions and The idea is that the citizen, as I said just now, that did that so what we do believe in sin anymore. So much as syndromes, which is. profoundly disempowering, say you Europe, because you'll your medical lies in you

pathology, rising, you're, you're, wrong, doing as soon as you ve done that you are not able to address it will overcome it you're not able to, as it will develop those habits of responsibility that you, but you at about. So well, and that I think this is the part of reason than that that young people are sensitive joy, drawn to your ideas. It is the thing is, when I tell tee, becomes a little kid tell young people to clean up the rheumatism, because I think the room is trivial. I think because the room is way more important than they think it is wrong, discovery that, in its part of this localization of of ignorance and malevolence, is- and I think it is part of central Christian thought that it's more difficult to rule yourself than to rule the city and the prime. The prime as for motivation about the sins of the world is to start with yourself and half see how that, if it, yourself, then it's something else write them something else. Well then

natural world and and resentment will rise from that or Oryx the place. Your or fathers built rotten and Jill so now. Let's talk about this idea that this movement is a heretical brand of Christianity or an offshoot of Christianity bits one of the questions you guys it forward to me. So What are the similarities? We talked about a couple of mortar the differences which we talked about a couple of him too. I guess is there anything else there to flesh out on one hand, similarities state the day of the passion for justice and concern for the right for aid marginalizing. The poets- that's all good, but there is. This this notion that yesterday the problem, lies elsewhere. a complete sense of self righteousness, and therefore a complete lack of forgiveness or compassion for those whom using a wrong no just you just

going forward upon you made me. You said you said Jordan, that that when you impress on your streets. You know that the source of you may like lie inside them about its possible, but the day they might for weakness had been up I can't go not another matter. A little later they're, they're scared by this notion, and I underline lighting cruelty. It's not mere weakness. It's like no hope. We think in this. This might not appeal in very remote. couple way to the darkest parts of your nature, not terrible thing to investigate. just a minute, interfered and paralyzing. So how do you move them beyond that point? And I was thinking, but apart it is, I tell I tell them or make it implicit too, that you cannot understand your possibility for good until you understand your possibility for evil cause. You don't take yourself seriously enough. It's like, while

what kind of an eighteen year old near do well or maybe you're forty year old, near dwell what matter. You're, just a collection of dust and some spect like place in the outer door was most anyways like no, no, you look at what you're with holding and what you're in collecting and unless you're going to say that pain itself is irrelevant. can you say that your sins are trivial and if their, not well, then you're, not trivial, you're certain trivial as a perpetrator? So then question is how, may how nontrivial could you be as Savior instead of a perpetrator, so that lights a spark it's like war and now these the look and who could I be while ice you can be a perpetrator, but you can be the opera If that, whatever we could start with perpetrate, and we can flesh out the opposite and their order there on board with that their there? and no wonder because like of course, right certainly consistent Jordan with somebody

influential accounts of how the Holocaust could possibly have happened leaving to one side is difficult, neurologic debate about the uniqueness of the shower and so on, I think was it. Is it Four Browning Richard Browning, the need that extraordinary book principle tat, where, where, where he, he studies that that least battalion involved one of them. I think that one of the aims that group and unjust to address staggering normality of the people involved in that conscripted they were not die. Hard. Ideologues die hard believers some of these lorries lodged they even objected. They weren't punished when they objected context. It is. It is a deadly book, terrifying book, it's it's a secret. I always thought Hannah around headed backwards. Evil banality, it's the Bennette, it's not that,

worthy of evil which the evil of banality evil about it? And I think that's a lovely things to tell undergraduates too, like your life, but now that isn't, who you are, that isn't who you should be it's like this is the only That can justify this suffering is a great adventure. What what's the greatest adventure, its ethical endeavour, have to be able to say that without cliche and you say why you struggle with the adversary within you, want and adventure and see what happens. If you tell the truth, if you don't know, what's gonna happen, if you tell the truth because your agenda free right, it's like you're, not trying to manipulate the world to deliver, in Height Gary and sense of delivering standing resources, you're, not an expert. a wider Europe Splore and, and- and you know, kids, they come into the university with a veneer of cynicism and its

this deep because their only eighteen, their nineteen there's just no cynicism there at all and then the cynicism is fed and they get more cynical and angry. Because what came to the place of wisdom and and Turned away with with with more cynicism, no argument, are you guys? I talk to you and me park. I posted this video the other day and cheese, a de facto from North Korea. We went through her story. She won't this book called in order to live, which is a harrowing book, although I do think it's hurrying to read, as it is harrowing to talk to her, but in any case. her book ends in two thousand and sixteen. So I asked her: what did she do after two thousand and sixteen and she went through high school and university in South Korea, high school and all the primary school in one year long self in a room basically and went through it all in one year and then went to a south korean University within their heart suffering universities, and then

after she wrote a book which was inspired by the way by George Orwell's animal farm was very interesting. She went to Colombia to take humanity's I thought we get a remarkable story. This girl escapes from starvation and famine and cruelty in total. Materialism in North Korea still is every in China. It's your way to New York and Ghost Columbia University. She said it was the dream of her father that she'd be educated and I said how was it she said a total waste of time and money- and I said a shock me- it really shocked, because we just have to talk about the ennobling. possibility of literature like say with with regard to Orwell, and I said it was the only time in the whole. Conversation actually saw her cynical because really, something to say given what she'd been through. I said that can't be right. That can't be like? Surely there was one professor There was one course that lead you

down the road of the perennial philosophy, let's say or that held up their golden thread, and she thought she said My does human biology course. I learned about evolution, but it got politically correct near the end and does it she didn't you couldn't say one thing about it and so well, if that's what Young people are receiving when they go to in August institution. Like that, it's no bloody wonder there. Cynicism is redoubled, especially when that's what's talked to them world. Power, mad oppressors and dust spoilers of the planet and and then avatars of our group power like can you come out of that anyway, but entirely dispirited- and also angry. Well, I gotta say just speaking just speaking in the defence of US my students, or at least that the system is as I had experienced it, my students have been Vienna.

Quite extraordinary and very brave promising, and they seem to have no not really picked up any of these these kind of ideological mythology, but I think we at the same time do you have to sit back and look at the problem more widely and unnatural, and I have spoken about this, if a lot in the last few years, through his experiences and oxygen, similar experiences there in here in Cambridge, the term, but it does seem to be a crisis of the university in the west. A sense of. you might call it an identity crisis is a sense that we can't any longer answer the question. What are universities for theirs, One traditional way of thinking about that and that is to say, roughly speaking there for the purpose, you two truth and goodness and and beauty, and it's going to be chaotic and and messy. But then there are

competing visions is to weaken the university hospital about the perennial philosophy I mean duchess nice. To me, to be self evident is we're we're having a invitation down the generations about the nature of humanity and its ideal and that's what the university is there, faster, so the humanities are at the core and in it brand- out into science and and and and and and the professions, but that's the heart and the hot it. Is this discussion, the perennial philosophy and and in detail I can't understand really why that case. Isn't me: more expense ITALY and also in some? since somewhat self evident- I mean I presume that that that. I can't understand why were so weak in the face of this criticism, sick, what the hell's with us. We dont is it because we are called to be What is it about things that we do I know how to be explicit about you know we're we're taken aback

by the critique in some sense, I think the problems which might be just a structural one? the university is no longer universe tee. But much more multi vivacity and that we are, as it were, increasingly fragmented, sometimes a very good reasons and to increasingly specialised silos even within the same overarching discipline. I want The things I love working, one, the reasons I love working in a divinity faculty estate does. Is it what have a single roughly, making anywhere a single organizing horizon and soda have colleagues who sociologists anthropologists. They work and Eastern religions Route, I'm a philosopher, but there, the theologians historians, textual specialists and Zella, roughly speaking, We are part of a single, a single Ecosystem, but that is not the case elsewhere, and so it is a kind of France. innovation. That makes it very very difficult to have the sorts of conversations the tower we battling makes a tower of Babel

right is big. Boys is languages, yeah perspectives, and what happens after that? That's after that's the flood by my experience, among my humanity, colleagues, humanity's colleagues, that what they think they're about other kinds of deep existential questions that the problem of philosophy raises adding a little under lost sight of what are they doing? and when we are doing it that's part of the problem certainly when I started history in nine seventies, most It was was mine, boring soulless drawing it was really tedious because because, apart from a few courses were actually Questions were raised. Oh I'm really just once It wasn't really clear what the pointed the stuff was immediately.

say, Sir Nigel, I think we have a special responsibility, is as theologians only those those who work within theology to which used to be, of course, queen of the Sciences, the idea being that it was a discipline so much a discipline but a kind of acres. Systems, different disciplines that did at least have some story to tell about how all the differ. avenues of human. The inquiry could fit together place they might have now, even if that's all lately rough it it as it were what it would look, what would be quiet displace that integrated system would be a Rival integrated system that was at least comparable in terms of explanatory power and capacity that to a common, it all. These different up the different reaches, whilst in some sense here your plane, I think, is that no effect unitary principle is lacking and we talked about, monetary principle as the Spirit that engendered the perennial philosophy. If that unitary spirit is fragment.

Had been lacking, then something corrupt. comes into filled, avoid or something partial or something limping in crippled in some sense right, a pathetic Joyce, religion and then that of course, leads question well, how do you know when a religion is pathologies than when it's not, but we got there to some degree there. Today we say while part of the home mark of a religion. That's got it, together in some senses than locates evil within rather than without, and in that that's an interesting proposition and seems at least worthy consideration, yeah. That's important degenerates, humility, four generates a certain restrained in the way you treat other people you disagree with, if you don't have that you can't have a little space. You happy shouting each other so I got really. Really important. I mean! Maybe us, That too, is is, is the socratic insist,

in support of ignorance is like I'm fundamental, The ignorant and prone to malevolence fix me right, It's something like that He has a hundred argue with that. While Socrates might argue that our main Socrates II does think that that knowledge is. Is, it is key? The ignorance is the awareness of all at the summit attitude is, is crucial here. This malevolence them wrong doing is just a failure of knowledge said it said as it were, moral failure is, is a kind of come to failures in the stomach The aims of Aristotle can't can't can't handle attitude. He thinks it is actually something deep within us that that needs is the time to go but, but but yes I mean that take idea, socratic principle of of dialect Biodiversity, that is to say, of a kind of fruitful friction between, between two or more positions its. I think that that model,

which is at the heart of the oxygen Cambridge model. That is to say Brody's. We do have lectures and we do have seminars graduate students, but that The idea of a tutor in a room supervisor with one or two me. Three students and what modeling that kind of dialogue, cool collaborative inquiry into the truth, Is that what you do is right now, hopefully, and indeed it like. I said it's very difficult, overstate the audience hunger for that its, especially when it's working. I mean people are drawn to it and and please very pleased that it's happening in theirs there's public demand for me when I talk, you know this when I talk to Harrison in in Dublin in London we had like eight thousand and ten thousand people, and it was a good faith. conversation you know it and, and We asked the audience if they wanted to switch Q and a or continue the dialogue. There overwhelmingly in support of continuing the dialogue,

We ve underestimated the we wonder, estimated public intelligence, partly because of technological shortcoming, I think, is that there are there is a hunger for this and in its being fed by ideologies if, if it isn't fed properly it is fed by ideologies, I dont know what to make of the ignorance versus malevolence, de I you know I mean the little economy and little Column Bay, because I do see the delight I gotta get tell your quick story. So you tell me, if think this is ignorance or malevolence. So when I debated level. Jacques. I did a fifteen minute critique of the communist manifesto and there were a lot. A radical left us in the audience and they'd come to hears Egypt. Take me apart, although that is what happened: the discussion we just had a discussion, and I mentioned at one point that the communist First, it was an incitement to bloody violence and mayhem and like a fish.

The audience laughed and cheered- and it was that that Friday, in revelation of unconscious motivation, you know they're all individuals in the crowd so their mask. They they can. They can manage ass, their darkest motivations without fear of revelation- and it just stop me called for about ten seconds, and I thought yeah yeah no kidding it's like we'll go dance. The streets when things are burning and is that word some higher good or is it just it's about time? Those back It's got what they deserved and it isn't obvious me that that's a manifestation of the striving for higher good. I mean it's complicated right, because if you identify evil in some sense, you have an obligation to deal with it. then, if you dont identify the evil that within a new externalize it, your motives are suspect right away, because it's just too convenient- and you might say well, that's ignorance and I do think that's part of it, but convenience factories. can't be overlooked. Like

First of all, Europe, your moral obligation is only to persecute those who are evil, so that lives a huge weight off your shoulders. And then you get to do anything terrible. You want, because you ve defied the adversary himself, and it's not you and if that's any, that egg thats, ignorance, it so deep that it transforms itself at that point into a kind of wealth. blind malevolence. That's how it looks to me Certainly that's true. I mean I mean. I know I've been reading more and more of run Asia around recently and the way he describes these sort of crowd pathologies and the way that a kind of a mob can, as it were, its mind through my meeting desire through simply imitate What they take the rest of the crowd to two to be doing, I find it very. Their imitating essential automating spirit to write, mean

maintaining something that that you might think of as technically say tonic. and that animals the entire crowd and is very difficult. Explain something like Nazi Germany. Without going down that pathway. Yes, I think I'll bet that certainly right and think that the problem in the modern context is that technology and social media in particular, of course, is kind of catalyze that that kind of that that mania, that that more malevolence version it the crowd and and it's it's escalated- bat that the possibilities of of ostracism and kind of Digital STAR Chambers and council. Turn on and so on and so forth and each it's it's something that we're gonna It was a genius out of the bottle and is very very difficult to work out how one can come up with

a clear diagnosis and a clear prescription for carrying out I'll. Tell you something. That's pretty interesting. Is you know when I the conversation like this and it goes well and then thousands of people comment. The comments are unbelievably positive, and so it is possible for that conversation to be de path. Apologized in the presence of the appropriate conversation If you look at that conversation with your yon me park, minutes are so unbelievably positive that its difficult there There is positive in a shocking way as twitter. Mob comments can be pause. can be shocking in a negative way. And so then it's up to people who engaging and in time dialogue at the edge of what we know to do so, and I think increasingly, to do so publicly because that the technology affords us that possibility yes, it's it's, not it's not all bad and it can offer food.

of belonging, even though It's only virtual belonging that that can really, satisfy an urge for community and and stood optimization. The optimization that we ve seen over the last few decades can can be able to come. I think, a lot about the possibility to of these dire logical investigations that might have been isolated to Cambridge and Oxford to become part of the public dialogue. Wouldn't that be something so I'm pretty sure both sides with wood would benefit from that sort of exchange. Another, and another grander hope is my consistent experience has been the day. The noisy shouted illiberal or a minority is a much larger majority of people who earns certain and intimidated, but in the right circumstances, could be liberated

and we would welcome this kind. The honest Rational, given take a reason, kind of exchange that doesn't run vote to whatever they disadvantages that day in on an inhibiting it's a social media are well. Maybe we can get fortunate continue. This conversation at some point out, bridge, Oxford imported from other people. That would be really good if we could manage it as far as I'm concerned, and once we can try well again, once can travel. I really like that, I think you very much for green- to participate in this and is really good both of you again and hopefully will at the right time do this again, and maybe with some other people too. So if you guys, and think of some other people. That would be good contributors to this. You know we could open it up a bit, not would be. Do you think it's worthwhile? That would be good as far as

concerned. Absolutely let let's, let's wagons, each other in the flesh of here sooner or like our lot lot You were having is Jordan very much like your conversation, I really appreciate it. I have to