Video Creator’s Channel Jordan B Peterson

Well, On Behalf Of Ralston College And The

Cambridge Center for the study of Platonism. It’s an immense honor to introduce two of the foremost intellectuals of our age. These thinkers one a philosopher, the other a psychologist, are spiritual writers addressing the malaise of the soul in our culture. John Stuart Mill In his Magnificent essay on Coleridge wrote of Bentham Jeremy Bentham who above all others men have been led to ask themselves in regards to any ancient or received opinion is it true and by Coleridge, what is the meaning with Coleridge In contrast to the utility of Benton, the very fact that any doctrine had been believed by thoughtful men and received by whole nations and generations of mankind was part of the problem to be solved was one of the phenomena to be accounted for this I think is true of both roger scrutin and. Jordan Peterson and I’d like to mention just a couple of points of convergence.

One Is An Insistence On The Importance Of

imagination as conversion to truth in opposition to a mere fantasy and an opposition to idolatry ideology, as well as idolatry, especially the idolatrous ideology of the post–modern foucault-derived consensus and an urgent return to questions about truth, beauty and goodness and of course, part of this is linked to what both perceive as the perilous position of the modern university. They both argue that continuity of esteem needs to be regained in the humanities and that the dominant strands of the humanities are leading to an impoverishment of the souls of students. Narratives. Both argue are not just stories of power, but these narratives persist because of their truth. So the importance for both Ralston College and indeed for the Cambridge Center for the study of Platonism.

These Thinkers Is Their Insistence Upon The Relationship

between muthos and logos between story and reason. The insistence upon a hierarchy of values and their vision of education as conversion to truth. This conversation will be moderated by the president of Ralston College Stephen Blackwood. Thank you UK thank you Douglas for those inspiring and grounding words starting us off right in relation to the past that we wish to recover. Let me start.

I Think With A Very Straightforward But

perhaps difficult question where we’re we’re gathered around the theme apprehending the transcendent loosely to gather this conversation and I’d like to begin by asking each of you what is the transcendent, What does it mean for something to be transcendent well If you let me start. I I take a position which I attribute also to Kant that um that we have a very clear negative understanding of. it we we as it were advanced to the edge of our thinking in so many areas knowing that although there’s nothing further that we can say that somehow the truth has not nevertheless not run out and and that negative view. I think needs to be combined with a more positive view which tells us that there are other ways not just maybe not thinking but some other way of of crossing that boundary and as it were landing in the realm of the transcendent and knowing it from inside. I think you know and that this is something that we understand very quickly in personal relations.

You Know That When I When

I address you. I know that I’m addressing something which addresses me too, but from a place where I could never be. I couldn’t look at myself from those eyes, and I can’t capture the thing. That is looking at me from those eyes, but nevertheless, there are leaps of the imagination which can put me in your point of view and from that point of view. I can come to understand exactly what I am but in a completely different way from simply the ordinary empirical knowledge that I have of myself and I think that that sort of interpersonal understanding.

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I Would Say We Can Adapt

to all the other aspects of our world, which is mysterious to us music for instance, but that’s a beginning and I want to return to music a bit a bit later. Jordan well, I think it’s useful as an adjunct to that so so Sir Roger mentioned that the transcendent is what we bump up against when we realize our ignorance and so it’s that which transcends our ignorance and and that in itself makes it an implacable fact. Unless you believe that you have no ignorance in which case there’s no point in furthering a discussion with you um so the transcendent is the fact in so far as it’s that which transcends our ignorance, but you can also think about it technically so and and and I think we know enough about how the brain works now so that not that we know much so that useful things can be said about that you tend to represent the world in the simplest manner that you possibly can that works for what you’re doing and so you don’t actually see. the world you see sufficiently useful low represent low resolution representations of the world and if they work, then that’s fine. There’s no need to adjust them and they’re relatively easy to remember and to manipulate.

But Now And Then You Have A

misapprehension about someone let’s say and you have a conversation with them and the conversation goes sideways and what that means is that the the thing that you thought you were conversing with is not the thing that you’re conversing with and that manifests itself in error right. So error is the place where the transcendent reveals itself and what is actually revealing itself is the reality that’s outside and underneath your perceptions and so what you see in the world in some sense is a set of animated cartoons and a lot of that is actually a consequence of you seeing nothing but your memory because. Your brain is organized so that instead of going through all of the difficulty of having to look at the thing in itself, you look at what you assume to be there and if you can get away with that so much the better, but the thing in itself is always much richer, richer than your apprehension of it, which is partly why you make mistakes, but also partly why you can continue to garner wisdom in the world. There’s always more there than meets the eye and God only knows how much more there is there than meets the eye and you can show this even in the religious sense to some degree because you could say that there’s an element to the transcendent that instills people with a sense of religious significance. You can do that by immediately scientifically by feeding people chemicals.

For Example, That Disrupt The Inhibition Of Perception

by memory and then that puts them in a place where the transcendent tends to reveal itself sometimes an overwhelming force. So this it’s not some fiction that this exists. It’s what’s transcendent is more real than the reality that you perceive well. Let’s pick let’s pick up on that because the the the ancients and the medievals had a clear sense that it wasn’t the world that was changing it was we ourselves as we. make an ascent towards deeper truths, higher forms of the beautiful as we ourselves become more self–conscious.

So Its Not The World Thats Changing

but but us. I wonder if you could say how you understand the nature of that ascent that that that that that movement and and what brings it about I I would be a bit wary of the metaphor of ascent. You know I I think in Plato, it’s quite clear what he meant that he he wanted us to actually to transcend our earthly perceptions and our earthly way of seeing things and look on the world from from a God’s eye perspective. and this could be done if we enter the world of the pure forms and so on leave empirical reality behind. I think actually in so far as the experience of the transcendent that I as I understand it is.

Us Modern People Its Not That Way

that we get it Perhaps perhaps Jordan might be right that that there are these drug-induced experiences where things open up to us because old barriers are suddenly swept away, But in my own case, it is the concentration on the empirical reality, which at a certain point flips from mere. sensory understanding took to a vision in that of its communicating something to me and I think this is what literature and art and music do at their best. They they redescribe reality so that it is actually communicating something to you. It’s It’s not just there as an inert object before you and that sense of the transcendence is like discovering yourself in a mirror seeing in the world as a whole that thing in you that you could never identify in words. You know the the subject which is looking at it and it’s not a mystery, but it’s something that you can’t then explain and it’s the difference between a good writer and a bad writer.

Of Course Is That A Good Writer

will describe something in such a way that the thing described has the soul of the reader in it so so that might be that a distinction in part between the thing and the meaningful thing right and that’s a mis that’s a very mysterious phenomenon. In fact, in some sense the essence of phenomena because that means to shine forth you know as we’re surrounded by. Empirical facts they’re everywhere there’s more of them than we can possibly count, but some of them do emerge and manifest themselves as that as that conjunction between the factual and the meaningful and then that’s what’s gripping and if you’re fortunate I mean to me that’s also partly what what leads us onward and maybe in in something approximating the ascent that you described is that the set of facts manifests itself as implicitly meaningful and that means in some sense that there is a call to you that isn’t from within you. I mean I don’t know how else to put it exactly because you walk into a bookstore and a book will will will reveal itself to you you know or or you have a conversation and part of the conversation will trigger something in you or you’re reading a scientific paper and much of it’s dull.

And Then All Of A Sudden

there’s something that sparks outward that’s like a port that’s a portal into the transcendent and that is a place where the fact and the meaning converge and that’s a phenomena. We don’t understand very well. It has something to do with its convergence with the narrative that drives us whatever that happens to be yeah. I think that’s a good way of putting it actually it connects with um the general problem of what the humanities are in the university.

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Ive Ive Always Assumed That In Some Way

or another if you’re teaching literature or musicology or or history of art or anything you are opening young people to those moments when the world ceases to be a mere accumulation of facts and as it were addresses you and that requires literary criticism. It requires opening yourself to experience in a way that. it requires a serious education of a special kind and I think that if we thought of the humanities as directed towards that we can see why they might be one way to fill the the moral void that that grows so easily in people’s lives so Jung had this.

Summary

Ralston College and the Cambridge Center for the study of Platonism. Jordan Peterson and roger scrutin and. John Stuart Mill are spiritual writers addressing the malaise of the soul in our culture. Both argue that continuity of esteem needs to be regained in the humanities and that the dominant strands of the humanities are leading to an impoverishment of the souls of students. They both argue are not just stories of power, but these narratives persist because of their truth. They insist upon the relationship between muthos and logos between story and reason. The insistence upon a hierarchy of values and their vision of education as conversion to truth. And the insistence upon the . insistence upon . a hierarchy . of values, their . vision of . education as conversions to . truth.& The insistence on a . hierarchy of . values and . their vision for education as converted to truth, they argue for the . ideal values. Both argues are not simply stories of the . narratives of power.& Narratives….. Click here to read more and watch the full video