1
00:02:03,123 --> 00:02:08,857
[Man] "The unexamined life is not
worth living," Plato says in
Line 38A of the Apology.

2
00:02:08,928 --> 00:02:11,954
How do you examine yourself?
What happens when you
interrogate yourself?

3
00:02:12,031 --> 00:02:15,228
What happens when you begin
to call into question...

4
00:02:15,301 --> 00:02:18,930
your tacit assumptions
and unarticulated presuppositions,

5
00:02:19,005 --> 00:02:22,532
and begin then to become
a different kind of person?

6
00:02:26,646 --> 00:02:29,308
See, I put it this way.
That for me,

7
00:02:29,382 --> 00:02:32,783
I mean, philosophy
is fundamentally about...

8
00:02:32,852 --> 00:02:35,514
our finite situation.

9
00:02:36,689 --> 00:02:40,318
We can define that in terms of
we're beings toward death,

10
00:02:40,393 --> 00:02:44,193
and we're featherless, two-legged,
linguistically conscious creatures
born between urine and feces...

11
00:02:44,264 --> 00:02:47,722
whose body will one day
be the culinary delight
of terrestrial worms.

12
00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:50,860
That's us.
We're beings toward death.

13
00:02:50,937 --> 00:02:56,136
At the same time, we have desire
while we are organisms
in space and time,

14
00:02:56,209 --> 00:02:58,541
and so it's desire
in the face of death.

15
00:02:58,611 --> 00:03:03,275
And then of course,
you've got dogmatism,
various attempts to hold on to certainty,

16
00:03:03,349 --> 00:03:08,252
various forms of idolatry,
and you've got dialogue
in the face of dogmatism.

17
00:03:08,321 --> 00:03:11,620
And then of course,
structurally and institutionally
you have domination...

18
00:03:11,691 --> 00:03:13,556
and you have democracy.

19
00:03:13,626 --> 00:03:16,891
You have attempts of people
tying to render accountable...

20
00:03:16,963 --> 00:03:21,923
elites, kings, queens, suzerians,
corporate elites, politicians,

21
00:03:22,001 --> 00:03:26,335
trying to make these elites
accountable to eveyday people.

22
00:03:26,406 --> 00:03:29,204
So philosophy itself becomes...

23
00:03:29,275 --> 00:03:31,209
a critical disposition...

24
00:03:31,277 --> 00:03:33,609
of wrestling with desire
in the face of death,

25
00:03:33,680 --> 00:03:36,911
wrestling with dialogue
in the face of- of dogmatism,

26
00:03:36,983 --> 00:03:41,443
and wrestling with democracy-
trying to keep alive very fragile
democratic experiments-

27
00:03:41,521 --> 00:03:43,455
in the face of structures
of domination;

28
00:03:43,523 --> 00:03:46,856
patriarchy, white supremacy,
imperial power,

29
00:03:46,926 --> 00:03:49,793
um- uh, state power.

30
00:03:49,862 --> 00:03:53,161
All those concentrated forms
of power...

31
00:03:53,233 --> 00:03:57,602
that are not accountable to people
who are affected by them.

32
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:29,230
[Woman]
So, can you hear me well?

33
00:04:29,302 --> 00:04:32,328
[Astra Taylor]
And you can speak to me, so-
Good. Vey good.

34
00:04:32,405 --> 00:04:35,568
Wonderful. Okay.

35
00:04:35,642 --> 00:04:40,238
So I was trying to figure out
what you were getting me
into here,

36
00:04:41,381 --> 00:04:45,044
and how we're implicated
in this walk.

37
00:04:45,118 --> 00:04:50,078
I was going to interview you
and ask you what you thought
you were doing.

38
00:04:50,156 --> 00:04:53,990
I'm specifically thinking about
the challenge of making a film
about philosophy,

39
00:04:54,060 --> 00:04:58,326
which, um, obviously
has a spoken element,

40
00:04:58,398 --> 00:05:00,525
but is typically written.

41
00:05:00,600 --> 00:05:05,162
And book form allows you
to explore something so in-depth,

42
00:05:05,238 --> 00:05:10,107
you know, 300, 400, 500 pages
exploring a single concept,

43
00:05:10,176 --> 00:05:14,636
whereas in a feature-length film
you have 80 minutes...

44
00:05:14,714 --> 00:05:17,182
in the form of speech
that's been recorded.

45
00:05:17,250 --> 00:05:19,718
And in the case of this film,
each person has 10 minutes.

46
00:05:19,786 --> 00:05:21,720
Yes, that is scandalous.

47
00:05:21,788 --> 00:05:24,279
I can understand that the others
would have 10 minutes,

48
00:05:24,357 --> 00:05:27,383
but to- to bring me down
to 10 minutes...

49
00:05:27,460 --> 00:05:29,826
is an outrage-
there's no doubt about it.

50
00:05:29,896 --> 00:05:34,799
The thing is, we don't know
where this film is going to land,

51
00:05:34,867 --> 00:05:37,961
whom it's going to shake up,
wake up,

52
00:05:38,037 --> 00:05:41,097
or freak out, or bore.

53
00:05:41,174 --> 00:05:45,304
But even boredom,
as an offshoot of melancholy,
would interest me...

54
00:05:45,378 --> 00:05:50,509
as a response
to these dazzling utterances
that we're producing.

55
00:05:50,583 --> 00:05:55,987
But I- I would say that,
even if philosophy-

56
00:05:56,055 --> 00:06:00,014
And don't forget that Heidegger
ditched philosophy for thinking,

57
00:06:00,093 --> 00:06:02,288
'cause he thought philosophy
as such...

58
00:06:02,362 --> 00:06:05,798
was still too institutional,
academic,

59
00:06:05,865 --> 00:06:09,096
too bound up in knowledge
and results,

60
00:06:09,168 --> 00:06:12,001
too cognitively inflected.

61
00:06:12,071 --> 00:06:15,700
So he asked the question,
"What is called thinking?"

62
00:06:15,775 --> 00:06:18,767
And he had a lot to say about walks,

63
00:06:18,845 --> 00:06:21,814
about going on paths
that lead nowhere.

64
00:06:21,881 --> 00:06:24,748
One of his important texts
is called Holzwege,

65
00:06:24,817 --> 00:06:27,377
which means a path
that leads nowhere.

66
00:06:27,453 --> 00:06:30,752
In Greek, the word for path
is methodos.

67
00:06:30,823 --> 00:06:32,814
So we're on the path.

68
00:06:38,364 --> 00:06:41,128
[Astra Taylor]
One thing I want to ask you
about is meaning.

69
00:06:41,200 --> 00:06:44,465
Is philosophy a search for meaning?

70
00:06:44,537 --> 00:06:46,835
[Ronell]
I'm very suspicious historically...

71
00:06:46,906 --> 00:06:50,535
and intellectually
of the promise of meaning,

72
00:06:50,610 --> 00:06:53,010
because meaning...

73
00:06:53,079 --> 00:06:56,674
has often had very fascistoid,

74
00:06:56,749 --> 00:06:59,377
non-progressivist edges,

75
00:06:59,452 --> 00:07:02,853
if not a core of that sort of thing.

76
00:07:02,922 --> 00:07:06,585
Excuse me. Um-

77
00:07:06,659 --> 00:07:08,684
So that vey often,

78
00:07:08,761 --> 00:07:11,992
also the emergency supplies
of meaning...

79
00:07:12,064 --> 00:07:16,694
that are brought
to a given incident or structure...

80
00:07:16,769 --> 00:07:20,364
or theme in one's life
are cover-ups,

81
00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:24,877
are a way of dressing
the wound of non-meaning.

82
00:07:24,944 --> 00:07:28,436
I think it's very hard
to keep things...

83
00:07:28,514 --> 00:07:32,416
in the tensional structure
of the openness,

84
00:07:32,485 --> 00:07:37,422
whether it's ecstatic or not,
of non-meaning.

85
00:07:37,490 --> 00:07:40,823
That's very, very difficult,
which is why there is then...

86
00:07:40,893 --> 00:07:46,388
the quick grasp for
a transcendental signifier,

87
00:07:46,466 --> 00:07:50,459
for God, for nation, for patriotism.

88
00:07:50,536 --> 00:07:53,994
It's been very devastating,
this, um-

89
00:07:54,073 --> 00:07:56,064
this craving for meaning,

90
00:07:57,076 --> 00:08:01,274
though it's something with which
we are in constant negotiation.

91
00:08:01,347 --> 00:08:04,908
Everyone wants something
like meaning.

92
00:08:04,984 --> 00:08:07,953
But when you see these dogs play,

93
00:08:08,020 --> 00:08:10,386
[Growling]
why reduce it to meaning...

94
00:08:10,456 --> 00:08:13,721
rather than just see
the arbitrary eruption...

95
00:08:13,793 --> 00:08:17,354
of something
that can't be grasped or explicated,

96
00:08:17,430 --> 00:08:19,364
but it's just there...

97
00:08:19,432 --> 00:08:22,924
in this kind of absolute
contingency of being.

98
00:08:26,072 --> 00:08:28,006
To leave things open...

99
00:08:28,074 --> 00:08:32,272
and radically inappropriable
and something-

100
00:08:32,345 --> 00:08:35,746
and admitting
we haven't really understood...

101
00:08:35,815 --> 00:08:40,047
is much less satisfying,
more frustrating,

102
00:08:40,119 --> 00:08:42,587
and more necessary,
I think, you know.

103
00:08:42,655 --> 00:08:45,215
And that's why
I think a lot of people...

104
00:08:45,291 --> 00:08:50,524
have been fed and fueled
by promises...

105
00:08:50,596 --> 00:08:54,896
of immediate gratification
in thought...

106
00:08:54,967 --> 00:08:57,834
and food and junk, and so on-

107
00:08:57,904 --> 00:09:00,532
junk thought, junk food,
and so on.

108
00:09:01,507 --> 00:09:03,634
So the- the-

109
00:09:03,709 --> 00:09:07,406
There's a politics of refusing
that gratification.

110
00:09:07,480 --> 00:09:12,349
And I know that's crazy-making,
but I think that's where
we have to pull the brakes.

111
00:09:23,195 --> 00:09:25,129
[Astra Taylor]
Some people might be troubled,
or might wonder,

112
00:09:25,197 --> 00:09:29,657
how do you behave ethically
if there's no ultimate meaning?

113
00:09:29,735 --> 00:09:33,933
Precisely where there
isn't guaranteed...

114
00:09:34,006 --> 00:09:36,975
or palpable meaning,

115
00:09:37,043 --> 00:09:42,413
you have to do a lot of work
and you have to be mega-ethical,

116
00:09:42,481 --> 00:09:45,882
'cause it's much easier
to live life and know...

117
00:09:45,952 --> 00:09:50,355
that well, that you shouldn't do,
and this you should do,
because someone said so.

118
00:09:50,423 --> 00:09:53,984
If we're not anxious,
if we're okay with things,

119
00:09:54,060 --> 00:09:57,154
we're not trying to explore
or figure anything out.

120
00:09:57,229 --> 00:10:00,392
So anxiety is the mood,
par excellence,

121
00:10:00,466 --> 00:10:03,492
of- of-

122
00:10:03,569 --> 00:10:06,197
of ethicity, I think, you know.

123
00:10:06,272 --> 00:10:10,504
Now, I'm not prescribing
anxiety disorder for anyone.

124
00:10:10,576 --> 00:10:14,239
However, could you imagine Mr. Bush,
who doesn't give a shit...

125
00:10:14,313 --> 00:10:17,282
when he sends everyone
to the gas chamber...

126
00:10:17,350 --> 00:10:21,514
or the, um, electric chair?

127
00:10:21,587 --> 00:10:23,817
He expresses no anxiety.

128
00:10:23,889 --> 00:10:26,881
And they're very proud of this.
They don't lose a wink of sleep.

129
00:10:26,959 --> 00:10:29,325
They express no anxiety.

130
00:10:31,197 --> 00:10:33,529
This is something
that Derrida has taught.

131
00:10:33,599 --> 00:10:37,899
If you feel that you've acquitted
yourself honorably,

132
00:10:37,970 --> 00:10:39,904
then you're not so ethical.

133
00:10:39,972 --> 00:10:43,738
If you have a good conscience,
then you're kind of worthless.

134
00:10:43,809 --> 00:10:47,142
Like, if you think-
"Oh, I gave this homeless person
five bucks.

135
00:10:47,213 --> 00:10:50,080
I'm great"-
then you're irresponsible.

136
00:10:50,149 --> 00:10:53,084
The responsible being
is one who thinks...

137
00:10:53,152 --> 00:10:55,814
they've never been
responsible enough.

138
00:10:55,888 --> 00:10:59,585
They've never taken care enough
of the Other.

139
00:10:59,659 --> 00:11:03,322
The Other is so in excess...

140
00:11:03,396 --> 00:11:07,958
of anything you can understand
or grasp or reduce.

141
00:11:08,034 --> 00:11:11,663
This in itself creates
an ethical relatedness-

142
00:11:11,737 --> 00:11:14,103
a relation without relation,
'cause you don't know-

143
00:11:14,173 --> 00:11:16,937
You can't presume to know
or grasp the Other.

144
00:11:17,009 --> 00:11:21,173
The minute you think you know
the Other, you're ready to kill them.

145
00:11:21,247 --> 00:11:23,215
You think,
"Oh, they're doing this or this.

146
00:11:23,282 --> 00:11:27,480
They're the axis of evil.
Let's drop some bombs."

147
00:11:27,553 --> 00:11:32,013
But if you don't know,
you don't understand this alterity,

148
00:11:32,091 --> 00:11:37,757
it's so Other that you can't violate it
with your sense of understanding,

149
00:11:37,830 --> 00:11:40,628
then, um,

150
00:11:40,700 --> 00:11:43,794
you have to let it live,
in a sense.

151
00:12:17,203 --> 00:12:20,536
This is the center of one of
the world's richest countries...

152
00:12:20,606 --> 00:12:22,540
and one of the most
expensive places there,

153
00:12:22,608 --> 00:12:24,803
and that raises an ethical issue.

154
00:12:24,877 --> 00:12:28,244
I mean, there are people who have
the money to buy at these stores...

155
00:12:28,314 --> 00:12:33,013
and who don't seem to see any kind
of moral problem doing that.

156
00:12:33,085 --> 00:12:37,579
But what I want to ask is,
well, shouldn't they see some
sort of moral problem about that?

157
00:12:37,656 --> 00:12:41,217
Isn't there a question about
what we should be spending
our money on?

158
00:12:43,729 --> 00:12:48,996
So we're outside Bergdorf Goodman,
where they've got a display
of Dolce and Gabbana shoes.

159
00:12:49,068 --> 00:12:52,663
And it's kind of amusing to me
because about 30 years ago,

160
00:12:52,738 --> 00:12:55,798
I wrote an article called
"Famine, Affluence, and Morality"...

161
00:12:55,875 --> 00:12:57,809
in which I imagined...

162
00:12:57,877 --> 00:13:00,505
that you're walking
past a shallow pond,

163
00:13:00,579 --> 00:13:05,482
and as you walk past it
you notice there's a small child
who's fallen into the pond...

164
00:13:05,551 --> 00:13:07,485
and seems to be in danger
of drowning,

165
00:13:07,553 --> 00:13:11,148
and you look around to see
where the parents are,
and there's nobody in sight.

166
00:13:11,223 --> 00:13:16,456
You realize that unless you wade
into this pond and pull the child out,

167
00:13:16,529 --> 00:13:18,520
the child is likely to drown.

168
00:13:18,597 --> 00:13:22,055
There's no danger to you
because you know the pond
is just a shallow one,

169
00:13:22,134 --> 00:13:25,228
but you are wearing
a nice pair of shoes...

170
00:13:25,304 --> 00:13:29,001
and they're probably
gonna get ruined if you wade
into that shallow pond.

171
00:13:29,074 --> 00:13:32,373
So, of course, when I ask
people this, they always say,

172
00:13:32,444 --> 00:13:37,780
"Well, of course, forget about
the shoes. You've just got to
save the child. That's clear."

173
00:13:37,850 --> 00:13:41,286
And then I stop and say,
"Okay, you know,
I agree with you about that.

174
00:13:41,353 --> 00:13:44,186
"But for the price
of a pair of shoes,

175
00:13:44,256 --> 00:13:49,125
"if you were to give that
to Oxfam or UNICEF
or one of those organizations,

176
00:13:49,195 --> 00:13:54,497
"they could probably save
the life of a child, maybe more
than one child in a poor county,

177
00:13:54,567 --> 00:13:57,468
"where children are dying because
they can't get basic medical care...

178
00:13:57,536 --> 00:14:02,838
to treat very basic diseases like diarrhea
or whatever else it might be."

179
00:14:02,908 --> 00:14:05,877
And that's really one of the reasons
why I think it's interesting...

180
00:14:05,945 --> 00:14:09,711
to be here on 5th Avenue
talking about ethics,

181
00:14:09,782 --> 00:14:13,912
because ethics is about
the basic choices that we ought
to make in our lives,

182
00:14:13,986 --> 00:14:17,478
and one of those choices
is how do we spend our money.

183
00:15:02,101 --> 00:15:05,832
[Singer]
I started thinking about
these issues back in the 1970s...

184
00:15:05,905 --> 00:15:09,272
when, for one thing,
there was the crisis in Bangladesh...

185
00:15:09,341 --> 00:15:12,674
where there were millions of people
who were in danger of starving...

186
00:15:12,745 --> 00:15:18,115
because of the repression
of the Bangladeshis
by the Pakistani Army at the time.

187
00:15:18,183 --> 00:15:23,211
And that made me think
about our obligations to help people
who are in danger of starvation.

188
00:15:23,289 --> 00:15:28,192
Also around the same time,
I happened to meet someone
who was a vegetarian,

189
00:15:28,260 --> 00:15:32,890
who, uh, got me asking myself about,

190
00:15:32,965 --> 00:15:35,024
am I justified in continuing to eat meat?

191
00:15:35,100 --> 00:15:38,968
What is it that gives us the right,
or that justifies us,

192
00:15:39,038 --> 00:15:41,836
in treating animals
the way they get treated...

193
00:15:41,907 --> 00:15:45,741
before they end up on our lunch
or dinner or whatever it might be?

194
00:15:45,811 --> 00:15:49,747
And I read a little bit about
factory farming,

195
00:15:49,815 --> 00:15:51,942
intensive farms,
and the way they confine animals,

196
00:15:52,017 --> 00:15:56,545
which was something
that was really just getting
going at that stage.

197
00:15:56,622 --> 00:16:00,058
And I thought that
you can't really justify this,

198
00:16:00,125 --> 00:16:04,186
that we've just taken
for granted the idea...

199
00:16:04,263 --> 00:16:09,200
that somehow humans
have the right to use animals
whichever way they want to.

200
00:16:09,268 --> 00:16:13,068
And that isn't defensible.

201
00:16:13,138 --> 00:16:17,370
The boundary of species
is not something that really
is so morally significant...

202
00:16:17,443 --> 00:16:20,037
that it entitles us
to take another sentient being...

203
00:16:20,112 --> 00:16:22,273
who can suffer or feel pain,

204
00:16:22,348 --> 00:16:25,146
and do as we wish
with that sentient being...

205
00:16:25,217 --> 00:16:28,675
just because we happen to like
the taste of its flesh.

206
00:16:28,754 --> 00:16:33,157
So these two issues really got
me thinking about Applied Ethics,

207
00:16:33,225 --> 00:16:38,288
which at this time in the beginning
of the 1970s wasn't really a field.

208
00:16:38,364 --> 00:16:43,563
It wasn't really something
that philosophers thought
was properly philosophy.

209
00:16:43,635 --> 00:16:46,763
But I think it was a good time
to start thinking about these issues...

210
00:16:46,839 --> 00:16:49,501
because of the student movement,

211
00:16:49,575 --> 00:16:52,408
the radical movement
of the '60s and early '70s...

212
00:16:52,478 --> 00:16:57,142
which had created a bit more interest
in these issues and raised the question,

213
00:16:57,216 --> 00:17:02,552
can we make our academic studies
more relevant to the important
questions ofthe day?

214
00:17:09,194 --> 00:17:11,628
When you do apply ethics,

215
00:17:11,697 --> 00:17:16,157
you often find that thinking things
through leads you to challenge
common-sense morality.

216
00:17:16,235 --> 00:17:20,467
And of course, this is
consistent with a very ancient
philosophical tradition.

217
00:17:20,539 --> 00:17:23,565
It's exactly what happened
with Socrates...

218
00:17:23,642 --> 00:17:26,975
when he started asking people about,
"What is justice?"

219
00:17:27,046 --> 00:17:29,412
And they thought
they knew what justice is,

220
00:17:29,481 --> 00:17:32,939
and then they started
thinking about it,

221
00:17:33,018 --> 00:17:35,043
and they realized
they didn't understand it.

222
00:17:35,120 --> 00:17:40,285
And of course,
Socrates ended up having-
being forced to drink the hemlock...

223
00:17:40,359 --> 00:17:44,159
because he was accused
of corrupting the morals
of the youth.

224
00:17:44,229 --> 00:17:48,325
Now, fortunately that doesn't happen
to philosophers today.

225
00:17:48,400 --> 00:17:52,928
But it could well be said
that from a conservative point of view,

226
00:17:53,005 --> 00:17:55,496
Applied Ethics does corrupt morals-

227
00:17:55,574 --> 00:18:00,170
"Corrupt" is the wrong word.
But it certainly challenges morals...

228
00:18:00,245 --> 00:18:03,408
and might lead us to think
differently about some things...

229
00:18:03,482 --> 00:18:06,679
that we have held very dear
for a long time.

230
00:18:09,021 --> 00:18:11,751
A lot of people think that
you can only have ethical standards...

231
00:18:11,824 --> 00:18:14,054
if in some way you're religious,

232
00:18:14,126 --> 00:18:17,527
you believe that there's a god
who handed down some commandments...

233
00:18:17,596 --> 00:18:21,692
or inspired some scriptures
which tell you what to do.

234
00:18:21,767 --> 00:18:24,201
I don't believe in any of that.

235
00:18:24,269 --> 00:18:27,534
I think ethics
has to come from ourselves,

236
00:18:27,606 --> 00:18:30,166
but that doesn't mean
that it's totally subjective,

237
00:18:30,242 --> 00:18:34,770
that doesn't mean that
you can think whatever you like
about what's right or wrong.

238
00:18:36,448 --> 00:18:39,349
When you start to look
at issues ethically,

239
00:18:39,418 --> 00:18:42,216
you have to do more than just think
about your own interests.

240
00:18:42,287 --> 00:18:46,621
You have to ask yourself,
how do I take into account
the interests of others?

241
00:18:46,692 --> 00:18:52,392
What would I choose
if I were to be in their position
rather than in my position?

242
00:19:09,848 --> 00:19:12,612
One of the most obvious things
that emerges...

243
00:19:12,684 --> 00:19:15,881
when you put yourself
in the position of others...

244
00:19:15,954 --> 00:19:20,914
is the priority of reducing
or preventing suffering,

245
00:19:20,993 --> 00:19:24,326
because ethics is not just about...

246
00:19:24,396 --> 00:19:27,593
what I actually do
and the impact of that,

247
00:19:27,666 --> 00:19:33,627
but it's also about what I omit to do,
what I decide not to do.

248
00:19:33,705 --> 00:19:38,335
And that's why, questions about-
given that we all have
a limited amount of money-

249
00:19:38,410 --> 00:19:41,038
questions about what you spend
your money on...

250
00:19:41,113 --> 00:19:43,980
are also questions about
what you don't spend your money on,

251
00:19:44,049 --> 00:19:47,348
or what you don't use
your money to achieve.

252
00:19:49,821 --> 00:19:52,221
They just say,
"Oh, well, I'm not harming anyone...

253
00:19:52,291 --> 00:19:57,251
if I go and spend
a thousand dollars on a new suit."

254
00:19:57,329 --> 00:20:02,062
But, uh, in fact,
given the opportunities
that we have to help...

255
00:20:02,134 --> 00:20:04,068
and given the way the world is,

256
00:20:04,136 --> 00:20:07,697
I think that quite often
you're actually...

257
00:20:07,773 --> 00:20:10,537
are failing to benefit someone,
which you could be doing.

258
00:20:10,609 --> 00:20:16,343
I think we have moral obligations
to help just as we have
moral obligations not to harm.

259
00:20:54,019 --> 00:20:57,978
[Singer]
Over the thousands of years of history
and development of philosophy,

260
00:20:58,056 --> 00:21:01,617
a lot of philosophers have asked,
"Does life have a meaning?
What is it?"

261
00:21:01,693 --> 00:21:05,356
And that's a question for which
I think we can give an answer.

262
00:21:05,430 --> 00:21:08,729
And I think the answer is,
we make our lives most meaningful...

263
00:21:08,800 --> 00:21:14,102
when we connect ourselves
with some really important causes
or issues.

264
00:21:14,172 --> 00:21:17,039
And we contribute to that,
so that we feel that...

265
00:21:17,109 --> 00:21:21,978
because we lived,
something has gone a little better
than it would have otherwise.

266
00:21:22,047 --> 00:21:26,541
We've contributed,
in however small a way,
to making the world a better place.

267
00:21:26,618 --> 00:21:31,646
And I think it's hard to find anything
more meaningful than doing that,

268
00:21:31,723 --> 00:21:37,025
than reducing the amount
of unnecessay pain and suffering
that there's been on this world,

269
00:21:37,095 --> 00:21:41,794
or making the world a little bit
better for all of the beings
who are sharing it with us.

270
00:22:31,917 --> 00:22:34,818
[Appiah]
I started thinking about
the difference between...

271
00:22:34,886 --> 00:22:38,253
the context in which
we evolved as a species...

272
00:22:38,323 --> 00:22:42,282
and the present, you know,
in this age of globalization.

273
00:22:42,361 --> 00:22:46,491
And one way to think about that
is to notice that...

274
00:22:46,565 --> 00:22:50,968
if you live a modern life,
if you're traveling
through an airport,

275
00:22:51,036 --> 00:22:53,334
you're gonna be passing
lots and lots of people,

276
00:22:53,405 --> 00:22:57,432
and within a few minutes
you'll have passed more people...

277
00:22:57,509 --> 00:22:59,773
than most of our remote
human ancestors...

278
00:22:59,845 --> 00:23:02,678
would ever have seen
in their entire lives.

279
00:23:06,918 --> 00:23:12,049
As an American, you exist
in this kind of virtual relationship
with 300 million people.

280
00:23:12,124 --> 00:23:16,527
If you're lucky enough to be Chinese,
your virtual relationships
are with, you know,

281
00:23:16,595 --> 00:23:19,723
soon, one and a half billion people
or something like that.

282
00:23:19,798 --> 00:23:23,495
So I think that's-
that's a way of dramatizing,

283
00:23:23,568 --> 00:23:25,661
I think, the challenge
that we face.

284
00:23:25,737 --> 00:23:29,673
We're- We're good at small,
face-to-face stuff.

285
00:23:29,741 --> 00:23:31,675
That's what we were made for.

286
00:23:31,743 --> 00:23:35,338
We know how to be responsible
for children and parents...

287
00:23:35,414 --> 00:23:38,110
and cousins and friends.

288
00:23:38,183 --> 00:23:41,448
But we now have to be responsible
for fellow citizens,

289
00:23:41,520 --> 00:23:45,047
both of our country
and fellow citizens of the world.

290
00:23:45,123 --> 00:23:47,921
And the question is,
can we figure that out?

291
00:23:59,771 --> 00:24:02,899
which means citizen of the cosmos,
of the world.

292
00:24:02,974 --> 00:24:06,432
And we need a notion
of global citizenship.

293
00:24:09,714 --> 00:24:13,206
The cosmopolitan says,
we have to begin by recognizing
that we're responsible...

294
00:24:13,285 --> 00:24:16,049
collectively, for each other,
as citizens are.

295
00:24:16,121 --> 00:24:17,918
But second,

296
00:24:17,989 --> 00:24:22,426
cosmopolitans think that it's
okay for people to-
to be different.

297
00:24:22,494 --> 00:24:24,689
That they care about everybody,

298
00:24:24,763 --> 00:24:28,859
but not in a way that means
they want everybody to be
the same, or like them.

299
00:24:28,934 --> 00:24:33,837
Whereas, there's a certain kind
of philosophical universalism,

300
00:24:33,905 --> 00:24:37,864
which is often associated
with evangelizing religions, where,

301
00:24:37,943 --> 00:24:41,379
"Yeah, we love everybody,
but we want them to become like us...

302
00:24:41,446 --> 00:24:43,710
in order to love them properly."

303
00:24:43,782 --> 00:24:48,742
There's a great German proverb
which says-

304
00:24:52,123 --> 00:24:56,253
"If you don't want to be my brother,
I'll bash your skull in."

305
00:24:56,328 --> 00:24:59,354
And that's- that's the opposite
of cosmopolitanism.

306
00:24:59,431 --> 00:25:03,128
It's the universalist who says,
"Yeah, I want you to be my brother,
but on my terms."

307
00:25:07,005 --> 00:25:11,942
Now, if you think that everybody's
entitled to be different, right,

308
00:25:12,010 --> 00:25:15,741
it can produce a kind of cultural
relativism, in which you say,

309
00:25:15,814 --> 00:25:17,907
"Whatever they want to do,
that's fine.

310
00:25:17,983 --> 00:25:22,044
"There's no place for me standing
outside to make any moral judgments,

311
00:25:22,120 --> 00:25:24,315
any ethical judgments,
about what they're up to."

312
00:25:26,091 --> 00:25:29,891
So that's kind of one position
that I want to distinguish myself from.

313
00:25:29,961 --> 00:25:32,191
I think that it's very important...

314
00:25:32,264 --> 00:25:37,566
that in the global conversation
of human beings
that cosmopolitans recommend,

315
00:25:37,636 --> 00:25:39,695
one of the things we're doing...

316
00:25:39,771 --> 00:25:41,864
is exchanging ideas about
what's right and wrong,

317
00:25:41,940 --> 00:25:44,807
and that it's perfectly
appropriate to do so.

318
00:25:55,987 --> 00:25:59,616
I have this privilege of having
grown up in a couple of places.

319
00:25:59,691 --> 00:26:01,784
My mother came from England.
My father came from Ghana.

320
00:26:01,860 --> 00:26:03,828
And they would never,
either of them,

321
00:26:03,895 --> 00:26:07,956
tell us exactly how they met
or exactly what it was
that drew them to each other,

322
00:26:08,033 --> 00:26:13,266
though my father always said
that my mother had
a splendidly un-English behind.

323
00:26:13,338 --> 00:26:15,067
That it was-

324
00:26:15,140 --> 00:26:18,507
She actually had a more African behind
and he found that attractive.
So I don't know.

325
00:26:18,577 --> 00:26:22,946
It happens that in the shanty
where I grew up, kinship-
that is, the family-

326
00:26:23,014 --> 00:26:26,177
is organized in a very different way
from the way that
it's organized in England.

327
00:26:26,251 --> 00:26:28,879
We're what anthropologists
call matrilineal.

328
00:26:28,954 --> 00:26:32,913
That means that the most
important adult male
in a child's life...

329
00:26:32,991 --> 00:26:38,156
isn't, um, his mother's husband,
that is, his father.

330
00:26:38,229 --> 00:26:41,198
It's his mother's brother,
his maternal uncle.

331
00:26:41,266 --> 00:26:43,496
There's a word for that; wofa.

332
00:26:43,568 --> 00:26:48,631
So I have, uh- uh,
these eight people in the world,

333
00:26:48,707 --> 00:26:51,267
two- two young women...

334
00:26:51,343 --> 00:26:53,971
and six young men
who are my nephews and nieces.

335
00:26:54,045 --> 00:26:57,537
I'm their wofa.
And by our tradition, I'm-

336
00:26:57,616 --> 00:27:00,050
Since my sisters don't have
any other brothers,

337
00:27:00,118 --> 00:27:02,746
I'm the guy who's responsible
for their education.

338
00:27:02,821 --> 00:27:05,984
If anything bad happens to them,
I'm supposed to look after them
and so on.

339
00:27:06,057 --> 00:27:10,756
Um, now of course, in England,
if you have a father, that's his job.

340
00:27:13,565 --> 00:27:16,261
There's a certain kind
of universalist who will say,

341
00:27:16,334 --> 00:27:18,393
"One of these has to be correct."

342
00:27:18,470 --> 00:27:20,836
But the cosmopolitan says
these are two ways of doing it,

343
00:27:20,905 --> 00:27:23,806
and as long as they do the thing
they're supposed to do,

344
00:27:23,875 --> 00:27:27,072
it seems to me absurd to suggest
that one has to be better
than the other,

345
00:27:27,145 --> 00:27:30,740
or that one should be universalized
for any reason.

346
00:27:40,125 --> 00:27:45,119
One thing that people talk about
all the time these days is conflicts
of values across cultures,

347
00:27:45,196 --> 00:27:48,359
and often people think they're
kind of inevitably irreconcilable...

348
00:27:48,433 --> 00:27:51,266
and that they're the root of
all the difficulties in the world.

349
00:27:51,336 --> 00:27:53,270
And I- The first way, I think,

350
00:27:53,338 --> 00:27:58,640
you need to work to disentangle
all the problems of that way of thinking...

351
00:27:58,710 --> 00:28:04,273
is to recognize the huge diversity
of values by which people are guided.

352
00:28:07,952 --> 00:28:11,183
We're different.
The cosmopolitan thinks
we're entitled to be different,

353
00:28:11,256 --> 00:28:13,816
and that it's permissible that
there should be differences
in certain ways.

354
00:28:13,892 --> 00:28:18,955
But the cosmopolitan also assumes
the fact that there are all
these different kinds of values...

355
00:28:19,030 --> 00:28:20,998
and the fact that
we can recognize so many of them...

356
00:28:21,066 --> 00:28:24,467
is a recollection of the fact
that we're all human beings,

357
00:28:24,536 --> 00:28:29,030
that we share what
you might call a moral nature.

358
00:28:37,982 --> 00:28:42,316
[Appiah] Our responsibilities
aren't just to a hundred people
whom we can interact with and see.

359
00:28:42,387 --> 00:28:44,150
And that's, I think,
the great challenge.

360
00:28:44,222 --> 00:28:47,487
Cosmopolitanism, for me,
is meant to be an answer
to that challenge.

361
00:28:47,559 --> 00:28:50,027
It's meant to say...

362
00:28:50,095 --> 00:28:52,996
you can't retreat to the hundred.

363
00:28:53,064 --> 00:28:57,501
You can't simply be partial
to some tiny group...

364
00:28:57,569 --> 00:29:00,060
and simply live out
your moral life in that.

365
00:29:00,138 --> 00:29:02,766
That's not-
That's not morally permissible.

366
00:29:02,841 --> 00:29:07,141
But you can't abandon
your local group either,

367
00:29:07,212 --> 00:29:10,841
because that would
take you too far away, I think,
from your humanity.

368
00:29:10,915 --> 00:29:14,510
So what we have to do
is to learn how to do both.

369
00:30:06,171 --> 00:30:09,971
[Nussbaum]
Aristotle had the ingredients
of a theory of justice...

370
00:30:10,041 --> 00:30:12,305
that I think is very powerful.

371
00:30:12,377 --> 00:30:15,904
And that is that it's the job of
a good political arrangement...

372
00:30:15,980 --> 00:30:18,915
to provide each
and every person...

373
00:30:18,983 --> 00:30:22,214
with what they need
to become capable...

374
00:30:22,287 --> 00:30:25,415
of living rich
and clourishing human lives.

375
00:30:27,826 --> 00:30:29,885
Now, of course,
he didn't include all the people,

376
00:30:29,961 --> 00:30:34,022
but he at least had that idea
of supporting human capability...

377
00:30:34,098 --> 00:30:36,760
that's the foundation
of my own approach.

378
00:30:36,835 --> 00:30:40,430
Now then, in the 17th
and 18th centuries,

379
00:30:40,505 --> 00:30:44,202
a very powerful new approach
came on the scene,

380
00:30:44,275 --> 00:30:46,709
and that was
the social contract approach-

381
00:30:46,778 --> 00:30:50,043
Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant.

382
00:30:50,114 --> 00:30:53,550
The social contract approach
was inspired...

383
00:30:53,618 --> 00:30:57,577
by the background culture
of feudalism,

384
00:30:57,655 --> 00:31:01,682
where all opportunities
were distributed unequally...

385
00:31:01,759 --> 00:31:04,193
to people according to their class,

386
00:31:04,262 --> 00:31:07,493
their inherited wealth,
and their status.

387
00:31:07,565 --> 00:31:12,400
And so what these theorists said is
try to imagine human beings...

388
00:31:12,470 --> 00:31:15,633
stripped of all those
inherited advantages,

389
00:31:15,707 --> 00:31:18,733
placed in what they called
the "state of nature,"

390
00:31:18,810 --> 00:31:23,611
where they had only their natural body
and their physical advantages,

391
00:31:23,681 --> 00:31:27,310
and try to imagine
what kind of arrangements
the would actually make.

392
00:31:34,559 --> 00:31:37,619
The social contract tradition is,
of course,

393
00:31:37,695 --> 00:31:40,562
an academic,
philosophical tradition,

394
00:31:40,632 --> 00:31:45,126
but it also has tremendous influence
on popular culture...

395
00:31:45,203 --> 00:31:48,001
and our general public life.

396
00:31:48,072 --> 00:31:51,337
Because we-
Every day we hear things like,

397
00:31:51,409 --> 00:31:54,970
"Oh, those people
don't pay their own way."

398
00:31:55,046 --> 00:31:58,015
Or, supporting
some new group of people,

399
00:31:58,082 --> 00:32:01,609
"Well, they'll be a drag
on our economy."

400
00:32:01,686 --> 00:32:06,623
So the idea that the good member
of society is a producer...

401
00:32:06,691 --> 00:32:12,527
who contributes advantage
to everyone, that is very-
a very live idea.

402
00:32:12,597 --> 00:32:17,864
And it lies behind
the decline of welfare programs
in this county.

403
00:32:17,936 --> 00:32:22,498
I think it lies behind many Americans'
skepticism about Europe,

404
00:32:22,573 --> 00:32:24,666
about European social democracy.

405
00:32:24,742 --> 00:32:27,768
You hear terms like
the "Nanny State,"

406
00:32:27,845 --> 00:32:31,110
as though there were something wrong
with the idea of maternal care...

407
00:32:31,182 --> 00:32:34,913
as a conception of what society
actually does.

408
00:32:34,986 --> 00:32:40,083
Um, we also see it in another way
in images of who the real man is.

409
00:32:40,158 --> 00:32:44,618
The real man is sort of like these
people in the state of nature.

410
00:32:44,696 --> 00:32:46,721
He doesn't deeply need anyone.

411
00:32:46,798 --> 00:32:51,735
He isn't bound to anyone
by ties of love and compassion.

412
00:32:51,803 --> 00:32:54,863
He's the loner who can go
his own way...

413
00:32:54,939 --> 00:32:57,100
and then out of advantage,

414
00:32:57,175 --> 00:33:01,805
he'll choose to have certain kinds
of social arrangements.

415
00:33:10,722 --> 00:33:16,126
The theorists of the social contract
made certain assumptions
that aren't always true.

416
00:33:16,194 --> 00:33:18,560
They assumed that the parties
to this contract...

417
00:33:18,629 --> 00:33:23,362
really are roughly equal
in physical and mental power.

418
00:33:23,434 --> 00:33:25,527
Now, that was fine...

419
00:33:25,603 --> 00:33:30,802
when you're thinking about adult men
with no disabilities,

420
00:33:30,875 --> 00:33:34,140
but as some of them already
began to notice,

421
00:33:34,212 --> 00:33:36,680
it doesn't do so well
when you think about women,

422
00:33:36,748 --> 00:33:41,617
because women's oppression
has always been partly occasioned...

423
00:33:41,686 --> 00:33:44,382
by their physical weakness,
compared to men.

424
00:33:44,455 --> 00:33:47,686
And so if you leave out
that physical asymmetry,

425
00:33:47,759 --> 00:33:51,820
you may be leaving out a problem
that a theory of justice
will need to fix.

426
00:33:51,896 --> 00:33:56,060
But it certainly does not do well
when we think about justice...

427
00:33:56,134 --> 00:34:00,594
for people with serious physical
and mental disabilities.

428
00:34:00,671 --> 00:34:03,367
And in fact, some of the theorists
who noticed that said,

429
00:34:03,441 --> 00:34:07,275
"Well, this is a problem,
but we'll just have to solve it later.

430
00:34:07,345 --> 00:34:11,975
We'll get the theory first,
then we'll work on this problem
at some other point."

431
00:34:12,050 --> 00:34:16,851
Well, my thought is
that this is not a small problem.

432
00:34:16,921 --> 00:34:20,823
There are a lot of people with serious
physical and mental disabilities.

433
00:34:20,892 --> 00:34:23,656
But not only that,
but it's all of us-

434
00:34:23,728 --> 00:34:28,631
when we're little children
and as we age.

435
00:34:28,699 --> 00:34:33,102
How do you think about justice
when you're dealing with bodies...

436
00:34:33,171 --> 00:34:37,835
that are very, very unequal
in their ability and their power?

437
00:34:37,909 --> 00:34:39,968
And perhaps even harder,

438
00:34:40,044 --> 00:34:42,012
how do you think about it
when you're dealing with...

439
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:46,744
mental powers that are very, very
unequal in their potential?

440
00:34:46,818 --> 00:34:51,084
And I think that this is
a really serious political problem.

441
00:34:51,155 --> 00:34:56,650
We have only just began
to understand how to educate
children with disabilities,

442
00:34:56,727 --> 00:35:00,163
how to think about
their political representation,

443
00:35:00,231 --> 00:35:04,531
how to design cities
that are open to them.

444
00:35:04,602 --> 00:35:09,266
I mean, this bridge we walked
across, a person in a wheelchair
can go over that bridge.

445
00:35:09,340 --> 00:35:12,002
But, you know, 50 years ago
that would not have been the case.

446
00:35:12,076 --> 00:35:17,275
There would have been steps,
and that person could not get
to see this beautiful lakeshore.

447
00:35:30,695 --> 00:35:34,825
The capabilities approach,
as I've developed it
as a theory of justice,

448
00:35:34,899 --> 00:35:38,164
begins with the idea
that all human beings...

449
00:35:38,236 --> 00:35:41,137
have an inherent dignity...

450
00:35:41,205 --> 00:35:43,833
and require life circumstances...

451
00:35:43,908 --> 00:35:47,571
that are worthy of that dignity.

452
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:52,938
The areas of life that seem to me
particularly important...

453
00:35:53,017 --> 00:35:56,316
when we think
about the capabilities are;

454
00:35:56,387 --> 00:36:00,414
of course life
is the very most basic one;

455
00:36:00,491 --> 00:36:04,291
bodily health; bodily integrity;

456
00:36:04,362 --> 00:36:08,924
the development of the senses,
imagination and thought;

457
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:11,935
the development
of practical reasoning;

458
00:36:12,003 --> 00:36:15,734
the development of affiliations,
both more informal,

459
00:36:15,806 --> 00:36:20,470
in the family and friendship
but also in the political community;

460
00:36:20,545 --> 00:36:23,946
the development
of the ability to play...

461
00:36:24,015 --> 00:36:26,779
and have recreational opportunities;

462
00:36:26,851 --> 00:36:28,842
the ability to have relationships...

463
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:34,324
with other creatures
and the world of nature;

464
00:36:34,392 --> 00:36:37,987
developing emotional capabilities,

465
00:36:38,062 --> 00:36:40,462
because I think a lot of theories
leave out the fact...

466
00:36:40,531 --> 00:36:45,025
that we don't want to have lives
that are filled with fear,
for example.

467
00:36:50,308 --> 00:36:54,108
In my view, people get together
to form a society...

468
00:36:54,178 --> 00:36:56,840
not because they're afraid...

469
00:36:56,914 --> 00:36:59,849
and they want to strike a deal
for mutual advantage,

470
00:36:59,917 --> 00:37:04,149
but it's much more out of love...

471
00:37:04,222 --> 00:37:09,558
that they want to join with others
in creating a world
that's as good as it can be.

472
00:37:27,211 --> 00:37:30,146
[Astra Taylor]
So, do you have to go to school
to be a philosopher?

473
00:37:30,214 --> 00:37:33,183
[ West ]
Oh, God, no. Thank God
you don"t have to go to school.

474
00:37:33,251 --> 00:37:36,186
No. A philosopher is a lover
of wisdom.

475
00:37:36,254 --> 00:37:39,087
It takes tremendous discipline,
it takes tremendous courage...

476
00:37:39,156 --> 00:37:41,147
to think for yourself,
to examine yourself.

477
00:37:41,225 --> 00:37:44,422
The Socratic imperative of
examining yourself requires courage.

478
00:37:44,495 --> 00:37:48,329
William Butler Yeats used to say
it takes more courage...

479
00:37:48,399 --> 00:37:53,200
to examine the dark corners
of your own soul than it does
for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.

480
00:37:53,271 --> 00:37:55,865
Courage to think critically.
You can't talk-

481
00:37:55,940 --> 00:37:59,205
Courage is the enabling virtue
for any philosopher,

482
00:37:59,277 --> 00:38:01,541
for any human being,
I think in the end.

483
00:38:01,612 --> 00:38:03,671
Courage to think,
courage to love,
courage to hope.

484
00:38:09,053 --> 00:38:13,319
Plato says philosophy is a meditation
on and a preparation for death.

485
00:38:13,391 --> 00:38:15,586
And by death,
what he means is not an event,

486
00:38:15,660 --> 00:38:19,596
but a death in life
because there's no rebirth,

487
00:38:19,664 --> 00:38:23,065
there's no change,
there's no transformation
without death.

488
00:38:23,134 --> 00:38:26,501
And therefore, the question becomes,
how do you learn how to die?

489
00:38:26,570 --> 00:38:29,368
And of course, Montaigne talks
about that in his famous essay,

490
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,136
"To Philosophize Is to Learn
How to Die."

491
00:38:32,209 --> 00:38:35,872
You can't talk about truth
without talking about learning
how to die.

492
00:38:40,084 --> 00:38:42,951
I believe that Theodor Adorno
was right when he says...

493
00:38:43,020 --> 00:38:46,888
that the condition of truth
is to allow suffering to speak.

494
00:38:46,957 --> 00:38:51,621
That gives it
an existential emphasis, you see.

495
00:38:51,696 --> 00:38:54,426
So we're really talking
about truth as a way of life...

496
00:38:54,498 --> 00:38:57,092
as opposed to simply truth
as a set of propositions...

497
00:38:57,168 --> 00:39:00,535
that correspond to a set
of things in the world.

498
00:39:04,008 --> 00:39:06,238
Human beings are unable...

499
00:39:06,310 --> 00:39:10,269
to ever gain any monopoly
on Truth, capital "T"

500
00:39:10,348 --> 00:39:14,250
We might have access to truth,
small "t," but they're fallible
claims about truth.

501
00:39:14,318 --> 00:39:17,845
We could be wrong.
We have to be open
to revision and so on.

502
00:39:17,922 --> 00:39:20,789
So there is a certain kind of mystery
that goes hand-in-hand with truth.

503
00:39:20,858 --> 00:39:25,295
This is why so many
of the existential thinkers,
be they religious,

504
00:39:25,363 --> 00:39:28,423
like Meister Eckhart
or Paul Tillich,

505
00:39:28,499 --> 00:39:32,333
or be they secular,
like Camus and Sartre,

506
00:39:32,403 --> 00:39:37,102
that they're accenting our finitude
and our inability to fully grasp...

507
00:39:37,174 --> 00:39:40,234
the ultimate nature of reality,
the truth about things.

508
00:39:40,311 --> 00:39:45,112
And therefore,
there, you talk about truth...

509
00:39:45,182 --> 00:39:47,742
being tied to the way to truth,

510
00:39:49,086 --> 00:39:51,987
because once you give up
on the notion...

511
00:39:52,056 --> 00:39:55,992
of fully grasping
the way the world is,

512
00:39:56,060 --> 00:40:01,157
you're gonna talk about what are
the ways in which I can sustain
my quest for truth.

513
00:40:02,767 --> 00:40:06,396
How do you sustain a journey,
a path toward truth,
the way to truth?

514
00:40:06,470 --> 00:40:09,871
So the truth talk goes hand-in-hand
with talk about the way to truth.

515
00:40:09,940 --> 00:40:11,999
And scientists could talk about this
in terms of, you know,

516
00:40:12,076 --> 00:40:15,944
inducing evidence
and drawing reliable conclusions
and so forth and so on.

517
00:40:16,013 --> 00:40:18,573
Religious folk could talk about this
in terms of...

518
00:40:18,649 --> 00:40:21,709
surrendering one's arrogance
and pride...

519
00:40:21,786 --> 00:40:25,017
in the face of divine revelation
and what have you.

520
00:40:25,089 --> 00:40:29,048
But they're always of acknowledging
our finitude and our fallibility.

521
00:40:33,464 --> 00:40:37,525
I want all of the rich,
historical colorations...

522
00:40:37,601 --> 00:40:41,628
to be manifest
in talking about our finitude.

523
00:40:41,705 --> 00:40:44,731
Being born of a woman...

524
00:40:44,809 --> 00:40:49,746
in stank and stench-
what I call "funk."

525
00:40:49,814 --> 00:40:52,442
Being introduced to the funk
of life in the womb...

526
00:40:52,516 --> 00:40:55,383
and the love-push that gets you out.

527
00:40:55,453 --> 00:40:58,286
Right? And then your body
is not just death-

528
00:40:58,355 --> 00:41:01,813
The way Vico talks about it.
And here Vico was so much better
than Heidegger.

529
00:41:01,892 --> 00:41:04,087
Vico talks about it
in terms of being a corpse.

530
00:41:04,161 --> 00:41:06,220
See, Heidegger didn't talk
about corpses.

531
00:41:06,297 --> 00:41:10,028
He talks about death.
It's still too abstract.

532
00:41:10,100 --> 00:41:12,364
Absolutely. Read the poetry
of John Donne.

533
00:41:12,436 --> 00:41:16,065
He'll tell you about corpses
that decompose.

534
00:41:16,140 --> 00:41:17,903
Well, see, that's history.

535
00:41:17,975 --> 00:41:21,433
That's the raw funky,
stanky stuff of life.

536
00:41:21,512 --> 00:41:24,606
That's what bluesmen do.
See, that's what jazzmen do.

537
00:41:29,119 --> 00:41:31,917
See, I'm a bluesman
in the life of the mind.

538
00:41:31,989 --> 00:41:35,652
I'm a jazzman
in the world of ideas.
Therefore for me, music is central.

539
00:41:35,726 --> 00:41:37,990
So when you're talking about poetry,
for the most part,

540
00:41:38,062 --> 00:41:42,192
Plato was talking primarily
about, uh, words,

541
00:41:42,266 --> 00:41:46,635
whereas I talk about notes,
I talk about tone,
I talk about timbre,

542
00:41:46,704 --> 00:41:49,195
I talk about rhythms.

543
00:41:49,273 --> 00:41:52,140
You see, for me,
music is fundamental.

544
00:41:52,209 --> 00:41:54,609
Philosophy must go to school
not only with the poets.

545
00:41:54,678 --> 00:41:58,011
Philosophy needs to go to school
with the musicians.

546
00:41:58,082 --> 00:42:02,610
Keep in mind, Plato bans
the flute in the republic
but not the lyre.

547
00:42:04,355 --> 00:42:06,789
Why?
Because the flute appeals...

548
00:42:06,857 --> 00:42:09,382
to all of these various sides
of who we are...

549
00:42:09,460 --> 00:42:12,623
given his tripartite conception
of the soul;

550
00:42:12,696 --> 00:42:16,132
the rational and the spirited
and the appetitive.

551
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:19,931
And the flute is- appeals
to all three of those,

552
00:42:20,004 --> 00:42:23,770
where he thinks the lyre
on one string, it only appeals to one
and therefore is permissible.

553
00:42:23,841 --> 00:42:26,969
Now of course, the irony is
when Plato was on his deathbed,
what did he do?

554
00:42:27,044 --> 00:42:31,344
Well, he requested the Thracian girl
to play music on the flute.

555
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:39,621
I'm a Christian, but I'm not a puritan.
I believe in pleasure.

556
00:42:39,690 --> 00:42:44,855
And orgiasmic pleasure has its place.
Intellectual pleasure has its place.
Social pleasure has its place.

557
00:42:44,929 --> 00:42:48,922
Televisual pleasure has its place.
You know, I like certain TV shows.

558
00:42:48,999 --> 00:42:51,661
My God, when it comes to music- Oh!

559
00:42:51,735 --> 00:42:56,536
You know, Beethoven's
32nd Sonata, Opus 111.

560
00:42:56,607 --> 00:42:59,974
Unbelievable aesthetic pleasure.

561
00:43:00,044 --> 00:43:03,138
The same would be true for
Curtis Mayfield or the Beatles
or what have you.

562
00:43:06,517 --> 00:43:11,887
There's a certain pleasure of the life
of the mind that cannot be denied.

563
00:43:11,956 --> 00:43:14,390
It's true that you might be
socially isolated,

564
00:43:14,458 --> 00:43:17,120
because you're in the library,
at home, and so on,

565
00:43:17,194 --> 00:43:19,628
but you're intensely alive.

566
00:43:19,697 --> 00:43:21,858
In fact, you're much more alive
than these folk...

567
00:43:21,932 --> 00:43:24,492
walking these streets
of New York in crowds...

568
00:43:24,568 --> 00:43:30,200
with just no intellectual interrogation
and questioning going at all.

569
00:43:30,274 --> 00:43:34,836
But if you read, you know, John
Ruskin or you read a Mark Twain,

570
00:43:34,912 --> 00:43:37,745
or, my God, Herman Melville,

571
00:43:37,815 --> 00:43:39,783
you almost have to throw the book
against the wall...

572
00:43:39,850 --> 00:43:44,344
because you're almost
so intensely alive
that you need a break.

573
00:43:44,421 --> 00:43:46,389
[Astra Taylor]
You get electrified.
Exactly.

574
00:43:46,457 --> 00:43:49,688
It's time to take a break and
get a little dullness in your life.

575
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:55,096
Take Moby Dick, throw it against
the wall the way Goethe threw
von Kleist's work against the wall.

576
00:43:55,165 --> 00:43:57,690
It was just too much.
It made Goethe-

577
00:43:57,768 --> 00:44:00,737
It reminded Goethe of
the darkness that he was escaping...

578
00:44:00,804 --> 00:44:03,671
after he overcame
those suicidal impulses...

579
00:44:03,741 --> 00:44:05,902
with Sorrows of Young Werther
in the 1770s...

580
00:44:05,976 --> 00:44:09,810
that made his move toward
neoclassicism in Weimar.

581
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:13,646
There are certain things
that make us too alive almost.

582
00:44:13,717 --> 00:44:17,448
It's almost like being too intensely
in love. You can't do anything.
[Chuckles]

583
00:44:17,521 --> 00:44:21,651
It's hard to get back the Kronos.
It's hard to get back the everyday life,
you know what I mean?

584
00:44:21,725 --> 00:44:25,286
That chirotic dimension of being
in love with another person,

585
00:44:25,362 --> 00:44:28,661
everything is so meaningful,
you want to sustain it.
It's true.

586
00:44:28,732 --> 00:44:32,168
You can't just do it, you know.
You gotta go to the bathroom,
have a drink of water. Shit.

587
00:45:32,696 --> 00:45:36,564
For my generation in the mid-'80s
when I was in my 20s...

588
00:45:36,633 --> 00:45:39,932
just starting to do politics
in a serious way,

589
00:45:40,003 --> 00:45:42,995
it seemed like the only way to-

590
00:45:43,073 --> 00:45:45,837
the only outlet for revolutionay desire
was to go to Central America...

591
00:45:45,909 --> 00:45:50,812
and to somehow participate in,
or at least observe, their revolutions.

592
00:45:50,881 --> 00:45:54,146
I mean, so a lot of people
went to Nicaragua.

593
00:45:54,218 --> 00:45:59,155
I, with my friends, was mostly
interested in El Salvador.

594
00:45:59,223 --> 00:46:02,021
But the, um- the thing I realized
at a certain point...

595
00:46:02,092 --> 00:46:07,029
was that all we could do
is really observe what
their revolutions were.

596
00:46:07,097 --> 00:46:12,296
And the defining moment for me
came in a meeting in El Salvador...

597
00:46:12,369 --> 00:46:15,338
with a group of, uh, students
at the University of El Salvador.

598
00:46:15,405 --> 00:46:18,932
And at a certain point,
a friend there said,

599
00:46:19,009 --> 00:46:22,206
"Look, we're really grateful
for these North American comrades
who come to help us,

600
00:46:22,279 --> 00:46:25,214
"but we really- what would
be really best for us...

601
00:46:25,282 --> 00:46:28,308
"is if you all would go home
and make revolution in the U.S.

602
00:46:28,385 --> 00:46:30,853
That would really be better
than trying to come help us here."

603
00:46:30,921 --> 00:46:35,119
And it was true, of course.
I don't think any of these
North Americans were particularly helpful...

604
00:46:35,192 --> 00:46:37,319
in Nicaragua and El Salvador, et cetera.

605
00:46:37,394 --> 00:46:40,454
Um, and- But I said at that point-

606
00:46:40,531 --> 00:46:42,522
"You know, Reagan's in the White House.

607
00:46:42,599 --> 00:46:46,501
I have no idea what it would mean
to make revolution in the U.S.
I just don't have any-"

608
00:46:46,570 --> 00:46:48,663
And then he said, "Look, don't
you have mountains in the U.S.?"

609
00:46:48,739 --> 00:46:51,173
And I said, "Yeah. We have mountains."
He says, "It's easy.

610
00:46:51,241 --> 00:46:55,405
"You go to the mountains.
You start an armed cell.
You make revolution."

611
00:46:55,479 --> 00:46:57,572
And I thought, "Oh, shit."
You know.

612
00:46:57,648 --> 00:47:00,583
It just didn't correspond
to my reality.

613
00:47:00,651 --> 00:47:04,781
Like those notions of
constructing the armed cell,

614
00:47:04,855 --> 00:47:09,189
especially constructing the armed cell
in the mountains and then sabotaging things.

615
00:47:09,259 --> 00:47:13,958
It didn't- It didn't make any sense at all,
so we really had no idea how to do it.

616
00:47:14,031 --> 00:47:16,397
Um, not just
we didn't know practically-

617
00:47:16,466 --> 00:47:20,027
like we didn't know which rifles
to take up into the mountains.

618
00:47:20,103 --> 00:47:24,267
It's-The whole idea
of what it involved was lacking,

619
00:47:24,341 --> 00:47:28,573
um, and required
a real conceptual rethinking.

620
00:48:07,851 --> 00:48:12,288
We're stuck conceptually, I think,
between two almost cliche ways
of thinking revolution today.

621
00:48:12,356 --> 00:48:15,291
On the one hand, we have...

622
00:48:15,359 --> 00:48:18,328
the notion of revolution
that involves...

623
00:48:18,395 --> 00:48:21,831
the replacement of a ruling elite...

624
00:48:21,899 --> 00:48:24,094
with another...

625
00:48:24,167 --> 00:48:26,431
better, in many ways, ruling elite.

626
00:48:26,503 --> 00:48:30,269
And that's in fact the form
that many of the modern
revolutions have taken...

627
00:48:30,340 --> 00:48:34,674
and have posed great benefits
for the people, et cetera,
but they have not arrived at democracy.

628
00:48:34,745 --> 00:48:39,148
And so that notion of revolution
is really discredited,
and I think rightly so.

629
00:48:39,216 --> 00:48:42,549
But opposed to that
is another notion of revolution,

630
00:48:42,619 --> 00:48:45,713
which I think is equally
discredited from exactly
the opposite point of view,

631
00:48:45,789 --> 00:48:49,953
which is the notion of revolution-
that, in fact hasn't been instituted-

632
00:48:50,027 --> 00:48:53,519
that thinks of revolution
as just the removal...

633
00:48:53,597 --> 00:48:57,397
of all of those forms of authority-

634
00:48:57,467 --> 00:48:59,901
state power, the power of capital-

635
00:48:59,970 --> 00:49:04,066
that stop people from expressing
their natural abilities to rule themselves.

636
00:49:07,244 --> 00:49:11,044
The question of human nature
has long been a thing
of political philosophy.

637
00:49:11,114 --> 00:49:16,381
In fact, I'm sure everyone had
some stupid evening in college
smoking way too much and talking,

638
00:49:16,453 --> 00:49:20,446
where you end up in a discussion
where, like, you decide you
disagree with your friend...

639
00:49:20,524 --> 00:49:22,549
because she thinks
that human nature's evil,

640
00:49:22,626 --> 00:49:24,856
you think human nature's good,
and you can't get any further.

641
00:49:24,928 --> 00:49:29,262
I mean, this is- I think
that kind of stupidity, I think,

642
00:49:29,333 --> 00:49:32,461
has affected a lot of the history
of political philosophy.

643
00:49:32,536 --> 00:49:35,699
And I think the relevant
fact for politics-

644
00:49:40,143 --> 00:49:43,340
Running aground.

645
00:49:45,482 --> 00:49:47,416
Shipwrecked.

646
00:49:52,823 --> 00:49:56,088
The relevant fact for politics is
really that human nature's changeable.

647
00:49:56,159 --> 00:50:01,392
Human nature isn't good or evil.
Human nature is, uh, constituted.

648
00:50:01,465 --> 00:50:03,990
It's constituted
by how we act, how we-

649
00:50:04,067 --> 00:50:08,936
The history- Human nature is, in fact,
the histoy of habits and practices...

650
00:50:09,006 --> 00:50:11,770
that are the result
of- of past struggles,

651
00:50:11,842 --> 00:50:14,902
of past hierarchies,
of past victories and defeats.

652
00:50:14,978 --> 00:50:17,469
And so this is, I think, actually-

653
00:50:17,547 --> 00:50:20,414
The key to rethinking revolution
is to recognize...

654
00:50:20,484 --> 00:50:23,248
that revolution...

655
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:28,053
is not just about...
a transformation for democracy.

656
00:50:28,125 --> 00:50:30,593
It's really-
Revolution really requires...

657
00:50:30,660 --> 00:50:34,994
a transformation of human nature
so that people are capable of democracy.

658
00:50:39,369 --> 00:50:42,429
Democracy is one of those concepts
that seems to me has been...

659
00:50:42,506 --> 00:50:45,100
almost completely corrupted today.

660
00:50:45,175 --> 00:50:47,405
In some cases,
it's used to mean...

661
00:50:47,477 --> 00:50:51,004
simply periodic elections
with a limited choice of rulers.

662
00:50:51,081 --> 00:50:55,108
In other cases, when one thinks
especially in international affairs,

663
00:50:55,185 --> 00:50:58,780
it often means following the will
of the United States.

664
00:50:58,855 --> 00:51:02,018
But really, democracy means
the rule of all by all.

665
00:51:02,092 --> 00:51:06,688
It means everybody involved
in collective self-rule.

666
00:51:09,900 --> 00:51:11,993
You see those turtles over there?

667
00:51:20,210 --> 00:51:24,442
How do you transform human nature
so that people will be capable
of democracy?

668
00:51:24,514 --> 00:51:27,847
Lenin's solution to this problem
is a properly dialectical one.

669
00:51:27,918 --> 00:51:31,445
He thinks- and this is in large part
what the Soviets enact-

670
00:51:31,521 --> 00:51:34,649
that there has to be
a negation of democracy.

671
00:51:34,724 --> 00:51:36,919
Call it "dictatorship of the proletariat,"

672
00:51:36,993 --> 00:51:41,726
some sort of hegemonic state
that would then operate the transition,

673
00:51:41,798 --> 00:51:43,789
that would transform human nature,

674
00:51:43,867 --> 00:51:48,634
then to eventually arrive at the time
when people are capable of democracy,

675
00:51:48,705 --> 00:51:51,674
the state's no longer necessary,
et cetera.

676
00:51:52,676 --> 00:51:56,942
It's properly the dialectical nature
of this that seems to me mistaken.

677
00:51:57,013 --> 00:52:01,848
How do people learn democracy?
How does human nature change
to become capable of democracy?

678
00:52:01,918 --> 00:52:03,886
Not by its opposite.

679
00:52:03,954 --> 00:52:08,584
It can only be done in a sort
of positive development by-

680
00:52:08,658 --> 00:52:10,956
You can only learn democracy by doing it.

681
00:52:11,027 --> 00:52:15,487
And so that that seems to me-
the conception-

682
00:52:15,565 --> 00:52:19,797
the only way it seems to me today
to be able to rehabilitate...

683
00:52:20,804 --> 00:52:22,863
the conception of revolution.

684
00:52:24,841 --> 00:52:29,039
Revolution then today
refuses that dialectic
between purgatory and paradise.

685
00:52:29,112 --> 00:52:33,549
It's rather instigating
utopia every day.

686
00:52:37,821 --> 00:52:41,587
There's something quite- that feels
immediately quite inappropriate...

687
00:52:41,658 --> 00:52:45,822
about talking
about revolution on such a-

688
00:52:45,896 --> 00:52:50,856
what would be sort of like...
aristocratic almost.

689
00:52:50,934 --> 00:52:53,266
I mean not even bourgeois.
Aristocratic location.

690
00:52:53,336 --> 00:52:57,773
You know, rowing
on a beautiful pond in a park...

691
00:52:57,841 --> 00:53:02,869
with the rich of New York all around it,
it seems like kind of an absurdity.

692
00:53:02,946 --> 00:53:06,575
[Astra Taylor]
Well, where would we pick that
would be the revolutionary spot?

693
00:53:06,650 --> 00:53:09,278
But then that
would be cliche already.

694
00:53:09,352 --> 00:53:12,651
Here, the cliche would be
that you'd choose as a visual site...

695
00:53:12,722 --> 00:53:17,216
either- either a scene of poverty...

696
00:53:17,294 --> 00:53:19,626
or a scene of labor and production.

697
00:53:19,696 --> 00:53:21,357
Um,

698
00:53:23,066 --> 00:53:25,432
because then you would show the ones
who would benefit from it,

699
00:53:25,502 --> 00:53:30,269
and even the subjects, you know,
the actors that would- that would conduct it.

700
00:53:30,340 --> 00:53:34,606
But it strikes me in another way
that it might be appropriate to have-

701
00:53:36,513 --> 00:53:40,813
to work against such
a conception of revolution...

702
00:53:40,884 --> 00:53:43,318
as, um-

703
00:53:44,788 --> 00:53:46,779
as loss and as deprivation.

704
00:53:47,657 --> 00:53:52,390
It makes little sense to me
to say revolution can't be made
in the United States...

705
00:53:52,462 --> 00:53:54,953
or revolution can't be made in New York
because everyone is too comfortable,

706
00:53:55,031 --> 00:53:57,659
because they have too much
to lose, et cetera.

707
00:53:57,734 --> 00:54:00,965
They too have
an enormous amount to gain.

708
00:54:01,037 --> 00:54:03,198
When we say a better world
is possible,

709
00:54:03,273 --> 00:54:07,300
we don't just mean a better world
for those who are least off today.

710
00:54:07,377 --> 00:54:09,470
We mean a better world for all of us.

711
00:54:34,571 --> 00:54:38,837
[Man]
This is where we should start
feeling at home.

712
00:54:41,511 --> 00:54:44,810
Part of our daily perception
of reality...

713
00:54:44,881 --> 00:54:48,442
is that this disappears
from our world.

714
00:54:48,518 --> 00:54:53,455
When you go to the toilet,
shit disappears. You flush it.

715
00:54:53,523 --> 00:54:57,926
Of course rationally you know
it's there in canalization and so on,

716
00:54:57,994 --> 00:55:01,293
but at a certain level of
your most elementay experience,

717
00:55:01,364 --> 00:55:05,357
it disappears from your world.

718
00:55:07,437 --> 00:55:11,373
But the problem is that trash
doesn't disappear.

719
00:55:13,443 --> 00:55:15,434
I think ecology-

720
00:55:15,512 --> 00:55:18,174
The way we approach
ecological problematic...

721
00:55:18,248 --> 00:55:22,617
is maybe the crucial field
of ideology today.

722
00:55:22,686 --> 00:55:27,953
And I use ideology in the
traditional sense of illusory

723
00:55:28,024 --> 00:55:32,393
wrong way of thinking
and perceiving reality.

724
00:55:32,462 --> 00:55:36,125
Why? Ideology is not simply dreaming...

725
00:55:36,199 --> 00:55:39,066
about false ideas and so on.

726
00:55:39,135 --> 00:55:44,937
Ideology addresses very real problems,
but it mystifies them.

727
00:55:45,008 --> 00:55:48,603
One of the elementay
ideological mechanisms, I claim,

728
00:55:48,678 --> 00:55:53,479
is what I call
the temptation of meaning.

729
00:55:53,550 --> 00:55:56,018
When something horrible happens,

730
00:55:56,086 --> 00:55:59,522
our spontaneous tendency
is to search for a meaning.

731
00:55:59,589 --> 00:56:03,525
It must mean something.
You know, like AIDS.
It was a trauma.

732
00:56:03,593 --> 00:56:06,790
Then conservatives came
and said it's punishment...

733
00:56:06,863 --> 00:56:10,162
for our sinful ways of life,
and so on and so on.

734
00:56:10,233 --> 00:56:16,069
Even if we interpret a catastrophe
as a punishment,

735
00:56:16,139 --> 00:56:17,868
it makes it easier in a way...

736
00:56:17,941 --> 00:56:21,433
because we know it's not just
some terrifying blind force.

737
00:56:21,511 --> 00:56:23,035
It has a meaning.

738
00:56:23,113 --> 00:56:25,707
It's better when you are
in the middle of a catastrophe.

739
00:56:25,782 --> 00:56:31,516
It's better to feel that God punished you
than to feel that it just happened.

740
00:56:31,588 --> 00:56:35,524
If God punished you,
it's still a universe of meaning.

741
00:56:35,592 --> 00:56:41,462
And I think that that's where
ecology as ideology enters.

742
00:57:01,985 --> 00:57:05,352
It's really the implicit
premise of ecology...

743
00:57:05,422 --> 00:57:08,391
that the existing world...

744
00:57:08,458 --> 00:57:11,552
is the best possible world,

745
00:57:11,628 --> 00:57:15,029
in the sense of
it's a balanced world...

746
00:57:15,098 --> 00:57:18,761
which is disturbed
through human hubris.

747
00:57:18,835 --> 00:57:21,497
So why do I find this problematic?

748
00:57:21,571 --> 00:57:25,473
Because I think
that this notion of nature-

749
00:57:25,542 --> 00:57:30,639
nature as a harmonious, organic,

750
00:57:30,713 --> 00:57:35,582
balanced, reproducing,
almost living organism,

751
00:57:35,652 --> 00:57:40,180
which is then disturbed, perturbed,

752
00:57:40,256 --> 00:57:44,249
derailed through human hubris,
technological exploitation and so on,

753
00:57:44,327 --> 00:57:48,764
is, I think, a secular version
of the religious story of the Fall.

754
00:57:48,832 --> 00:57:54,065
And the answer should be-
not that there is no fall-
that we are part of nature,

755
00:57:54,137 --> 00:57:57,197
but on the contrary,
that there is no nature.

756
00:57:57,273 --> 00:58:01,869
Nature is not a balanced totality
which then we humans disturb.

757
00:58:01,945 --> 00:58:04,243
Nature is a big series...

758
00:58:04,314 --> 00:58:06,612
of unimaginable catastrophes.

759
00:58:06,683 --> 00:58:11,086
We profit from them.
What's our main source
of energy today? Oil.

760
00:58:11,154 --> 00:58:13,588
What are we aware- What is oil?

761
00:58:13,656 --> 00:58:18,423
Oil reserves beneath the earth
are material remainders...

762
00:58:18,495 --> 00:58:21,020
of an unimaginable catastrophe.

763
00:58:21,097 --> 00:58:25,158
Are we aware-
Because we all know
that oil- oil- oil is-

764
00:58:25,235 --> 00:58:29,035
oil is composed of the
remainders of animal life,

765
00:58:29,105 --> 00:58:31,198
plants and so on and so on.

766
00:58:31,274 --> 00:58:35,335
Can you imagine what kind
of unthinkable catastrophe...

767
00:58:35,411 --> 00:58:37,345
had to occur on Earth?

768
00:58:37,413 --> 00:58:39,347
So that is good to remember.

769
00:58:57,567 --> 00:59:00,434
No. You call this porn? My God.

770
00:59:06,509 --> 00:59:11,378
You can have a half of a hamburger.
There is some cheese sandwich.

771
00:59:11,447 --> 00:59:14,644
Then you can have a muffin
and some juice.

772
00:59:21,157 --> 00:59:25,355
Ecology will slowly turn, maybe,

773
00:59:25,428 --> 00:59:29,330
into a new opium of the masses...

774
00:59:29,399 --> 00:59:32,459
the way, as we all know,
Marx defined religion.

775
00:59:33,403 --> 00:59:39,069
What we expect from religion
is a kind of an unquestionable
highest authority.

776
00:59:39,142 --> 00:59:42,134
It's God's word, so it is.
You don't debate it.

777
00:59:42,211 --> 00:59:44,145
Today, I claim,

778
00:59:44,213 --> 00:59:49,173
ecology is more and more
taking over this role...

779
00:59:49,252 --> 00:59:52,710
of a conservative ideology.

780
00:59:52,789 --> 00:59:57,385
Whenever there is
a new scientific breakthrough-
biogenetic development, whatever-

781
00:59:57,460 --> 00:59:59,792
it is as if the voice...

782
00:59:59,862 --> 01:00:04,492
which warns us not to trespass,

783
01:00:04,567 --> 01:00:06,865
violate a certain invisible limit...

784
01:00:06,936 --> 01:00:09,234
like, "Don't do that.
It would be too much."

785
01:00:09,305 --> 01:00:14,038
That voice is today more
and more the voice of ecology.

786
01:00:14,110 --> 01:00:16,340
Like, "Don't mess with D.N.A.

787
01:00:16,412 --> 01:00:18,539
Don't mess with nature.
Don't do it"-

788
01:00:18,615 --> 01:00:21,311
this basic conservative...

789
01:00:21,384 --> 01:00:26,447
partly ideological mistrust of change.

790
01:00:26,522 --> 01:00:28,490
This is today ecology.

791
01:00:30,426 --> 01:00:33,361
Another myth
which is popular about ecology-

792
01:00:33,429 --> 01:00:37,160
namely a spontaneous ideological myth-

793
01:00:37,233 --> 01:00:41,431
is the idea that we Western people...

794
01:00:41,504 --> 01:00:44,667
in our artificial
technological environment...

795
01:00:44,741 --> 01:00:50,304
are alienated from immediate
natural environments-

796
01:00:50,380 --> 01:00:52,314
that we should not forget...

797
01:00:52,382 --> 01:00:56,910
that we humans
are part of the living Earth.

798
01:00:56,986 --> 01:01:01,753
We should not forget
that we are not abstract engineers,

799
01:01:01,824 --> 01:01:04,418
theorists who just exploit nature-

800
01:01:04,494 --> 01:01:10,399
that we are part of nature,
that nature is our unfathomable,
impenetrable background.

801
01:01:10,466 --> 01:01:15,733
I think that that precisely
is the greatest danger.

802
01:01:15,805 --> 01:01:20,208
Why? Think about
a certain obvious paradox.

803
01:01:20,276 --> 01:01:24,440
We all know in what
danger we all are-

804
01:01:24,514 --> 01:01:29,144
global warming,
possibility of other ecological
catastrophes and so on and so on.

805
01:01:29,218 --> 01:01:32,676
But why don't we do anything about it?

806
01:01:32,755 --> 01:01:35,724
It is, I think, a nice example...

807
01:01:35,792 --> 01:01:40,661
of what in psychoanalysis
we call disavowal.

808
01:01:40,730 --> 01:01:43,699
The logic is that of,
"I know very well,

809
01:01:43,766 --> 01:01:47,634
but I act as if I don't know."

810
01:01:47,704 --> 01:01:50,002
For example, precisely,

811
01:01:50,073 --> 01:01:54,533
in the case of ecology, I know very
well there may be global warming,

812
01:01:54,610 --> 01:01:57,704
everything will explode,
be destroyed.

813
01:01:57,780 --> 01:02:02,149
But after reading a treatise on it,
what do I do?

814
01:02:02,218 --> 01:02:07,019
I step out. I see- not things
that I see now behind me-

815
01:02:07,090 --> 01:02:09,115
that's a nice sight for me-

816
01:02:09,192 --> 01:02:12,923
I see nice trees, birds singing and so on.

817
01:02:12,995 --> 01:02:17,056
And even if I know rationally
this is all in danger,

818
01:02:17,133 --> 01:02:22,070
I simply do not believe
that this can be destroyed.

819
01:02:22,138 --> 01:02:27,542
That's the horror of visiting sites
of a catastrophe like Chernobyl.

820
01:02:27,610 --> 01:02:30,841
You- In a way,
we are not evolutionarily-

821
01:02:30,913 --> 01:02:34,178
We are not wired to even imagine
something like that.

822
01:02:34,250 --> 01:02:36,241
It's in a way unimaginable.

823
01:02:36,319 --> 01:02:39,311
So I think
that what we should do...

824
01:02:39,388 --> 01:02:44,052
to confront properly the threat
of ecological catastrophe...

825
01:02:44,127 --> 01:02:46,857
is not all this New Age stuff...

826
01:02:46,929 --> 01:02:50,763
to break out of this
technological manipulative mold...

827
01:02:50,833 --> 01:02:53,666
and to found our roots in nature,

828
01:02:53,736 --> 01:02:57,934
but, on the contrary, to cut off
even more these roots in nature.

829
01:03:07,550 --> 01:03:11,543
We need more alienation
from our life-world,

830
01:03:11,621 --> 01:03:14,886
from our, as it were,
spontaneous nature.

831
01:03:14,957 --> 01:03:17,949
We should become more artificial.

832
01:03:27,136 --> 01:03:31,766
We should develop, I think,
a much more terrifying
new abstract materialism,

833
01:03:31,841 --> 01:03:35,743
a kind of a mathematical universe
where there is nothing.

834
01:03:35,812 --> 01:03:39,441
There are just formulas,
technical forms and so on.

835
01:03:39,515 --> 01:03:44,350
And the difficult thing
is to find poetry,

836
01:03:44,420 --> 01:03:46,650
spirituality,
in this dimension...

837
01:03:48,391 --> 01:03:51,986
to recreate-if not beauty-
then aesthetic dimension...

838
01:03:52,061 --> 01:03:55,292
in things like this, in trash itself.

839
01:03:55,364 --> 01:03:57,457
That's the true love of the world.

840
01:03:57,533 --> 01:04:00,900
Because what is love?
Love is not idealization.

841
01:04:02,171 --> 01:04:07,370
Every true lover knows
that if you really love a woman or a man,

842
01:04:08,878 --> 01:04:12,746
that you don't idealize him or her.

843
01:04:12,815 --> 01:04:16,046
Love means that you accept a person...

844
01:04:16,118 --> 01:04:20,054
with all its failures,
stupidities, ugly points.

845
01:04:20,122 --> 01:04:24,616
And nonetheless,
the person's absolute for you.

846
01:04:24,694 --> 01:04:28,152
Everything life-
that makes life worth living.

847
01:04:28,231 --> 01:04:32,725
But you see perfection
in imperfection itself.

848
01:04:32,802 --> 01:04:38,570
And that's how we should learn
to love the world.

849
01:04:38,641 --> 01:04:41,872
True ecologist loves all this.

850
01:05:22,551 --> 01:05:25,452
I thought we should take
this walk together.

851
01:05:25,521 --> 01:05:27,580
And, um-

852
01:05:29,292 --> 01:05:33,854
One of the things I wanted
to talk about was what it means
for us to take a walk together.

853
01:05:41,938 --> 01:05:47,069
When I first asked you
about this, um, you told me
you take walks, you take strolls.

854
01:05:47,143 --> 01:05:50,237
I do.
And...

855
01:05:50,313 --> 01:05:55,751
can you say something about,
um, what that is for you?

856
01:05:55,818 --> 01:06:00,221
When do you do it
and how do you do it
and what words do you have for it?

857
01:06:00,289 --> 01:06:04,248
Well I think that I-
I always go for a walk-
Mm-hmm.

858
01:06:04,327 --> 01:06:06,318
Probably every day I go for a walk.
Every day.

859
01:06:06,395 --> 01:06:10,798
Um, and I always tell people
that I'm going for walks.

860
01:06:10,866 --> 01:06:12,800
I use that word.

861
01:06:12,868 --> 01:06:16,235
And most of the disabled people
who I know use that term also.

862
01:06:16,305 --> 01:06:20,537
And which environments make it
possible for you to take a walk?

863
01:06:20,609 --> 01:06:25,376
I moved to San Francisco
largely because it's the most
accessible place in the world.

864
01:06:25,448 --> 01:06:27,439
Yes.
And part of what's so amazing
to me about it...

865
01:06:27,516 --> 01:06:31,612
is that the- the physical access-

866
01:06:31,687 --> 01:06:33,814
the fact that the public transportation
is accessible,

867
01:06:33,889 --> 01:06:36,323
there's curb cuts most places.

868
01:06:36,392 --> 01:06:40,692
Almost most places I'll go,
there's curb cuts.
Buildings are accessible.

869
01:06:40,763 --> 01:06:45,223
And what this does is
that it also leads
to a social acceptability,

870
01:06:45,301 --> 01:06:48,793
that somehow because-
because there's physical access,

871
01:06:48,871 --> 01:06:51,772
there're simply more disabled people
out and about in the world.

872
01:06:51,841 --> 01:06:55,834
And so people have learned
how to interact with them...

873
01:06:55,911 --> 01:06:58,436
and are used to them
in this certain way.
Yes.

874
01:06:58,514 --> 01:07:03,383
And so the physical access
actually leads to, um,

875
01:07:04,587 --> 01:07:06,953
a social access, an acceptance.
Yeah.

876
01:07:07,023 --> 01:07:09,457
It must be nice not to always
have to be the pioneer.

877
01:07:09,525 --> 01:07:12,392
Yes, definitely. Definitely.
The very first one they meet...

878
01:07:12,461 --> 01:07:15,225
The first disabled person
they've ever seen.
and having to explain.

879
01:07:15,297 --> 01:07:17,527
Yeah.
And yes I do, you know, speak...

880
01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:20,125
and think and talk
and move and enjoy life...
Yes.

881
01:07:20,202 --> 01:07:23,103
and suffer many of the same
heartaches that you do.

882
01:07:23,172 --> 01:07:25,106
Anyway, um,

883
01:07:25,174 --> 01:07:30,043
but what I'm wondering about
is, um, moving in social space, right?

884
01:07:30,112 --> 01:07:32,603
Moving- all the movements
you can do...

885
01:07:32,681 --> 01:07:36,617
and which help you live
and which express you
in various ways.

886
01:07:36,685 --> 01:07:42,453
Um, do you feel free to move
in all the ways you want to move?

887
01:07:42,525 --> 01:07:47,792
I can go into a coffee shop
and actually pick up the cup
with my mouth...

888
01:07:47,863 --> 01:07:49,797
and carry it to my table.

889
01:07:49,865 --> 01:07:54,029
But then that-
that becomes almost more difficult...

890
01:07:54,103 --> 01:07:57,436
because of the-

891
01:07:57,506 --> 01:07:59,940
just the normalizing standards
of our movements...
Yes.

892
01:08:00,009 --> 01:08:03,410
and the discomfort
that that causes...

893
01:08:03,479 --> 01:08:06,710
when I do things with body parts...

894
01:08:06,782 --> 01:08:11,151
that aren't necessarily
what we assume that they're for.

895
01:08:11,220 --> 01:08:15,680
That seems to be even more, um,

896
01:08:17,560 --> 01:08:19,755
hard for people to deal with.

897
01:08:21,363 --> 01:08:23,388
Is that somebody's shoe?
Someone's shoe.

898
01:08:23,466 --> 01:08:27,300
I wonder
if they can walk without it.
Yeah.

899
01:08:27,369 --> 01:08:31,965
I'm just thinking that nobody
takes a walk without there being
a technique of walking.

900
01:08:32,041 --> 01:08:33,975
Yeah.
Nobody goes for a walk...

901
01:08:34,043 --> 01:08:38,742
without there being something
that supports that walk,
uh, outside of ourselves.

902
01:08:38,814 --> 01:08:44,514
Mm-hmm.
Um, and that maybe
we have a false idea,

903
01:08:44,587 --> 01:08:49,615
um, that the able-bodied person
is somehow radically
self-sufficient.

904
01:08:49,692 --> 01:08:51,683
[Sunaura Taylor]
Yeah.

905
01:08:54,597 --> 01:08:59,933
It wasn't until I was
in my early 20s, about 20 or 21,

906
01:09:00,002 --> 01:09:04,735
that I became aware
of disability...

907
01:09:04,807 --> 01:09:06,741
as a political issue.

908
01:09:06,809 --> 01:09:11,143
Um, and that happened
largely through discovering
the social model of disability...

909
01:09:11,213 --> 01:09:13,306
which is basically-

910
01:09:13,382 --> 01:09:15,543
In disability studies,
they have a distinction...

911
01:09:15,618 --> 01:09:17,677
between disability
and impairment.
Yeah.

912
01:09:17,753 --> 01:09:22,622
So impairment would be
my- my body, my embodiment
right now.

913
01:09:22,691 --> 01:09:25,888
The fact that I was born
with arthrogyposis,

914
01:09:25,961 --> 01:09:31,422
which affects- what
the medical world has labeled
as arthrogyposis-

915
01:09:31,500 --> 01:09:36,733
Um, but basically that my joints
are-are-are-are fused.

916
01:09:36,805 --> 01:09:40,935
My muscles are weaker.
I can't move in certain ways.

917
01:09:41,010 --> 01:09:46,607
And this does affect my life
in all sorts of situations.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

918
01:09:46,682 --> 01:09:49,947
For instance, you know,
there's a plum tree in my backyard.

919
01:09:50,019 --> 01:09:52,283
I can't pick the plums
off the plum tree.

920
01:09:52,354 --> 01:09:54,345
I have to wait for them
to drop or whatever.

921
01:09:54,423 --> 01:09:58,826
Um, but then-
And so there's that-
there's that embodiment,

922
01:09:58,894 --> 01:10:01,727
um, our own unique embodiments.

923
01:10:01,797 --> 01:10:06,666
And then there's disability
which is basically the-

924
01:10:06,735 --> 01:10:12,367
the... social repression
of disabled people.

925
01:10:12,441 --> 01:10:16,275
The fact that disabled people
have limited housing options.

926
01:10:16,345 --> 01:10:18,438
We don't have career opportunities.

927
01:10:18,514 --> 01:10:21,745
Um, we're socially isolated.

928
01:10:21,817 --> 01:10:23,751
We're, um-

929
01:10:23,819 --> 01:10:27,016
You know, in many ways,
there's a cultural aversion
to disabled people.

930
01:10:27,089 --> 01:10:31,287
So would disability
be the social organization
of impairment?

931
01:10:31,360 --> 01:10:33,885
The disabling effects,
basically, of society.

932
01:10:38,734 --> 01:10:42,067
What happened?
Did you come in contact
with disability activists?

933
01:10:42,137 --> 01:10:46,096
Or did you read certain things?
I read a book review actually.

934
01:10:46,175 --> 01:10:48,905
Oh, really?
Yeah, I just read a book review.

935
01:10:48,978 --> 01:10:50,969
And when that happened,
I lived in Brooklyn.

936
01:10:51,046 --> 01:10:55,983
And I would- I would really try
to make myself go out...

937
01:10:56,051 --> 01:10:58,349
and just order a coffee
by myself.
Yes.

938
01:10:58,420 --> 01:11:01,583
And I would sit for hours
beforehand in the park...

939
01:11:01,657 --> 01:11:04,091
just trying to get up the nerve
to do that.
Oh.

940
01:11:04,159 --> 01:11:07,651
In a way, it's a political protest
for me to go in...

941
01:11:07,730 --> 01:11:10,198
and order a coffee
and demand help...

942
01:11:10,266 --> 01:11:13,997
simply because in my opinion,
help is something that we all need.

943
01:11:14,069 --> 01:11:18,301
Yes.
And it's something that is-
is, you know, looked down upon...

944
01:11:18,374 --> 01:11:22,834
and... not really taken care of
in this society...

945
01:11:22,911 --> 01:11:24,879
when we all-
when we all need help...
Yes.

946
01:11:24,947 --> 01:11:28,348
and we're all interdependent
in all sorts of ways.
Yes.

947
01:11:30,819 --> 01:11:33,686
Should we stop
and get me something warm?

948
01:11:36,058 --> 01:11:37,525
I don't know, honey.
That's pretty fancy.

949
01:11:37,593 --> 01:11:40,460
Let's go find something good.

950
01:11:41,697 --> 01:11:44,427
Yeah, I think that would
probably fall off my shoulders.

951
01:11:46,368 --> 01:11:49,360
Although I guess we can try it on.

952
01:11:49,438 --> 01:11:52,703
Basically, that's the back, yeah.
That would be-

953
01:11:53,876 --> 01:11:55,867
Yeah.

954
01:11:57,179 --> 01:11:59,170
Okay.

955
01:12:01,116 --> 01:12:03,141
Other arm.
Other arm?

956
01:12:09,391 --> 01:12:12,326
And I like it.
It's stylish.
It's very stylish.

957
01:12:12,394 --> 01:12:15,420
Okay.
It's kind of, you know,

958
01:12:15,497 --> 01:12:17,431
sporty and fancy.

959
01:12:17,499 --> 01:12:21,230
It's gonna be a new show,
Shopping With Judith Butler.

960
01:12:21,303 --> 01:12:23,237
For the Queer Eye.

961
01:12:25,040 --> 01:12:27,508
Maybe I can just get it
while wearing it.

962
01:12:28,644 --> 01:12:31,272
[Clerk]
Hey.
Hi. We put the sweater on.

963
01:12:31,347 --> 01:12:33,281
Yeah, so I'm actually buying
the one that I'm wearing.
We just wanna buy it.

964
01:12:33,349 --> 01:12:35,909
Okay. Um, so it's by weight.

965
01:12:35,984 --> 01:12:37,918
Oh, it's by weight?
Can we guess?

966
01:12:37,986 --> 01:12:40,682
I can probably just do it
for four bucks plus tax.
That sounds good.

967
01:12:40,756 --> 01:12:43,190
Here you go.

968
01:12:45,561 --> 01:12:49,691
Can you give me the- the bills first
and then give me the change?
Sure.

969
01:12:50,766 --> 01:12:53,234
Oh. Oh, I just meant the-
Oh, you just want-

970
01:12:53,302 --> 01:12:55,930
Yeah, I just can't hold both
at the same time.
There you go.

971
01:12:57,773 --> 01:13:01,641
- There you go.
- Thanks. Thanks so much.

972
01:13:06,915 --> 01:13:11,443
I think gender and disability
converge in a whole lot
of different ways.

973
01:13:11,520 --> 01:13:15,251
Yeah.
But one thing I think
both movements do...

974
01:13:15,324 --> 01:13:20,227
is get us to rethink, um,
what the body can do.

975
01:13:20,963 --> 01:13:25,662
There's an essay by the philosopher
Gilles Deleuze called
"What Can a Body Do?"

976
01:13:26,969 --> 01:13:31,497
Uh, and the question
is supposed to challenge,
um, the traditional ways...

977
01:13:31,573 --> 01:13:33,564
in which we think
about bodies.
Mm-hmm.

978
01:13:33,642 --> 01:13:36,440
We usually ask, you know,
what is a body...

979
01:13:36,512 --> 01:13:38,980
or what is the ideal form
of a body...

980
01:13:39,047 --> 01:13:41,948
or, you know,
what's the difference
between the body and the soul...

981
01:13:42,017 --> 01:13:43,951
and that kind of thing.
Yeah.

982
01:13:44,019 --> 01:13:49,651
Uh, but "what can a body do?"
is, um- is a different question.

983
01:13:49,725 --> 01:13:52,717
It's- It- It isolates
a set of capacities...

984
01:13:52,795 --> 01:13:57,061
and a set of instrumentalities
or actions,

985
01:13:57,132 --> 01:14:00,499
and we are kind
of assemblages of those things.
Mm-hmm.

986
01:14:00,569 --> 01:14:02,503
Um, and I like this idea.

987
01:14:02,571 --> 01:14:04,471
It's- It's not like
there's an essence,

988
01:14:04,540 --> 01:14:08,169
and it's not like
there's an ideal morphology-

989
01:14:08,243 --> 01:14:10,177
you know, what a body
should look like.

990
01:14:10,245 --> 01:14:12,145
It's exactly not that question.
Yeah. Yeah.

991
01:14:12,214 --> 01:14:15,411
[Laughs] Or what a body
should move like.
Mm-hmm.

992
01:14:15,484 --> 01:14:18,783
Um, and one of the things
that I found...

993
01:14:18,854 --> 01:14:21,584
in thinking about gender
and even violence...

994
01:14:21,657 --> 01:14:25,491
against, uh, sexual minorities
or gender minorities-

995
01:14:25,561 --> 01:14:30,760
people whose gender presentation
doesn't conform with standard ideals...

996
01:14:30,833 --> 01:14:34,360
of femininity or masculinity-

997
01:14:34,436 --> 01:14:37,735
is that very often, um,

998
01:14:37,806 --> 01:14:40,866
it comes down to, uh,

999
01:14:40,943 --> 01:14:45,243
you know, how people walk,
how they use their hips,
what they do with their body parts,

1000
01:14:45,314 --> 01:14:47,646
uh, what they use
their mouth for,
[Laughs]

1001
01:14:47,716 --> 01:14:51,482
what they use their anus for
or what they allow
their anus to be used for.

1002
01:14:56,058 --> 01:15:01,462
There's a guy in Maine who-
I guess he was around 18 years old.

1003
01:15:01,530 --> 01:15:05,557
And, uh, he walked
with a very, um,

1004
01:15:05,634 --> 01:15:07,568
distinct swish.

1005
01:15:07,636 --> 01:15:11,766
You know, the hips going one way
or another- and very feminine walk.

1006
01:15:12,508 --> 01:15:15,102
But one day
he was walking to school,

1007
01:15:15,177 --> 01:15:17,941
and he was attacked
by three of his classmates,

1008
01:15:18,013 --> 01:15:22,177
and he was thrown over a bridge
and he was killed.

1009
01:15:22,251 --> 01:15:25,846
And, um, the question that community
had to deal with-

1010
01:15:25,921 --> 01:15:29,584
and, indeed, the entire media
that covered this event-

1011
01:15:29,658 --> 01:15:32,991
was, you know, how could it be
that somebody's gait,

1012
01:15:33,061 --> 01:15:35,222
that somebody's style of walking...

1013
01:15:35,297 --> 01:15:39,097
could engender the desire
to kill that person?

1014
01:15:42,137 --> 01:15:45,595
And that, you know-
that makes me think
about the walk in a different way.

1015
01:15:45,674 --> 01:15:48,438
I mean, a walk
can be a dangerous thing.

1016
01:15:52,214 --> 01:15:54,478
I'm just remembering
when I was little- when I did walk-

1017
01:15:54,550 --> 01:15:57,678
I would be told
that I walked Iike a monkey.
Ah.

1018
01:15:57,753 --> 01:16:01,814
And I think that for a lot of,
you know, disabled people,

1019
01:16:01,890 --> 01:16:04,620
the violence and the-

1020
01:16:04,693 --> 01:16:09,528
the- the sort of-
the hatred exists a lot...

1021
01:16:09,598 --> 01:16:15,537
in- in- in this, um,

1022
01:16:15,604 --> 01:16:17,595
reminding of people...

1023
01:16:17,673 --> 01:16:22,042
that our bodies are... going to age...

1024
01:16:22,110 --> 01:16:26,410
and are, um, going to die.

1025
01:16:26,481 --> 01:16:28,142
And-

1026
01:16:29,484 --> 01:16:33,887
You know, in some ways,
I wonder also just, you know-
just thinking about the monkey comment...

1027
01:16:33,956 --> 01:16:38,325
if it is also a level of, um-

1028
01:16:38,393 --> 01:16:40,520
and this is just a thought
off the top of my head right now-

1029
01:16:40,596 --> 01:16:42,587
but just, um,

1030
01:16:44,199 --> 01:16:47,600
the- the sort of...

1031
01:16:50,973 --> 01:16:54,773
where- where our boundaries lie
as a human...

1032
01:16:54,843 --> 01:16:57,676
and what becomes non-human, you know.

1033
01:16:57,746 --> 01:17:01,238
It makes me wonder
whether the person
was anti-evolutionary.

1034
01:17:01,316 --> 01:17:03,284
Yeah.
Maybe they were a creationist.

1035
01:17:03,352 --> 01:17:06,913
It's like, "Well, why shouldn't
we have some resemblance
to the monkey?" I mean-

1036
01:17:06,989 --> 01:17:09,014
Well, the monkey's actually
always been my favorite animal too.

1037
01:17:09,091 --> 01:17:11,025
So actually quite a lot
of the time I was flattered.

1038
01:17:11,093 --> 01:17:13,027
Exactly.
Yeah.

1039
01:17:13,095 --> 01:17:15,029
But that- that-

1040
01:17:15,097 --> 01:17:18,464
When- When- When
in those in-between moments...

1041
01:17:18,533 --> 01:17:21,730
of, you know- in between male
and-and female...

1042
01:17:21,803 --> 01:17:27,708
or in between, um- uh,
death and-and health-

1043
01:17:27,776 --> 01:17:31,473
when- when do you still
count as a human?

1044
01:17:33,281 --> 01:17:35,272
My sense is that
what's at stake here...

1045
01:17:35,350 --> 01:17:40,811
is really rethinking the human
as a site of interdependency.
Mm-hmm.

1046
01:17:40,889 --> 01:17:44,586
And I think, you know,
when you walk
into the coffee shop. Right?

1047
01:17:44,660 --> 01:17:46,924
If I can go back
to that moment for a moment.

1048
01:17:46,995 --> 01:17:49,190
And you- you ask for the coffee,

1049
01:17:49,264 --> 01:17:53,257
or you, indeed,
even ask for some assistance
with the coffee,

1050
01:17:53,335 --> 01:17:57,101
um, you're basically
posing the question-

1051
01:17:57,172 --> 01:18:02,109
Do we or do we not live in a world
in which we assist each other?
[Laughs] Yeah.

1052
01:18:02,177 --> 01:18:08,116
Do we or do we not help
each other with- with basic needs?

1053
01:18:08,183 --> 01:18:13,018
And are basic needs there
to be decided on
as a social issue...

1054
01:18:13,088 --> 01:18:17,684
and not just my personal,
individual issue...

1055
01:18:17,759 --> 01:18:20,057
or your personal, individual issue?

1056
01:18:20,128 --> 01:18:22,187
So, I mean, there's a challenge
to individualism...

1057
01:18:22,264 --> 01:18:26,792
that happens at the moment
in which you ask for some assistance
with the coffee cup.

1058
01:18:26,868 --> 01:18:29,359
Yeah. Yeah.
And hopefully,
people will take it up...

1059
01:18:29,438 --> 01:18:31,804
and say, "Yes, I too
live in that world...
Yeah.

1060
01:18:31,873 --> 01:18:35,206
in which I understand
that we need each other
in order to address our basic needs."

1061
01:18:35,277 --> 01:18:37,211
Mm-hmm.
You know.

1062
01:18:37,279 --> 01:18:41,272
And- And I wanna organize
a social, political world
on the basis of that recognition.

1063
01:19:24,226 --> 01:19:28,560
[West]
Romanticism thoroughly saturated
the discourse of modern thinkers.

1064
01:19:28,630 --> 01:19:31,463
Can you totalize?
Can you make things whole?
[Astra Taylor] Right.

1065
01:19:31,533 --> 01:19:34,525
Can you create harmony?
And if you can't, disappointment.

1066
01:19:36,671 --> 01:19:39,765
Disappointment's
always at the center.
Failure's always at the center.

1067
01:19:39,841 --> 01:19:44,835
But where'd the Romanticism come from?
Why begin with Romanticism?
See, I don't begin with Romanticism.

1068
01:19:47,682 --> 01:19:51,118
You remember what Beethoven
said on his deathbed, you know.

1069
01:19:51,186 --> 01:19:53,120
He said,
"I've learned to look at the world...

1070
01:19:53,188 --> 01:19:56,954
in all of its darkness and evil
and still love it."

1071
01:19:57,025 --> 01:20:01,826
And that's not Romantic Beethoven.
This is the Beethoven of the String
Quartet 131,"

1072
01:20:01,897 --> 01:20:06,266
the greatest string quartet ever written-
not just in classical music.

1073
01:20:06,334 --> 01:20:10,566
But of course it's a European form,
so Beethoven is the grand master.

1074
01:20:10,639 --> 01:20:13,039
But the string quartet-
you go back to those movements,

1075
01:20:13,108 --> 01:20:17,306
it's no Romantic wholeness
to be shattered,
as in the early Beethoven.

1076
01:20:17,379 --> 01:20:19,904
He's given up on that, you see.

1077
01:20:19,981 --> 01:20:24,441
This is where Chekhov begins.
This is where the blues starts.
This is where jazz starts.

1078
01:20:24,519 --> 01:20:27,454
You think Charlie Parker's upset
'cause he can't sustain a harmony?

1079
01:20:27,522 --> 01:20:32,482
He didn't care about the harmony.
He was trying to completely ride
on the dissonance, ride on the blue notes.

1080
01:20:32,561 --> 01:20:36,088
Of course he's got harmony
in terms of its interventions
here and there.

1081
01:20:36,164 --> 01:20:38,689
But why start with this
obsession with wholeness?

1082
01:20:38,767 --> 01:20:42,726
And if you can't have it,
then you're disappointed
and wanna have a drink...

1083
01:20:42,804 --> 01:20:46,831
and melancholia
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1084
01:20:46,908 --> 01:20:50,639
No. You see, the blues-
my kind of blues-

1085
01:20:50,712 --> 01:20:56,048
begins with catastrophe,
begins with the Angel of History
in Benjamin's Theses.

1086
01:20:56,117 --> 01:21:00,110
You see. It begins with the pillage,
the wreckage-

1087
01:21:00,188 --> 01:21:02,349
one pile on another.

1088
01:21:02,424 --> 01:21:08,158
That's the starting point.
The blues is personal catastrophe
lyrically expressed.

1089
01:21:09,197 --> 01:21:11,324
And black people in America
and in the modern world-

1090
01:21:11,399 --> 01:21:13,560
given these vicious legacies
of white supremacy-

1091
01:21:13,635 --> 01:21:17,765
it is how do you generate...

1092
01:21:17,839 --> 01:21:21,366
an elegance
of earned self-togetherness...

1093
01:21:21,443 --> 01:21:23,570
so that you have
a stick-to-it-ness...

1094
01:21:23,645 --> 01:21:26,136
in the face of the catastrophic
and the calamitous...

1095
01:21:26,214 --> 01:21:28,705
and the horrendous
and the scandalous and the monstrous.

1096
01:21:34,356 --> 01:21:37,985
See, part of the problem, though,
is that, see, when you have
a Romantic project,

1097
01:21:38,059 --> 01:21:43,725
you're so obsessed with time as loss
and time as a taker.

1098
01:21:43,798 --> 01:21:47,734
Whereas, as a Chekhovian Christian,
I wanna stress, as well,

1099
01:21:47,802 --> 01:21:51,397
time as a gift and time as a giver.

1100
01:21:51,473 --> 01:21:56,001
So that, yes, it's failure,
but how good is a failure?
You done some wonderful things.

1101
01:21:56,077 --> 01:22:00,514
Now, Beckett could say, you know,
"Try again, fail again, fail better."

1102
01:22:00,582 --> 01:22:05,212
But why call it failure?
I mean, why not say
you have a sense of gratitude...

1103
01:22:05,287 --> 01:22:08,484
that you're able to do
as much as you did?

1104
01:22:08,556 --> 01:22:11,024
You're able to love as much
and think as much...

1105
01:22:11,092 --> 01:22:13,424
and play as much.

1106
01:22:13,495 --> 01:22:15,929
Why think you needed
the whole thing?

1107
01:22:15,997 --> 01:22:19,091
You see what I mean?
This is even disturbing about America.

1108
01:22:19,167 --> 01:22:21,692
And, of course, America
is a Romantic project.

1109
01:22:21,770 --> 01:22:26,798
It's paradisal, "City on a Hill"
and all this other mess
and lies and so on.

1110
01:22:26,875 --> 01:22:30,367
I say no, no. America is
a very fragile democratic experiment,

1111
01:22:30,445 --> 01:22:33,039
predicated on the dispossession
of the lands of indigenous peoples...

1112
01:22:33,114 --> 01:22:36,345
and the enslavement of African peoples
and the subjugation of women...

1113
01:22:36,418 --> 01:22:38,579
and the marginalization
of gays and lesbians.

1114
01:22:38,653 --> 01:22:41,213
And it has great potential.

1115
01:22:41,289 --> 01:22:44,816
But this notion that somehow,
you know, we had it all...

1116
01:22:44,893 --> 01:22:46,918
or ever will have it all,
it's got to go.

1117
01:22:46,995 --> 01:22:48,929
You got to push it to the side.

1118
01:22:48,997 --> 01:22:53,058
And once you push
all that to the side, then it tends
to evacuate the language of disappointment...

1119
01:22:53,134 --> 01:22:55,125
and the language of failure.

1120
01:22:55,203 --> 01:22:57,728
And you say-
Okay, well, how much have we done?

1121
01:22:57,806 --> 01:22:59,740
How have we been able to do it?

1122
01:22:59,808 --> 01:23:02,106
Can we do more?
Well, in certain situations,
you can't do more.

1123
01:23:02,177 --> 01:23:05,772
It's like trying to break-dance at 75.
You can't do it anymore.

1124
01:23:05,847 --> 01:23:08,907
You were a master at 16. It's over.

1125
01:23:08,984 --> 01:23:12,750
You can't make love at 80
the way you did at 20.
So what?

1126
01:23:12,821 --> 01:23:15,153
Time is real.

1127
01:23:20,128 --> 01:23:24,224
So the one question that keeps
coming up- or a phrase-

1128
01:23:24,299 --> 01:23:26,233
is this idea
of the meaningful life.

1129
01:23:26,301 --> 01:23:28,997
Do you think it is
philosophy's duty
to speak on this?

1130
01:23:29,070 --> 01:23:31,664
A meaningful life?
How to live
a meaningful life.

1131
01:23:33,274 --> 01:23:36,835
Is that even a relevant-
Is that even an appropriate question
for a philosopher?

1132
01:23:36,911 --> 01:23:40,176
No, I think it is.
No, I think the problem with meaning
is vey important.

1133
01:23:40,248 --> 01:23:42,580
Nihilism is a serious challenge.

1134
01:23:42,650 --> 01:23:45,210
Meaninglessness
is a serious challenge.

1135
01:23:45,286 --> 01:23:50,019
Even making sense of meaninglessness
is itself a kind of discipline
and achievement.

1136
01:23:53,128 --> 01:23:55,358
The problem is, of course,
you never reach it, you know.

1137
01:23:55,430 --> 01:23:59,196
It's not a static,
stationary telos or end or aim.

1138
01:23:59,267 --> 01:24:02,930
It's a process that one never reaches.
It's Sisyphean.

1139
01:24:03,004 --> 01:24:07,737
You're going up the hill
looking for better meanings...

1140
01:24:07,809 --> 01:24:11,472
or grander, more enabling meanings.

1141
01:24:11,546 --> 01:24:13,639
But you never reach it.

1142
01:24:13,715 --> 01:24:15,945
Uh, you know, in that sense,

1143
01:24:16,017 --> 01:24:19,009
you die without being able
to "have" the whole,

1144
01:24:19,087 --> 01:24:21,453
in the language
of the Romantic discourse.

1145
01:24:26,127 --> 01:24:28,857
Let me just jump out here
on the corner.

1146
01:24:28,930 --> 01:24:31,228
Okay, you'll. Thank you so much.
[Man] Thank you very much.

1147
01:24:31,299 --> 01:24:33,324
Take good care now.
You too.