The Wes Cecil Podcast
- Episodes
- 255
- Format
- Series – listen from the start
- Latest episode
- Nov 14, 2026
About the podcast
My lectures are dedicated to making Philosophy in particular and the world of ideas in general available to everyone. My exploration of topics and thinkers is designed to provide a foundation for listeners to engage in further reading and thought and develop their own conceptions of the topics I introduce. I have PhD in Literature and Philosophy and was a college professor for over 20 years. I am working to remove the barriers that prevent many from experiencing and understanding the lives and thoughts of some of the world's greatest thinkers.
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Episodes 255
Taoism: Ep. 19 - On Trusting and Not Trusting Ourselves
Taoism’s encouragement of doing the ‘easy’ or the ‘natural’ is easily misinterpreted. Taoism invites us to reflect on our social concepts from the standpoint of our own carefully analyzed sense of the world …
Show notes
Taoism’s encouragement of doing the ‘easy’ or the ‘natural’ is easily misinterpreted. Taoism invites us to reflect on our social concepts from the standpoint of our own carefully analyzed sense of the world. The importance of our own experiences considered within the context of nature implicitly invites a re-valuing of our cultural norms and habits. A subtle, but powerful, approach to rethinking the world.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Q & A - American Calvinism - Ep. 10
Q & A - AMERICAN CALVINISMWes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture V: American CalvinismSign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials …
Show notes
Q & A - AMERICAN CALVINISM
Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture V: American Calvinism
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
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The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 10 - Success
The notion that resistance is doomed and only violence or resignation to the status quo are viable options actually belies the historical reality. In the cases of marijuana legalization, gay marriage …
Show notes
The notion that resistance is doomed and only violence or resignation to the status quo are viable options actually belies the historical reality. In the cases of marijuana legalization, gay marriage, socialised medicine or gay marriage, joyful, even celebratory resistance has often led to dramatic and even rapid change. Joy has a proven track record as a winning strategy.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Taoism: Ep. 18 - The Continuing Relevance of Taoism
Taoism offers a surprisingly powerful critique of the modern world - a world of which it had no conception. Fundamental principles that inform our societies - Rationality, Power, Wealth, Individuality …
Show notes
Taoism offers a surprisingly powerful critique of the modern world - a world of which it had no conception. Fundamental principles that inform our societies - Rationality, Power, Wealth, Individuality, Rationality - play little or no role in the key ideals of Taoism. Hence, it offers an amazingly refreshing critique of our lives and our world.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
American Calvinism - Ep. 9
AMERICAN CALVINISMIn this lecture I explore the deep and abiding influence of Calvinism on the American cultural outlook. Whether Christian or not, Americans believe in purity, the centrality of moral …
Show notes
AMERICAN CALVINISM
In this lecture I explore the deep and abiding influence of Calvinism on the American cultural outlook. Whether Christian or not, Americans believe in purity, the centrality of moral judgements, visible signs of success and more. These attitudes are rarely traced back to their true origin - the specific beliefs and social forms developed by John Calvin. America is a Calvinist country par excellence.
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
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The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 9 - Violence
What of violent resistance? This is one of the most vexed questions surrounding the ethics and viability of resistance. What constitutes violence? When, if ever, is it justified? Does it actually work? It is …
Show notes
What of violent resistance? This is one of the most vexed questions surrounding the ethics and viability of resistance. What constitutes violence? When, if ever, is it justified? Does it actually work? It is clear that it often takes the application of some kind of force to get states to change, yet states claim only the state can deploy force. This fundamental disequilibrium between citizens and states creates a difficult and confusing challenge.
"A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."— Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (1919)
"Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man."— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
"Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all."— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651
"Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws..." — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689)
"The state is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class."— Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
"Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy."— Hannah Arendt, On Violence (1969)
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Taoism: Ep. 17 - Power
Re’, Li, Wei, and Qi are types of power explored in Taoism. However, the types of power Taoism emphasizes is very different from, perhaps antithetical to the types of power generally promoted in Western …
Show notes
Re’, Li, Wei, and Qi are types of power explored in Taoism. However, the types of power Taoism emphasizes is very different from, perhaps antithetical to the types of power generally promoted in Western civilization. Rather than control and authority, Taoism seeks harmony, effortlessness, ease and vitality.
The Chapters cited are Re’ 38, Li 33, Wei 72 and Qi 10.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Q & A - Nihilistic Materialism - Ep. 8
Q & A - NIHILISTIC MATERIALISMWes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture IV: Nihilistic MaterialismSign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course …
Show notes
Q & A - NIHILISTIC MATERIALISM
Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture IV: Nihilistic Materialism
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 8 - Meet The New Boss
There are many critiques of the power of ideology to shape our perception of the world and freeze us in a sense of powerlessness. However, less discussed is that while we may feel nothing really changes, in …
Show notes
There are many critiques of the power of ideology to shape our perception of the world and freeze us in a sense of powerlessness. However, less discussed is that while we may feel nothing really changes, in many ways the world has changed dramatically in a relatively short period of time. When we reject our cultural presumptions about the world, we can liberate our past, presents and future.
A few selected texts:
Althusser Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus
Jameson Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Zizeck Ideology Today
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Taoism: Ep. 16 - Truth and Goodness
In Chapter two of Chuang Tzu, we read a clear questioning of the value of ‘Truth’ and the inability of the language to reliable capture the reality we experience. If we move from a concept of truth to one of …
Show notes
In Chapter two of Chuang Tzu, we read a clear questioning of the value of ‘Truth’ and the inability of the language to reliable capture the reality we experience. If we move from a concept of truth to one of engagement, discussion, reflection and conversation we are much closer to the Taoist approach to knowing than when we argue about ‘Truth’ or ‘Right’ or ‘Goodness’.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nihilistic Materialism - Ep. 7
NIHILISTIC MATERIALISMThat American culture is materialistic is an accurate but often unhelpful distinction as it is our particular kind of materialism that America manifests that is important to understand. In …
Show notes
NIHILISTIC MATERIALISM
That American culture is materialistic is an accurate but often unhelpful distinction as it is our particular kind of materialism that America manifests that is important to understand. In this lecture, I explore the peculiar Nihilistic elements that shape American materialism. Significantly, all the standard critiques of materialism - that material goods will not give your life meaning, that shopping is just coping mechanism for deeper ills, that the press of consumerism is driven largely by corporate greed - have little to no grip on the American psyche because everyone knows them and consumes anyway! America combines both a disbelief in consumerism with aggressive consumerism into a curious and counterintuitive set of outlooks and behaviors that shape important elements of American society.
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
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The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 7 - The Students are Marching
As if just to illustrate the ideas we’ve been exploring, the students of France are out on the streets to protest the latest French government budget. Not only is this a repeat of some of the key elements that …
Show notes
As if just to illustrate the ideas we’ve been exploring, the students of France are out on the streets to protest the latest French government budget. Not only is this a repeat of some of the key elements that led to the revolt in May 1968, it also underlines the degree to which the government will go to not have to admit they have utterly failed to deliver on its many promises over the last 20 years. The joy of resistance is getting very real indeed.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Taoism: Ep. 15 - Forget Balance
The popular American conception of balance associated with Taoism is almost entirely misleading and very probably anti-thetical to the core principles of Taoism. While the ancient Chinese had a word for balance …
Show notes
The popular American conception of balance associated with Taoism is almost entirely misleading and very probably anti-thetical to the core principles of Taoism. While the ancient Chinese had a word for balance as in a balance beam or equal scales, this word never appears in the Tao Te Ching. Rather it uses the words for Harmony, Middle, Stillness and Equilibrium. Our concept of placing two things opposed to each other until they cancel out and become static is simply wrong within the conceptual space of Taoist thought.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Q & A - American Individualism - Ep. 6
Q & A - AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISMWes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture III: American IndividualismSign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course …
Show notes
Q & A - AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM
Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture III: American Individualism
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 6 - Subjects of History
Camus’ critique of Romanticism is grounded in a belief in the contingency of human existence. We are not isolated heroes who can, or perhaps cannot, utterly transform the world. We are limited humans living in …
Show notes
Camus’ critique of Romanticism is grounded in a belief in the contingency of human existence. We are not isolated heroes who can, or perhaps cannot, utterly transform the world. We are limited humans living in an environment shaped by forces beyond our control or even comprehension. As such, we can at best attempt to resist according to our own sense of joy while keeping our communities in mind. Hence the importance of joy. To find joy in the ongoing struggle is the approach Camus recommends.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Taoism: Ep. 14 - The Problem is Other People
Chapter 14 of Chuan Tzu presents a Taoist reflection on perhaps the single vexing problem in our lives - the other people. Taoism argues for a natural approach to other people that will remove us from the …
Show notes
Chapter 14 of Chuan Tzu presents a Taoist reflection on perhaps the single vexing problem in our lives - the other people. Taoism argues for a natural approach to other people that will remove us from the shackles of expectations, obligations, and unnatural modes of reciprocal behavior. Chuang Tzu acknowledges the difficulty, yet it remains necessary to address this central problem if we are to have any hope of creating lives in harmony with the Tao.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
American Individualism - Ep. 5
AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM:This lecture explores the evolution of the American conception of the individual and why it has become so dominant within American culture. Devoid of a deep history and often in strange …
Show notes
AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM:
This lecture explores the evolution of the American conception of the individual and why it has become so dominant within American culture. Devoid of a deep history and often in strange surroundings with strange people, many Americans have, for generations, felt thrust out on their own. What for most societies was considered a severe punishment - banishment - became, in America, a common and perhaps necessary mode of life. Over time, a virtue was created from this necessity and the peculiar form of American individualism became cemented as a core element of American values.
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
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The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 5 - Imaginations Under Siege
Following on last episode's discussion of the philosophical critiques of how commoditization influences our world, I thought it would be worth taking a moment to reflect in a concrete fashion on how our …
Show notes
Following on last episode's discussion of the philosophical critiques of how commoditization influences our world, I thought it would be worth taking a moment to reflect in a concrete fashion on how our imaginations are used against us to distort the world and colonize our subconscious. I’ve been a bit heavy with the references so I thought I’d save a few up for next time.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Taoism: Ep. 13 - Taoism and Pleasure
What rises in the Taoist tradition when one is tranquil is pleasure. This simple idea is almost universally ignored or obscured in the Taoist tradition - yet it is central to both the literate and folk …
Show notes
What rises in the Taoist tradition when one is tranquil is pleasure. This simple idea is almost universally ignored or obscured in the Taoist tradition - yet it is central to both the literate and folk tradition. Living in accordance with the Tao is living with pleasure.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Q & A - No History for You! - Ep. 4
Q & A - NO HISTORY FOR YOU! Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture II: No History for You!Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials …
Show notes
Q & A - NO HISTORY FOR YOU!
Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture II: No History for You!
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
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The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 4 - Sign Value and Recuperation
One of the significant challenges of our current environment is that our own imaginations have been turned against us. Much of our needs come from our imaginations and are very much focused on the way acts and …
Show notes
One of the significant challenges of our current environment is that our own imaginations have been turned against us. Much of our needs come from our imaginations and are very much focused on the way acts and products signify - their sign value. What this means is that our very real desire for change ends up being recuperated and being sold back to us products that reinforce the very system we wish to change. Traditional skills and ways of living become “Trad Wife”, anti-capitalist movements are sold back to us in posters and t-shirts, and despair becomes a market opportunity. In this environment, the imagination becomes a central territory for understanding and, importantly, enacting resistance.
Books I mention in the lecture:
Karl Marx, Das Kapital Volume 1
Jean Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (warning, English Translation is a bit dodgy and the early Semiotext(e) edition is incomplete and hence confusing (or more confusing, it is plenty confusing in French))
Jean Baudrillard Symbolic Exchange and Death
Georges Bataille The Accursed Share
George Orwell 1984 (The Appendices are written retrospectively about the world of Oceania and Newspeak that did not endure)
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Taoism: Ep. 12 - Taoism and Tranquility
While Taoism emphasizes knowing and being nothing, it does have a positive value - tranquility. Virtually ignored as a value in the Western tradition with its powerful focus on “meaning” and “knowing” Taoism …
Show notes
While Taoism emphasizes knowing and being nothing, it does have a positive value - tranquility. Virtually ignored as a value in the Western tradition with its powerful focus on “meaning” and “knowing” Taoism focus on feeling the world and, it argues, the feeling should be tranquil. Chapters 15 and 16 of the Tao Te Ching are central to these ideas.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
No History For You! - Ep. 3
NO HISTORY FOR YOU!In my second lecture I explore the bizarre and necessary historical amnesia that besets American culture. For the first 200 years of American settlement, the Native American culture was …
Show notes
NO HISTORY FOR YOU!
In my second lecture I explore the bizarre and necessary historical amnesia that besets American culture. For the first 200 years of American settlement, the Native American culture was forcibly erased, then actively ignored once the ‘Natives’ problem had been “solved”. Also, the invisibility of the African American presence in much of the US, which represented 40-50% of the population in some states, created a further barrier to American history. Finally, the internal patterns of settlement and mass migration cemented a near total disregard for framing our cultural understanding in any historical sensibility.
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
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The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 3 - Revolution is a Trap
The overriding narrative of revolution features a defined enemy inhabiting a defined space that we can, with courage, suffering and sacrifice, overthrow and inaugurate a new and better world. However, as Kafka …
Show notes
The overriding narrative of revolution features a defined enemy inhabiting a defined space that we can, with courage, suffering and sacrifice, overthrow and inaugurate a new and better world. However, as Kafka and Musil demonstrated we live in a world that is diffuse, multi-layered and without center. These more uncomfortable and less entertaining versions of our world demonstrate the fundamental naivete of the notion of revolution that, functionally, becomes a disabling myth. Rather than revolution or nothing, in which we get nothing because we can’t have the revolution, I argue for the value of resistance, which is both available and immediate.
Books I mention in the lecture:
Kafka The Metamorphosis
Kafka The Castle
Musil The Man Without Qualities
Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
Lem The Invincible
Raymond Aron The Opiate of the Intellectuals
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
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Taoism: Ep. 11 - Taoism and Nihilism
Taoism posits that the meaninglessness of life is not a basis for Nihilism but for Joy and Liberty. The palpable despair imparted by the advance of science and the increasing awareness of the triviality of …
Show notes
Taoism posits that the meaninglessness of life is not a basis for Nihilism but for Joy and Liberty. The palpable despair imparted by the advance of science and the increasing awareness of the triviality of humanity on a universal scale disoriented - and perhaps is still disorienting - virtually every culture in the world. Taoism, however, provided an inspiring response to these problems 2,600 years before they appeared.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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Q & A - What is an American? - Ep. 2
Q & A - WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture I: "What is an American?" Apologies for the audio quality on this one—it improves as the series moves along.Sign-up for Wes’s …
Show notes
Q & A - WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?
Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture I: "What is an American?" Apologies for the audio quality on this one—it improves as the series moves along.
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
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The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 2 - You are Not A Resource
2,000 years ago Cicero warned us against the idea that other people are functionally prey from whom we extract the profit. Unfortunately, his arguments have been forgotten and we inhabit a society that insists …
Show notes
2,000 years ago Cicero warned us against the idea that other people are functionally prey from whom we extract the profit. Unfortunately, his arguments have been forgotten and we inhabit a society that insists that the exploitation of others is not only acceptable but necessary and admirable. As Deleuze and Guattari and others have demonstrated, this logic leads to an idea of the self that is entirely devoid of human sympathy. We think we are exploiting others but we are in fact re-conceptualizing ourselves as extraction/consumption machines that have no other values or functions. Within this context, caring for others as valuable and even beautiful is an act of resistance.
Books mentioned:
Cicero De Officiis Book 3 50-57
Deleuze and Guattari A Thousand Plateaus - Plateau 6
Delueze and Guattari Anti-Oedipus
Koran Al-Mutaffifin and Al-Isra (amongst many other passages)
Deluzism by Ian Buchanan particularly the last chapter.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Taoism: Ep. 10 - Socrates was NOT a Taoist
While Taoism emphasizes ‘not knowing’ it does so in a very different way than Socrates’s claim of knowing what he does not know. In Chapter 17 of Chuangtzu we encounter a classic example of both the limits of …
Show notes
While Taoism emphasizes ‘not knowing’ it does so in a very different way than Socrates’s claim of knowing what he does not know. In Chapter 17 of Chuangtzu we encounter a classic example of both the limits of knowledge and the importance of experience to the Taoist tradition. In many ways, Taoism refutes the entire basis of the Platonic/Socratic tradition that underlies most of the western philosophic tradition.
Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.
Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil
Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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What is an American? - Ep. 1
WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?In my introductory lecture I explore the uniquely powerful role America plays in the contemporary world and the history that underlies its global dominance. 250 years ago, the United states …
Show notes
WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?
In my introductory lecture I explore the uniquely powerful role America plays in the contemporary world and the history that underlies its global dominance. 250 years ago, the United states had a tiny population, was loosely organized and beset by internal conflicts. A rapid and massive demographic and geographic expansion brought this relative backwater onto the world stage and then to global dominance. The cultural transformations that proceeded with this transformation created a society that is, for good or ill, extremely influential and uniquely American.
Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!
Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month.
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New Series! The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 1
Resistance rather than revolution and Joy rather than suffering. Within our contemporary cultural environment, understanding the tensions in how we respond to the world can help feel more powerful. Creating …
Show notes
Resistance rather than revolution and Joy rather than suffering. Within our contemporary cultural environment, understanding the tensions in how we respond to the world can help feel more powerful. Creating meaning and joy will also transform our sense of ourselves and, by extension, our world.
Books Mentioned:
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by Karl Marx
The Rebel by Albert Camus
Mai 68, l’heritage impossible by Jean-Pierre Le Goff
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
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