WHAT IS BEING? (EXPLAINING HEIDEGGER)
Every young philosophy student has to struggle with one important question - the question of being. Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, released in 1927, caused a tectonic shift in Continental thought. The German thinker accused the whole of Western metaphysics as a "forgetfulness of being." Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas, Heidegger says, dealt with beings, not Being. But what is being? Is it a concept? Can we calculate being as such? What is the relationship between science and the being of beings? These are some of the questions that this short lecture attempts to address.
POWER ACCORDING TO MICHEL FOUCAULT
In this lecture, I explain the distinction between archaeology and genealogy. What is power? For Michel Foucault, power is deeply embedded in the subtle rules of institutions. The Panopticon is everywhere - in schools, asylums, and in the state apparatus, controlling people. But power is not what the sovereign, in the case of the state, or your teacher, inside the classroom, holds. Foucault explains that power cannot be possessed. Rather, we surrender our freedom by submitting ourselves to it. In consumer society, this explains why things possess value. In The Order of Things, Foucault enunciates the idea of similitude. Knowledge comes to be a matter of representation. In this way, the truth is reduced into a proposition. You put a price on happiness, you confuse what it means with its price. Power is everywhere, but it is not a question of who is in control. Rather, it is about how we have become docile bodies by simply allowing those who are up there to subjugate us.
LIBERAL EQUALITY EXPLAINED
According to John Rawls, "each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that no even the welfare of society can override." Inequalities are allowed, according to Rawls, as long as these are to the benefit of the worst off. Rawls tries to reconcile freedom and equality in this respect. To prioritize freedom means that persons can pursue the good life based on their talent or intelligence as long as the same will be to the advantage of the least advantaged in society. Liberal equality, in this regard, means that inequalities are permissible. This is what the idea of distributive justice, by way of the difference principle, is all about.
ARISTOTLE ON CHARACTER
What is the meaning of self-realization? In this short lecture, the concept of happiness is explained. Happiness is the finality of human action. What this means is that human freedom must ultimately lead to the perfection of the self. To achieve this requires persistence and consistence. For this reason, the idea of virtue is rooted in practice. The good life can only be attained by means of moral virtue, which must be distinguished from intellectual wisdom. The practice of virtue, in this way, is what character is all about.
THE SOURCE OF MORAL OBLIGATION
In this short lecture, the idea of moral duty is explained. Persons are rational beings. For this reason, we have a knowledge of right and wrong. However, we need to determine where our moral accountability lies. Kant says that "nothing is good except a good will." The source of moral obligation is our freedom. The dignity of man, his moral worth, is rooted in his autonomy. This autonomy enables the human subject to make choices. To will the good means that we must hold ourselves accountable to it. Otherwise, our actions would be antithetical to the meaning and value of our freedom.
