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Unlimited slows. Hello,

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my name is David Runsterman, and this

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is Past, Present, Future. Today's

0:47

episode in our series about the history of freedom

0:50

with the philosopher and writer, and what we're going

0:52

to talk about today in a little

0:54

bit, is about another philosopher, Immanuel

0:56

Kant, and his ideas,

0:58

his ideals for enlightened freedom

1:01

and perpetual peace. We

1:03

talk about just how realistic or

1:05

unrealistic that ideal is and

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1:47

you. philosopher,

2:00

some of it is pretty difficult, I can testify

2:02

to that. But he also says

2:04

things that are really easy to grasp and quite

2:06

intuitive. And I want to start with one of

2:09

those. So there's a puzzle that Kant

2:11

writes about that I think everyone

2:13

will recognize, which is

2:15

when you think about human freedom, there

2:18

are two aspects of it that are hard

2:20

to reconcile. So one is clearly to be

2:23

a free human being is

2:25

to be free to do whatever you like. At

2:27

some level, to be human

2:29

is to have the ability, unlike animals

2:31

and other creatures, to

2:33

make your own mind up. And if

2:35

you are unconstrained, that

2:38

could result in almost anything. The

2:40

human brain is capable of coming to

2:42

almost any decision or any choice. And

2:45

yet when you look at how human beings behave

2:47

en masse, they tend

2:49

to conform to certain patterns.

2:52

They weirdly exercise their freedom

2:55

in ways that make it feel like they've

2:58

all been told to do the same thing.

3:00

So the example that I think of here,

3:02

and I always think this every election time

3:04

when I watch the election coverage on

3:06

the BBC or wherever it is, so people

3:08

have voted in Britain and however many it

3:11

is, tens of millions of people vote. There

3:13

have been opinion polls, but then on

3:15

the night you discover what people actually

3:17

have decided. And there's an

3:19

exit poll, they asked a small number

3:22

of people in various places. And this

3:24

exit poll actually tells you how everybody

3:26

voted. And it's incredibly

3:28

accurate. And I find myself thinking,

3:30

so just because these people in this part of the country

3:32

have decided to do this, it's not like they told the

3:35

people in the other part of the country to do the

3:37

same thing, but they are going to do the same thing.

3:40

There is going to be a pattern to

3:42

this free exercise, unconstrained exercise of human choice,

3:44

because despite the fact that just because people

3:46

in Yeoville have voted this way, people 50

3:49

miles down the road could have done something

3:51

completely different, but they don't. They

3:53

do the same thing. They maybe don't do

3:55

what they said in the opinion polls they would do.

3:57

They've exercised their freedom to make their own mind up

4:00

on the... a day. But they've done the thing that

4:02

the people 50 miles down the road did without having

4:04

to be told. But it's almost as though what you

4:07

do when you do the exit poll is you've

4:09

asked the people who told all the other people

4:11

how to vote and it works. And that is

4:13

what Kant is writing about. He's writing about this

4:16

weird tension in human behavior between the obvious discretion

4:18

that we have not to do what other people

4:20

do and the fact that we do do what

4:22

other people do. And he has an answer for

4:25

this. How come those two things are both true?

4:27

Yeah. And I think it's something to do with

4:29

the nature of what we are as human beings.

4:32

I think Kant thinks that reason

4:34

is both disrupting a pattern and conforming

4:36

to a pattern. Both of these are

4:39

our capacities. And indeed, they're

4:41

both our vulnerability. The kind of Achilles

4:43

heel is that we have this. But

4:45

they're also our strength. And in a

4:47

way, the entire Kantian project, the entire

4:49

critical project is to be able to

4:52

articulate an account of reason and

4:54

how reason operates within humans that

4:56

helps them think about their decisions and

4:59

be aware of both the dangers

5:01

and the promises of our use

5:03

of our capacities. What

5:05

I really like is in many ways

5:07

the contemporary. There's a number of things

5:10

that he says about humans, about reason,

5:12

about our societies that are really resonance

5:14

for today. And one of them is

5:16

this tendency of reason to

5:19

struggle with two things. One is dogmatism

5:21

and one is skepticism. And the entire

5:23

Kantian project and the project of reason

5:25

is to help and to help us

5:27

think through this. How can we avoid

5:29

both dogmatism, that is to say conforming

5:31

and accepting authority and endorsing what other

5:33

people tell us, falling, complying into a

5:35

pattern without questioning it? And on the

5:37

other hand, skepticism, which is the opposite,

5:39

to question everything and to then not

5:41

have the resolve to do certain things

5:44

because you're too questioning. And there's a

5:46

kind of paralysis of action that leads.

5:49

He thinks that the modern predicament is

5:51

always torn between those two. And that is

5:53

only if you think about reason. His

5:56

entire project is one that tries to

5:58

help humans reason in such a way

6:00

that they can. can steer a middle

6:02

path between these two things, dogmatism and

6:04

scepticism. And I think that's really resonance

6:06

today as well. You think about the

6:08

world right now. This is really what

6:10

we find ourselves, is scepticism, despair, lack

6:12

of alternative on the one hand, and

6:14

on the other hand, authority, tradition, compliance,

6:16

conformity, following a pattern. Part of the

6:18

reason we follow a pattern though is

6:20

that we are part of nature and

6:22

nature has patterns. And so we

6:24

are part of that. And we are the

6:26

creatures who can understand that. So

6:29

presumably animals can't. Animals follow these

6:31

patterns, but they don't know that's what

6:33

they're doing. But if you know that you're

6:35

following a pattern, that's also the thing

6:38

that allows you to exercise your discretion

6:40

not to follow a pattern. But we

6:42

struggle with that all the time too.

6:45

We simultaneously probably overstate the extent to

6:47

which it's us making up our own

6:49

minds. I'm voting this

6:51

way because I'm a free person and

6:54

I get to exercise my choice. I know, look, I

6:56

voted like all the people in Yeoville or wherever it

6:58

is, even though I've never met them. And

7:01

I think I'm a different person. I'm a

7:03

free independent person, but I am actually conforming

7:06

to a pattern. And so isn't part of

7:08

the project also that in each case, so

7:10

we can overstate the extent to which we

7:12

are free in that

7:14

first sense that we are just an individual, an

7:16

autonomous individual making up our own mind, because we're

7:18

not, we're part of a whole set of natural

7:21

patterns in the natural order of the world. And at

7:23

the same time, we can overstate the extent to which

7:25

we're part of the natural order of the world, because

7:28

we're human. And to be human is

7:30

different from just being part of

7:33

all of the rest of nature. I think what

7:35

is really interesting about the way in which this

7:38

kind of Kantian project developed is it starts with

7:40

this idea that we are part of the pattern.

7:42

But on the other hand, we are also the

7:44

source of the patterns that we identify in nature,

7:46

because the concept of a scientific law wouldn't be

7:49

there without a mind, without a reason

7:51

that tries to think about, okay, how

7:53

do we structure these phenomena

7:55

that we find in nature? And in a way,

7:58

the whole Kantian project is to try and bring

8:00

the scientific revolutions of the 17th

8:02

century Copernicus into philosophy, into the

8:04

world of social science, into the

8:06

world of human relations by

8:09

saying, yes, there are all these things that

8:11

we find there are these phenomena in nature,

8:13

but without a mind that grasp these phenomena,

8:15

without us being able to analyze and understand

8:18

them and distinguish them and say this is

8:20

a generalization, this is contingent, this is necessary.

8:22

All these decisions that we make are all

8:24

part of our reason and it's because we

8:26

have this capacity for reason and this ability

8:29

to think about the law that we then

8:32

try and find what is the law in

8:34

all the structures that we are part of,

8:36

science, nature, observation of the

8:38

world, but also our social relations and

8:41

that's not a coincidence. I think that

8:43

the whole Kantian project is about the

8:45

moral law. What is the law that

8:48

structures human relations, structures, human conduct? Is

8:50

there something necessary and universal there

8:52

or is it just contingent, generalization,

8:54

habit, convention and obviously he challenges

8:57

all that, but I think there is a

8:59

sense in which it starts from this recognition

9:01

of patterns and our input into patterns.

9:03

And those patterns exist across time as

9:05

well as across space. So in

9:08

my example, people in one part of the country turn out

9:10

to be doing what people in another part of the country

9:12

are doing on the same day, but also

9:15

Kant believes that people a long time ago

9:17

were doing things that it looked

9:19

like they were doing for their own reasons and

9:22

those reasons are pretty inaccessible to us and

9:25

on his version of it, some of them are pretty primitive

9:28

and yet they are leading to something else that

9:30

they can't have known about. They can't

9:32

have been thinking, we're doing this because one day

9:34

it will result in the French Revolution or whatever

9:37

it is and yet we can discern some

9:39

of those patterns and it's teleological. That's his

9:41

word for it. There's a direction of travel

9:44

to human affairs within which human beings

9:46

are both free to completely reject the

9:49

teleology and to do things that make

9:51

no sense in terms of an idea

9:53

of progress or whatever it is. And

9:55

yet in the long run, what you

9:58

get is a form of moral progress. It's

10:01

very controversial what Kant meant actually by teleology

10:03

and how you think about the teleology. I

10:05

personally think that the teleology is not something

10:08

that you find. It's something

10:10

that you reconstruct thinking about what is

10:12

the type of human behavior in history

10:15

and what is it driven by. And Kant thinks

10:17

that it is driven by reason. It's driven

10:19

by the imperatives of reason. And to

10:21

the extent that you try and identify those

10:23

reasons and ask yourself, are they moral reasons

10:25

or are they prudential reasons? You can tell

10:28

a story that applies more generally to humans

10:30

across space and time. And so you can

10:32

tell a story about how they interact and

10:34

you can then have a narrative of progress

10:36

or regress in history. And I

10:38

think maybe this is what distinguishes Kant from

10:40

some other later versions of teleology.

10:43

I don't think there is anything deterministic in

10:45

Kantian teleology. It's really all about

10:47

how humans as driven by

10:50

reasons act in history and

10:52

in their societies and the extent to

10:54

which we can reconstruct those reasons as

10:56

moral reasons and say insofar as we

10:58

see anything like something that

11:01

resembles moral motives, moral imperatives

11:03

that advances our capacity for morality, we can

11:06

say that there is progress. If we can't

11:08

find that, then we can't say that

11:10

there is progress. It's just regressive and

11:12

it's just a kind of random arbitrary

11:14

listing of events and characters and history

11:16

is just a sum, a collection of

11:18

stuff that happens, but there's no philosophical

11:20

history. Phenosophical history depends

11:22

on our ability to maintain firm

11:25

that commitment to morality as we

11:28

observe historical events unfold. And

11:30

Kant thinks that what makes us human is that

11:32

we are reasoning creatures. In a way that's

11:35

the difference between a human and an animal

11:37

is that we have reason and animals don't

11:39

have reason. And our reason is

11:41

both, as I say, a source of error

11:43

because reason gets you into all kinds of

11:45

mistakes and prejudice and problems and tragedies in

11:47

a way of reason. But it's also if

11:49

you are able to then reflect critically with

11:51

all of Kant's books that with a

11:53

critique of pure reason, critique of practical

11:55

reason, critique of judgment, if

11:57

you think about the critique of reason, then

12:00

you can help reason unfold in

12:02

a way that is more aligned

12:04

to moral commitments. One

12:06

of the patterns that, as I understand it,

12:08

and you can correct me if I'm wrong, can't discern

12:11

in history, is that using

12:14

our reason, we can all understand that it would

12:16

be better for us if we

12:18

got along better. You are

12:20

freer apart from anything else if you

12:22

live in a society or in a

12:24

world which doesn't have conflict, doesn't have

12:26

war. War is the great enemy of

12:28

freedom. So best to use our reason

12:30

to avoid war. And at the same

12:32

time, we are drawn to conflict. And

12:35

actually, many of the ways in which we exercise

12:37

our reason draw us into conflict with each other,

12:39

because not just that we don't agree about things,

12:42

but we fundamentally loathe some of the things that

12:44

other human beings tell us are

12:46

the truth. And his term for this is

12:49

on social socialability. That is, we're pulled

12:51

in these two different directions. We're pulled

12:53

towards conflict, and this connects

12:55

us to Machiavelli again. But we're

12:58

also pulled by our reason towards an

13:00

understanding that concord or agreement would be

13:02

better for us and better for the

13:04

exercise of our freedom. And this is what

13:06

it means to be human. I mean, this

13:08

is what it means to be part of nature,

13:10

but also in nature, they're not doing the reasoning

13:12

bit. As reasoning creatures, we

13:14

are pulled in these two different directions.

13:16

And yet out of that, this

13:19

is how reason ultimately leads to freedom.

13:22

Because out of our knowledge,

13:24

our understanding that our desire

13:26

for peace has to coexist with

13:28

our impulse to exercise our freedom

13:30

to produce conflict, we create the

13:32

institutions, the rules by which we

13:35

can be constrained. So it's this

13:37

weird combination of what you might

13:39

think of as an

13:41

ideal notion of a collective good

13:44

and peace, and something

13:46

that's more like those philosophers of conflict,

13:48

Machiavellian Hobbes, who think that we need

13:50

to be tamed, but to

13:52

be a reasoning creature is to understand both

13:54

those things. Yeah, and I

13:56

think what's really interesting, and that makes Kant

13:59

in some ways... reflecting on this issue

14:01

in a way that's similar to how Christian

14:03

authors thought about it is the fact that

14:05

both of these tendencies for conflict and for

14:07

harmony are within reason and they're

14:09

part of the use of reason. Kant

14:12

at some point in a book called Religion

14:14

Within the Limits of Reason talks about the

14:16

conflict, the fight between the evil principle and

14:18

the good principle as principles that are both

14:21

part of what it means to be human

14:23

as incentives that we are both driven by.

14:25

And indeed it looks as though

14:27

we wouldn't be free, we wouldn't have free will

14:29

and this is where the kind of overlap with

14:31

the Christian tradition is there wouldn't be free will

14:33

if there was no possibility of error, if there

14:36

was no evil, if evil was something that happens

14:38

outside the mind or outside reason

14:40

or outside what it means to be

14:42

human. It's exactly the fact that it's

14:44

part of who we are that makes

14:46

it a challenge and problem to resolve

14:48

that requires being more sophisticated in how

14:50

you go about thinking about. And Kant

14:52

goes through different stages in his thinking.

14:54

There is an earlier stage where he

14:56

thinks of nature as something that could

14:58

potentially help as something

15:00

like a providential intervention that

15:03

prompts humans that brings them in

15:05

these conflicts. There is something

15:07

that we can detect in nature a tendency

15:10

to help us resolve these conflicts

15:12

and through war come to an

15:14

agreement to make peace and to cooperate with

15:16

each other. And I think there is a

15:18

later understanding that to some extent goes along

15:21

with Kant's changes in how he thought about

15:23

teleology and how he thought about purposeiveness

15:25

more generally both in nature and in

15:27

reason whereby he becomes much more institutionally

15:29

explicit and where it's all about the

15:31

kinds of politics that we have rather

15:33

than the help that nature gives us

15:36

in terms of resolving these conflicts

15:38

and these contradictions. There's earlier point where

15:40

he thinks well nature is going to make us come

15:43

to forms of understanding and to

15:45

political institutions that will enable us

15:47

to resolve our problems and there

15:49

is a later stage where he thinks well

15:51

and usually this coincides with the

15:53

French Revolution and the impact that the French Revolution

15:56

had on Kant's thinking where he thinks well actually

15:58

it's when humans become their own. agents

16:00

they take their faith in their own

16:02

hands politically, that they then have a

16:04

chance of going in a more productive

16:07

cooperative direction. So which of those two

16:09

is the more pessimistic? Because, so

16:12

in response to the French Revolution,

16:14

can't see that human beings can

16:17

really rest control of this very

16:19

long and complicated story. At

16:22

the same time, there are lots of aspects of

16:24

the French Revolution that would give one pause as

16:26

to the ability of human beings to

16:28

somehow naturally come to an understanding of

16:30

what should happen next. And

16:33

this thing can spiral out of control

16:35

very, very quickly. And the

16:37

danger of doing it without lots of

16:39

institutional hemming in is it turns into

16:41

a catastrophe. Yeah, and that's what a lot

16:43

of contemporaries of Kant, including someone like Burke,

16:45

for example, thought. And that was the reason

16:48

for why they were against the French Revolution,

16:50

because they exactly when people become too confident

16:52

of themselves and of their own capacities

16:54

to resolve problems that they can become

16:56

tyrannical and they're these rigorous

16:58

forms of domination. I think Kant

17:00

thought of the French Revolution as one of

17:03

the most progressive events in the history of humanity.

17:06

And in particular, when he writes about this, it's not

17:08

just about the French Revolution as such and

17:10

the revolution as brought

17:13

about by the protagonists of revolution. It's a

17:15

lot about the effects that the

17:17

French Revolution had on those who are watching it, even

17:20

from Prussia or from outside France, basically. Not

17:22

in the theater of war, not in the

17:24

theater of revolution. He writes of

17:26

this as one of the most progressive

17:28

events in the history of humanity, because

17:30

he thinks that there is something tells

17:33

us about our ability to observe

17:36

events with impartiality. So

17:38

he says the spectators to the French

17:40

Revolution see people overthrowing authority, the authority

17:42

of the church or of the monarchy,

17:44

these institutions that they've been for centuries living

17:46

under. And there is a sort of expressive

17:49

element to just being able to get rid

17:51

of that. And he

17:53

thinks that the reaction

17:55

that the French Revolution triggers of

17:57

enthusiasm around those who are observing

18:00

this phenomenon and wanting it to

18:02

go well for the revolutionaries tells

18:04

us something about our moral capacities,

18:06

our moral dispositions and about the

18:09

fact that there is some hope

18:11

that things will go well because we

18:14

have this impartial tendency to just be

18:16

sympathetic to this moral happening in a

18:18

way. So it's really interesting. It's not

18:20

about what they do, what the French

18:22

revolutionaries do, which in many ways also

18:26

rose, as you say, to disaster and

18:28

has produced all these tragedies. It's more

18:30

about how those who were outside the

18:32

theater of war, the theater of revolution,

18:35

think about those events and the ability

18:37

to participate in them and to be

18:39

interested in them even though their interests

18:41

are not at stake. The way in

18:43

which politics helps us reflect about the

18:45

moral structure of our moral dispositions that

18:47

is for count what is singling

18:49

out this event as progressive or as he says,

18:51

he calls it a sign of human progress in

18:54

history. You watch the French Revolution,

18:56

you watch it unfold from the outside, the

18:58

initial event, many people thought this was

19:00

the great dawn of human freedom and

19:02

then you see the terror,

19:04

that's one thing and you might think that's a contingency

19:06

and it doesn't have to go that way. But

19:09

then you see something more familiar and

19:11

certainly more familiar to anyone who'd studied

19:14

human history, which was the great explosion

19:16

of freedom is replaced

19:18

not just by repression, but

19:21

by the re-establishment of familiar

19:23

patterns of political domination from

19:25

revolution to terror, but from

19:27

terror to military rule, for

19:29

military rule, to the rise

19:31

of Napoleon, to empire,

19:33

to European war and to the

19:35

re-establishment then of what

19:37

the other European powers felt was a

19:40

more comfortable order, which then guaranteed a

19:42

form of peace, but the dreams of

19:44

the revolution by that point to a

19:46

certain extent anyway have died. So

19:49

where then if you're looking at it from

19:51

the outside, do you take your inspiration for

19:53

freedom? Is it that what this at least

19:55

shows is that the pattern can be broken

19:57

even though in other ways the pattern reasserts

19:59

itself? itself. It reasserts itself always

20:01

in a new way. Nothing, you don't

20:03

erase the French Revolution from history, even

20:06

when you reassert the familiar pattern of

20:08

European power structures. Is

20:10

that it or is it the thought that next time it

20:13

will be better? Or is it the thought that we could

20:15

do it differently or that we've learned the lesson? Is it

20:17

a lesson learning thing? The latter

20:19

for me, but to go back and I'll start with Kant and then

20:21

I'll get to how I think about it. Kant

20:23

didn't live to see the decline of the

20:25

revolution of the Republic on the rise of Napoleon

20:27

or any of that. He didn't see that. But

20:30

he did live to see the terror and

20:32

it's really interesting that unlike many of his

20:34

contemporaries, he was not bothered by terror. He

20:36

was actually saying that some of the accounts

20:38

of his contemporaries were writing about all the

20:40

things that the French revolutionaries do and the

20:42

terror of Jacobins and so on is nothing

20:44

compared to the pressure and the tragedies

20:46

that the exercise of authority before the

20:48

French revolutionaries came, if you think about

20:50

it in a cumulative way produced.

20:53

And that's really interesting because Kant was not a consequentialist. He

20:55

was not into kind of weighing benefits and burdens.

20:58

So it's very interesting that his contemporaries record him

21:00

as saying this, that it's interesting that

21:02

he has this position where he thinks

21:04

there's this rupture and this fundamental moment

21:07

where something happens that can't quite be

21:09

accounted by moral standards, but that maybe

21:11

needs to be looked at with hindsight

21:13

of historical development and with a philosophical

21:15

reconstruction of history. Does that give

21:17

you pause? It gives me pause. It

21:21

makes me anxious about Kant. None

21:24

of the philosophers that we are studying were usually

21:26

particularly nice person. Why should it be this

21:28

pause? I'm sort of interested in the thoughts

21:30

and thinking about what can I

21:32

take from that, but the fact that they

21:35

make particular pronouncements on any given topic of

21:37

the day, they usually weren't always what we

21:39

would think or hope that they would be.

21:41

I associate a sense that terror

21:44

comes out in the wash of human history

21:47

with many of the

21:49

worst political outcomes of the politics that

21:52

comes later and the

21:54

great terrors of the 20th century, which

21:56

to be honest, don't really

21:58

come out in the wash of human

22:00

history. human history, the millions, the many

22:02

millions dead in the 20th

22:05

century, in the full range of those terrors.

22:07

Maybe it makes me a small L

22:09

liberal or small C conservative. I

22:13

find it uncomfortable even

22:16

starting on the road of

22:19

allowing that if

22:21

you take a long enough view, these

22:24

horrors pale because

22:27

this is your time and this is

22:29

your world and in your time in

22:31

your world they don't pale. Which

22:33

is why I don't think he was

22:35

grounding his defense of the French Revolution

22:37

on these justifications. This is not his

22:40

argument. This is something that I was saying anecdotally.

22:42

He was saying to his friends who were going

22:44

around and saying the Jacobins and so on and

22:46

he said, well, the institutions are right, the republic

22:48

is right and what the church did, what the

22:50

monarchy did, what the massacres of the religious wars,

22:53

you have to factor all of that in and if

22:56

you think about all of those things then maybe we need

22:58

to keep a perspective in check on what

23:00

we think about how we assess the Jacobins. And

23:03

he certainly then wasn't familiar with what happened after

23:05

what kind of president the Jacobin said or anything

23:07

like that. He just thought this is a pattern

23:09

of violence that is part of human history has

23:11

always been then was not invented by the Jacobins.

23:14

For me the interesting question is and this is where

23:16

I want to go back to what you said at

23:18

the end, what gives me hope that things will be

23:21

different? Well I think if you have this philosophical

23:23

perspective on history where you think there is

23:25

a tendency to learn from one's mistakes and

23:27

we can create institutions that channel

23:30

that tendency and we can self-correct

23:32

and we do create rights and

23:34

forms of protection for individuals from

23:37

the abuses of authority and

23:39

we don't want to lose those which

23:41

is why I don't think we should be

23:43

completely anarchist about institutions. We might want to

23:45

replace them but I don't think the

23:48

replacement is arbitrary. It needs to

23:50

be replaced by something that preserves

23:52

the benefits of the predecessor institutions

23:54

and remedies on their pitfalls and there is a

23:56

kind of learning curve there that I think

23:59

should be a good thing. be part of how

24:01

we think about politics and its relationship to morality.

24:03

It's a self-correcting mechanism.

24:06

But to be able to have that, you

24:09

do have to have a philosophical understanding of

24:11

history. You do have to be able to

24:13

create connections between our time and that time

24:15

and the previous time. And so

24:17

there needs to be some sense in which there is a

24:19

bigger story that we can tell about how things

24:22

happen and what humans do and what

24:24

they don't do. If we say our

24:26

time now is completely incomparable with

24:28

what happened 200 years ago or if we say

24:32

so there is a kind of temporal

24:34

detachment theory where you say, you know, what

24:36

happens now is completely – it's like different languages. The

24:38

past is a different language and we can't understand it.

24:41

Or likewise, if you say what

24:43

happens in our culture is completely

24:46

unintelligible to somewhere else in the

24:48

world and there is no possibility of communicating, then

24:50

it's not possible to have those forms of learning

24:52

and it's not possible to have this means

24:54

of contact. And that's why I think

24:56

it's really important and unfortunately we've lost

24:58

it, but it's really important to recover

25:01

this philosophical perspective on history which enables

25:03

us to put together claims across time

25:05

and across space with

25:07

the help of something like what can't be

25:10

called reason which is the constant there and

25:12

which is the universal in a way that

25:14

gives you the possibility of mediating and translating

25:16

between these different contextual arguments.

25:19

But in order to learn from the passage of time,

25:21

you also have to have time. So Kant's very clear

25:23

that this is a really messy

25:25

story. The human story is messy. It

25:27

has twists and turns along the

25:30

way. People choose evil. They don't. There's

25:32

nothing that guarantees they're going to choose

25:34

good. It's sometimes catastrophic. But

25:37

it tends to write itself and each

25:39

time it writes itself, there are more

25:42

philosophical resources to draw on in the

25:44

history of philosophy. This

25:46

is the end of the 18th century,

25:48

the dawn of the 19th century, and

25:51

time moves at a particular rhythm. Dramatic

25:53

events happen at the same time. You can

25:55

recognize your world in the world of a hundred years ago

25:58

and you can imagine a world a hundred years ago. years

26:00

to come which is not completely removed

26:02

from your world. So we're now not

26:04

then. We are in the, well

26:07

not even the early 21st century anymore. It's

26:09

getting on, right? Time is getting on. Last

26:12

time with Machiavelli you mentioned climate change. Climate

26:14

change seems to me a good example of

26:17

this which is the temporal frame doesn't feel

26:19

particularly Kantian. The twists and turns

26:21

along the way. On the one hand we're thinking

26:23

about geological time,

26:25

natural time, where the Anthropocene, the

26:27

human story fits into this much,

26:30

much broader story which

26:32

doesn't all depend on human reason. Is

26:34

human reason just another of the forces

26:36

that shape the natural environment and maybe

26:38

catastrophically? And then there's an

26:41

urgency to it which means if we've got

26:43

to wait for the twists and turns and

26:45

the catastrophes to play themselves out, it

26:47

may be too late. And

26:50

if people are now encouraged to think the history

26:52

of philosophy over 200 years, 300

26:54

years, 2000 years, we'll give

26:56

you the resources to think about the institutional

26:59

reforms that allow. We haven't got the time

27:01

for that. And it may not

27:03

be that we are detached from the past because we

27:05

are our own people, but that we

27:07

are facing challenges. Nuclear war it seems to me

27:09

would be the other one where

27:13

political time but also philosophical time

27:15

is now warped in

27:17

ways that take it outside of the ebb

27:20

and flow of Kantian reason. And

27:23

I don't know what I think about that. Probably what I

27:25

think about that is that it's terrifying. Yeah,

27:27

but are you actually convinced of that? My

27:29

comparison is the Lisbon earthquake at some

27:31

point. These philosophers of the Enlightenment, they

27:34

were hit by this event. And if

27:36

you imagine a religious worldview where there

27:38

is a lot of discussion around providence and

27:40

does God love us or not love... The

27:42

reason the Lisbon earthquake made such an impact

27:44

on Enlightenment philosophers at the time was that

27:46

it seemed one of these external shocks that

27:49

sort of forces you to confront all the

27:51

assumptions you make about the benign intervention of

27:53

God or the fact that God loves humans

27:55

and there seems to be all this amount

27:57

of evil that's just produced out of

27:59

nowhere. that you can't quite account for.

28:01

So they face their own catastrophic thinking,

28:04

you know, their own challenges to their own thinking

28:06

and in some ways even more than us

28:08

because they had less tools to predict events

28:10

whereas we have better science and so we

28:13

know more and we that can kind of

28:15

encourage catastrophic thinking but it can also encourage

28:17

a different way of looking at the future

28:19

which is to say well if you do

28:21

certain things then you doesn't need to happen.

28:23

There's nothing inevitable because we are better equipped,

28:25

we have better knowledge, we have better tools,

28:28

we have better understanding of our environment and

28:30

so we are actually paradoxically more in control

28:32

of nature when we know more about it

28:34

than a period where people didn't

28:36

have the same tools and so we're much more at

28:38

the mercy of the elements of external forces. So it's

28:41

kind of paradoxical for me that we have

28:43

this weird twist, right? When we're at the

28:45

moment we actually have more science, more capacity,

28:47

more prediction, better tools. We face

28:49

this catastrophic thinking that's almost

28:52

worse than it was for people who didn't

28:54

have any of that. So that's my pessimistic

28:56

take on this which is that the story

28:58

doesn't develop in that tension

29:01

between reason as the ability that

29:03

we have to understand the world better and

29:06

also reason as the thing that might drive us to do

29:09

bad things and we now

29:11

understand the world much better but we also

29:13

have the capacity to do worse things. We

29:15

could destroy the natural environment. I think nuclear

29:17

war is nothing like the Lisbon earthquake and

29:20

I think that sort of intervention in this story,

29:22

the Lisbon earthquake certainly for the

29:24

people in Lisbon was the equivalent. If you're all

29:26

exactly that's what I was going to say. For

29:29

the people who are captured in any conflict,

29:31

in any war, it doesn't really matter how you die.

29:33

If you're going to die, then for the person who

29:35

dies and the person who are next to the person

29:38

who dies, it really doesn't matter whether it's nuclear war or

29:40

a car crash. No but I'm thinking

29:42

about then the possibility of the recovery as

29:44

the story ebbs and flows along its way,

29:47

the recovery from this. I mean the human

29:49

history is full of apocalypses for the people

29:51

who live through them. In fact, that's the

29:53

dominant story I think but out of it

29:55

comes as Kant would say

29:58

the emergence of the institutions of restraint

30:01

and constraint that make these less likely and

30:03

then using reason something more than that the

30:05

ability of people to behave in a more

30:07

moral way all of that I

30:09

can think of 21st century scenarios where

30:11

that's simply it's not

30:13

plausible that it's part of that gradual

30:17

story of moral progress I mean it's a pessimistic

30:19

view but I don't think it's a unrealistic

30:22

view that that might be what happens

30:24

here but also that tension with you

30:26

know let's call it unsociable

30:29

sociability unsociable sociability

30:32

in the age of climate change and

30:34

nuclear war seems to me a different

30:36

kind of proposition because there are ways

30:39

that the human story can go paths

30:41

that could be taken from

30:43

which there isn't an obvious coming back

30:46

to a Kantian

30:48

philosophy of history yeah and there is

30:50

a demoralizing way and a more empowering

30:52

way of looking at it and so in a

30:54

way the Kantian story of progress is also

30:57

story it is a narrative it's a story

30:59

that we tell ourselves about how we can

31:01

think about history and it's premised on a

31:03

certain understanding of which of the multis that

31:05

shape reason will prevail the good one or

31:07

a bad one so it will go well

31:10

if people act morally it will go badly

31:12

if it if people don't act morally

31:14

I think the problem is that we're in the

31:16

times in which we live we have just actually

31:18

lost faith in the human so we have lost

31:21

faith in our collective capacity and that's also story

31:23

that we've told ourselves and that has taken hold

31:25

of our minds and it exercises

31:27

this epistemological power it we are in its

31:30

hold in the sense that we are unable

31:32

and of course unlike people in the past

31:34

who had religion as well that could sustain

31:36

them we've also lost that so we're in

31:38

a way in a world where a

31:40

lot of the sources traditional sources we

31:43

trust science but only insofar as

31:45

it goes along with this catastrophic

31:47

predictive thinking we don't really

31:49

trust religion we have really not much

31:51

faith in community and in because

31:54

we're in this ultra individualistic societies where

31:56

people are encouraged to fend for themselves

31:58

and help themselves and don't really think

32:00

about social contact. So of course,

32:02

it's hard because the narratives that surround

32:04

us are all narratives of loss of

32:06

faith in the human. And

32:09

in a way what Kant is saying

32:11

in the famous essay in the Enlightenment

32:13

where he says, enlightenment is the process

32:15

of emerging from your own self-incurred immaturity.

32:18

I think we're exactly in that type

32:20

of self-incurred immaturity prediction because you

32:23

could tell the story very differently, it

32:25

could go very differently but of course

32:27

it will only go very differently if

32:29

people act and mobilize and get together

32:31

and try and come up with resources

32:33

that encourage a different narrative to take

32:35

hold. If we just all of us

32:37

sit there and watch the apocalypse and think,

32:39

oh well, nothing can be done anymore, well

32:42

yeah, it will happen and nothing in Kant

32:44

that will stop that from happening and indeed

32:46

there's nothing Kant says that will stop that

32:48

because he's not a fool

32:50

and he doesn't say, well, it

32:52

goes well. The assumption that it

32:54

goes well is premised on us

32:56

acting morally and acting morally also

32:59

means creating the kinds of political

33:01

institutions that channel these moral incentives.

33:03

And when that's not the case, then it doesn't go well.

33:06

It's terrible. Nothing in nature that can help

33:08

you. There's a wonderful paragraph in

33:10

the Critique of Judgment where he says, nature

33:12

doesn't take the human being for their special

33:14

darling. It doesn't spare them pestilence or

33:16

hunger or any of the things that

33:18

it spares other animals to nature for

33:20

a way in which if you just

33:22

take natural perspective, we are just animals

33:24

like any other animal and yeah, of

33:26

course we'll die, we'll fight, we'll be

33:28

extinct like other species of animals get

33:30

extinct. What makes us a little

33:32

bit different is that we have the capacity to

33:35

prevent that from happening if we act in a

33:37

certain way. But it does require us to act

33:39

in a certain way and to think that it's

33:41

possible to act in that way. If we lose

33:43

the faith in the human in that sense, then

33:46

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is a story about freedom and it's also a story

34:56

about peace. If we do that

34:58

we can find a way towards peace in

35:01

a world in which in the political

35:04

versions of this of what it means to

35:06

be human the way it tends to go

35:08

wrong is war and war is one of

35:10

the things that we can choose not through

35:12

natural impulse but because we choose the evil

35:14

right that's one of the things that war

35:16

is and war is evil and it's a

35:18

human choice it's not just we suddenly become

35:20

animals we fight a war then we become

35:22

philosophers and we do peace we're human in

35:24

both of those functions of what

35:27

we do but for Kant

35:29

the arc is towards peace and one

35:31

of the things that he thought at the

35:33

end of the 18th century we could learn

35:36

is that war is kind of unsustainable in

35:38

the long run and one of the reasons he

35:40

thought it was unsustainable and this

35:42

was a classic enlightenment argument it sounds

35:44

quite unphilosophical was the only way in

35:46

the modern world not in the ancient

35:48

world but in the modern world to

35:50

fund these wars was by taking out

35:52

massive debts you had to borrow to

35:54

fight these wars and he just thought

35:57

this is completely unsustainable And rational

35:59

thinking? Human. Things will notices. It may

36:01

take time now. you may have to fight

36:03

some pretty awful was but then you'll twig.

36:05

It's just not worth it. Even if we

36:07

win if you lose it's definitely fighting the

36:09

war. But even if we when we won

36:11

the war but with burdened with all this

36:13

debt in a way we've lost our freedom

36:15

because weeks we're now. In. Debt

36:17

the people who are criticism So we

36:19

will work out that the only way

36:22

to maintain our freedom is to avoid

36:24

this and that will be a path

36:26

to peace. And he was wrong about

36:28

that. We've had this conversation before on

36:30

this book. Us talking about the enlightenment

36:32

in that. The. Most powerful

36:34

states of the modern world have actually found

36:36

a way to sustain that level of that.

36:38

The United States and Twenty Twenty Fours the

36:40

single most indebted institution in human history on

36:43

a scale that can't Would have thought that

36:45

racing human beings would just. Know.

36:47

Is impossible. But it's not impossible.

36:50

And this is also a

36:52

world in which war. Is

36:54

not as prevalent as as ever Been Cool

36:56

less prevalent in some ways but much more

36:58

prevalent than can't would have hoped to hundred

37:00

years after he wrote. Yelled I don't

37:03

think I'm thought that there was a

37:05

again necessity in the disappearance. Of law or

37:07

and in fact but reason would help her see it.

37:09

But. It was also a political act.

37:11

So the famous essay on perpetual piece.

37:14

It's an essay that's that's with the

37:16

idea of having a clause in a

37:18

peace treaty that says there's i'll be

37:20

no war and not a kind of

37:22

temporary peace but death of perpetual feast

37:24

of these that last forever. So he

37:27

was someone with that. The answer to

37:29

not having war is to come up

37:31

with international institutions. And same as argument

37:33

about the Federation of Republican States that

37:35

creates the forms of supra national corporation

37:38

that enables states to then sono their

37:40

antagonisms. In a direction of creating international

37:42

institutions that help them coordinate themselves. Overcome

37:44

A The standard argument in the Enlightenment was that

37:46

we have the state of nature between individuals and

37:49

there is the states And that's why we have

37:51

a safe because otherwise people are fighting. It's other

37:53

And a lot of Enlightenment critics, including fans took

37:55

this one step further and said, well, now you

37:57

have the state of nature between states That does.

38:00

Have these states that are now fighting it's

38:02

other and being like individuals in the fate

38:04

of nights? So how do we make sure

38:06

that we have a mechanism of cooperation? And

38:09

he thought that the argument for perpetual piece

38:11

was exactly that kind of argument were states

38:13

are asked to. Stop fighting,

38:16

Stop funding War. Stops are

38:18

arming themselves. Basically stopped doing all

38:20

of the things that they're doing right now

38:22

and in fact, The. Motivation for

38:24

that was it's only to great

38:27

international institutions with some power over

38:29

these individual states that you can

38:31

create forms of sustainable corporation that.

38:34

Don't need to trigger constant conflicts and

38:36

this is why it's an argument not

38:38

for peace before perpetual peace with as

38:40

much more demanding in a way but

38:42

I think also more promising. Because without

38:44

perpetual bases always have more here

38:46

and there and conflicts and to

38:48

erupt interestingly and his brother. For

38:50

perpetual these woods was not again

38:52

or something a pump came up

38:54

with it woven. Russo mentioned it

38:56

was in some pierre included Rasa

38:58

included the proposal for Federation of

39:00

European States. But with a very

39:03

large, expensive geography. Heads clauses for

39:05

what to do with the Ottoman Empire. Because

39:07

it with a with a question of you know the

39:09

christians versus the others. And sauce. But it was

39:11

very visionary for the time and in some

39:13

ways something that. Should. Still be an inspiration

39:15

for how we think about institutions nowadays.

39:18

I. Saw him as a problem with the

39:20

enlightenment view but you can take the

39:22

next steps of the first up. For

39:25

on social social policies is from.

39:28

Human. Conflict to the institutions of

39:30

the state and then these states

39:32

are in conflict. Me take them

39:34

expect which is to the institutions

39:36

that the steaks them are constrained

39:38

by. Bills. Are within which they

39:40

can expose the freedom of choice and

39:42

letting the floor with that is that.

39:45

Mistakes on human and. They are

39:47

not human and lots of ways including they

39:49

don't reason like human beings do, they reasoned

39:51

like machines. I've always thought that this is

39:53

the fundamental flaw with the whole view of

39:55

the world and. Part. Of my evidence

39:58

for that is that Trump was wrong about that. So

40:01

on a human level. That. Relationship

40:03

to warn that is unsustainable. It

40:05

doesn't make any sense, but it

40:07

makes perfectly good sense for these

40:09

machines which turn out to be

40:12

among other things debt servicing machines

40:14

that give human beings faith That

40:16

actually perpetual indebtedness is the story

40:18

of the modern human condition and

40:20

out of perpetual indebtedness. The United

40:23

States is the classic example of

40:25

this out of perpetual indebtedness. What

40:27

you get is lots of good

40:29

things. the human beings economic growth

40:31

and the rest. But you don't

40:34

get the end of conflict because that

40:36

a credit to relationships are inherently unstable

40:38

and then debt. Is. The Engine

40:40

of War I think you're right that counts

40:42

didn't see that but other people didn't say

40:44

that. Someone like sister for example who on

40:46

the continent many ways. Actually when he wrote

40:48

one of his books everyone thought it was

40:50

an of anonymously and everyone thought it was

40:52

com than so he was kind of the

40:54

nurturing his inner can't even though we ended

40:56

up in a very different place as professional

40:58

fees and up with a celebration of Us

41:01

State than what he calls the cloth Commercial.

41:03

States But in a way. these arguments about

41:05

that, the unsustainability of that and so on,

41:07

what exactly is led him to argue. That

41:09

we need to do something about not death. But.

41:12

The states still book about globalization more generally

41:14

and his answer was what week? Since we

41:16

can't do anything about globalization that we just

41:18

go back to the cloth commercial state and

41:20

stop interacting and some of the globalized and

41:23

and some Then there's the whole debate the

41:25

follows from there it sister was one. Which.

41:27

Is also quite contemporary. Questions. Temporary Rights

41:29

of these? That was one answer. Another argument

41:31

was then Hagan and Mark. Switches difference way

41:34

of thinking about it which is wealth. Why

41:36

don't you? Instead of putting all the

41:38

emphasis on said think about what, Where's

41:40

that coming from? Enceladus? The structure of our

41:43

economic relations and will maybe we'll talk in

41:45

the theater about this at this discussion around

41:47

the market than the relationship of markets to

41:49

the states. but basically the argument. Was then

41:51

or reform not just of the

41:53

states but also the environments, the

41:55

economic environment, Within which states. Operates

41:57

ends the something that will.

42:00

Then enable states to be

42:02

better at creating peace without

42:04

these. Constraints. On them

42:06

with Sar in some ways external and

42:08

constraints of the market rather than produced

42:10

by the states. You. Could

42:13

say one of the reasons we've

42:15

lost our faith in the human

42:17

is that human reason has turned

42:19

out to be remarkably good at

42:22

building artificial agents, artificial decision makers

42:24

including rational decision makers on a

42:26

mechanistic understanding irrationality that are the

42:28

dominant forces in our world that.

42:31

The. State is not simply an expression

42:33

of human reason for best friend. For

42:36

worse, good or evil, it is it's

42:38

own thing. And that

42:40

our world is dominated by these

42:42

vast and cities which are their

42:44

own thing and they are the

42:46

products of human reason. and they

42:48

are. Motivated. By what

42:51

the human beings who build them want to happen,

42:53

but they also require a kind of life of

42:55

the road and the other way in which we

42:57

may not have much time. Is

42:59

that this process is really

43:01

rapidly accelerating. The human reason

43:03

coupled now with the reasoning

43:05

capacity of so called intelligent

43:07

machines artificially intelligent machines is

43:09

a rapid pace creating new

43:11

kinds of decision making and

43:13

cities which again suggests to

43:15

me that. What? You Need

43:17

in the Canteen story, which is the sort of

43:20

back and forth with the West and wolfed whatever

43:22

the phrase would be of the story of human

43:24

reason. That. Story made.

43:26

I've lost face their stories

43:29

over. Yeah. I don't agree with

43:31

that impact because I think maybe we actually have

43:33

a disagreement in terms of how we think about

43:35

the autonomy of these activists Laden so I think

43:37

may I effect you think of and as much

43:39

more autonomous and I think they are. From human

43:41

reason. I think they track

43:44

human reason. It's just that they tracked and not

43:46

a moral side of human reason. So they

43:48

track that kind of instrumentals reason that

43:50

is for then slowly many ways but

43:52

isn't always kind of thinking about morality

43:54

and moral imperatives and science. but that's

43:57

i don't think there's anything essential about that they don't

43:59

need to be doing that. They can

44:01

be designed in different ways and we do

44:03

have agency and these are still

44:06

connected to us, these institutions that we create,

44:08

these artificial agents. It's still

44:10

fundamentally human reason that is at their basis.

44:12

They channel human reason differently in different historical

44:15

periods and because of the constraints and because

44:17

of the environment in which they operate they

44:19

might be different. But I don't think there's

44:21

anything essential about this loss of control which

44:23

is also partly why I'm I think more

44:25

optimistic and not completely despairing because I think

44:27

well they now reflect

44:29

what the sidegeist is and so

44:31

they reflect the dominant tendencies but

44:33

these are tendencies. There is nothing

44:36

essential about them, there's nothing deterministic

44:38

and because we are free and

44:40

we could be different. And I

44:42

think if we concede that humans

44:44

are free we have to

44:46

also concede that they could be different and

44:48

we also have to concede that there's nothing

44:50

predetermined about the way they operate and what

44:52

they create produces. I want

44:54

to ask you about one last idea of freedom which is

44:57

essentially Kantian which is intellectual freedom. Though

45:00

in the essay about enlightenment it's also

45:02

about what it is to live

45:04

in a world where it is absolutely crucial that

45:07

people are able to voice

45:09

dissenting opinions at

45:11

the same time as it is also important

45:14

that you don't descend into anarchy. So

45:16

to summarize it too crudely essentially

45:18

what Kant is saying is that

45:21

at a certain level you must abide by

45:23

the rules of your state but you also

45:25

must be willing to criticize them. That's

45:29

quite Machiavellian in a way,

45:31

it's also quite Socratic

45:33

or Platonic. You know we've been talking

45:35

about different versions of this, the dilemma

45:37

of what we call democracy

45:40

but other people would call republican forms

45:42

of government which is you both need

45:44

to be a good citizen and a

45:46

dissenting citizen. But Kant's

45:49

version of it is very much an

45:52

intellectual version in the sense that he's imagining

45:54

what he calls a republic of letters and

45:57

he's imagining what we would probably think

45:59

of was something close to the

46:02

academic version of this, that there are

46:04

settings in which dissent is

46:06

not just to be

46:08

encouraged. It's absolutely essential among the people

46:10

who are understood as the thought leaders

46:13

and the ones who are communicating to

46:15

a literate public in a world where

46:17

most people were not literate. And so

46:20

it exists within a particular setting.

46:23

And within that setting, you can

46:26

have radical intellectual freedom because

46:28

it's unlikely to leak out into

46:31

a world in which it would lead to people

46:33

no longer obeying the law.

46:35

And that also feels to me quite, let's

46:38

say 19th century, late 18th, 19th century, and

46:41

through to ideals of university

46:43

and educated life in the 20th century, it

46:45

doesn't feel to me very 21st century in

46:48

the age of the kind of information

46:51

space that we live in now, the

46:53

ways in which it's been radically democratized,

46:55

in which the expression of dissent and

46:57

of different opinions has

47:00

spread way beyond the Republic of letters.

47:03

Or maybe we're all now in the Republic of letters, I don't know.

47:05

But it's not that Kantian version in

47:07

which part of what

47:09

makes it work is that you

47:12

can move between these two spaces

47:14

where it's radical freedom of dissent

47:16

and intellectual dissent within a relatively

47:19

stable political space. I

47:22

don't feel that's our world. So

47:24

yes and no, this very interesting discussion, I

47:27

always have this discussion with my students, discussion

47:29

around the enlightenment and how you think about

47:31

the public sphere and the extent to which

47:33

our public sphere or the digital public spheres

47:35

that we have, the extent to

47:37

which they overlap or differ from

47:39

these enlightenment public spheres. And I think there

47:42

is a sense in which predicament is not

47:44

that different in that what Kant is saying

47:46

is, if you're in a particular social role,

47:48

if you're a doctor or a tax collector or

47:51

an administrator or whatever, you just

47:53

have to perform within

47:55

the constraints of that role because otherwise

47:57

you can't be a conscientious objector in

47:59

every type of function that you perform, right?

48:01

So you have to teach certain things, you have to teach

48:03

certain things. You can't just go around, tell the students what

48:06

your opinions are on everything you teach, even though you might

48:08

have an opinion on everything. And that

48:10

applies to, again, to being a doctor, to

48:12

being an engineer, to whatever, being an administrator,

48:15

being a tax collector. So in that

48:17

sense, I think we are still in a society where

48:20

there is division of labor and where all of us

48:22

are performing certain social roles. But then we also have

48:24

something like the ethics of the citizen, where we can

48:26

step out of our social role and criticize the constraints

48:28

of that role, the way in which those roles function.

48:31

And in that sense, it's quite similar. What I

48:33

think is different, and I think you're completely right

48:35

about that, is that we have a notional expansion

48:38

of a public sphere in that for count

48:40

it was basically just educated bourgeois

48:42

and aristocratic men. And, you know,

48:45

there were no women, there were no sense of

48:47

people without property would be included in the public

48:49

sphere and so on. And so in a

48:51

way, formally, right now we have a much more expansive

48:54

public sphere and the more

48:56

potential for emancipation also because it's much

48:58

more the discourse could take on, could

49:00

be wider. But oddly, there's also something

49:03

else that happens, which is then the

49:05

pressure of conformity. And so in our

49:07

contemporary public sphere, there is,

49:09

yes, possibly lots of

49:11

ideas circulating and so on. But in practice, what you

49:14

have is highly disciplined currents

49:16

of thought and thought bubbles

49:18

where you have everyone agreeing within the

49:21

thought bubble and very little then

49:24

transfer from one bubble to the other

49:26

and very little exchange between those. And

49:28

then it becomes again like the Kantian

49:31

context in which he's saying, well, you

49:33

need to be able to step out

49:35

of now not just the role obligations,

49:37

but also the thought bubbles where then

49:39

the enlightenment argument, I think, becomes still

49:41

really relevant because it is an argument

49:43

for exercising reason in an open

49:45

way. And Kant doesn't say, you know,

49:48

just exercise reason, there are constraints of how you exercise

49:50

reason. It's not just that we reason, but there you have

49:52

to reason in a way that puts you

49:54

in a place of everyone else. You have to

49:56

think consistently there is what Kant calls

49:58

the maxims of enlightenment. I'm thinking and

50:01

not have anything goes And then

50:03

you discipline your conversations and then

50:05

you're able within those constraints a

50:07

reason to have conversations. Across these

50:10

different bubbles. And that's is what

50:12

might encourage the public sphere to

50:14

operate, but just. The existence of the

50:16

public sphere and just the openness is not

50:18

going to be gnostic. Of cerro many different

50:21

ways including and contemporary society is in

50:23

which both is disciplined by commerce, by

50:25

incentives, by advertising by but propaganda or

50:27

by the sea or pressure of conformity

50:29

with the appears to so about time.

50:31

Though Canton Republic of Letters moved as

50:33

a relatively sedate pace, you have the

50:35

time to think you had the time

50:37

to respond. If there was going to

50:40

be progress in this world it would

50:42

ever want to do with take a

50:44

lot of time, progress in philosophy and

50:46

we are moving in a particular direction.

50:48

But it takes time we. Don't have

50:50

that time now and then.

50:53

You. Will you are must boot. Twitter.

50:55

And and he called x is the

50:57

phrase uses of i'm buying the global public

50:59

Square That's what I'm doing And for

51:01

this to work, Dawkins become so conformist and

51:04

it's become so regulated we have to

51:06

open up. We go to let them from

51:08

by. Can you know we have to

51:10

break up. These. Bubbles.

51:12

but. Her, It's frankly

51:14

been a disaster, I think. And it's

51:16

be a disaster because it is just

51:18

the unregulated version of it for the

51:21

reasons he said just create new kinds

51:23

of patterns of domination. Yeah, They do,

51:25

but I don't think the problem is time. The

51:27

problem is education. Birch Case and takes

51:29

time bread. But I think that that we have

51:31

to go back to. The source said what is the

51:33

issue that if you have very educated public with as

51:36

a lot of people tend to assume that's one of

51:38

the questions with digital interactions and digital media as everything

51:40

is like Sosa process once a week and then it's

51:42

not enough time for things are highly educated. The fact

51:45

that it's quick could also be an advantage because then

51:47

we could have an argument. Really quickly and then resulted

51:49

in than most of the next argument that would have a

51:51

lot more knowledge. So. I think there is a

51:53

different way of seeing it, which is the

51:55

reason it's now producing the worst pathologies is

51:58

this quickness? And the press and the urgency. combined

52:00

with fundamental ignorance. But the

52:02

fundamental ignorance, again, is not

52:04

essential. It's driven by the

52:07

way in which education works

52:09

and education institutions are funded

52:11

and who gets to benefit and who doesn't. So then we

52:13

go back to all the discussions around access

52:15

to education, what it takes to

52:17

think intellectually and critically. I

52:20

completely understand what you just

52:22

said and I can picture it as

52:25

an ideal, the quick argument

52:27

that produces the answer more quickly

52:29

and allows us to move on.

52:33

We now live in a world where

52:35

that kind of speed has been franchised

52:37

out to machines. It just has and

52:39

I don't think it's coming back. That

52:41

kind of knowledge, the ability to access

52:43

this space so that you can move

52:45

in time with the pace of the

52:48

information, is so reliant now on machines

52:50

which are themselves controlled by and dominated

52:52

by the forces that you just talked

52:54

about. And I don't

52:56

think, my feeling is that this

52:58

has escaped. The story that we've talked about which

53:01

through the 20th century did make

53:03

a lot of sense, we have escaped it

53:05

and part of the reason that we've escaped it, I

53:08

totally also get what you're saying that

53:10

it's tracking one version of human reason.

53:12

But that version of human reason that

53:14

it is tracking has

53:16

now acquired a life of its own. Fine,

53:19

it has escaped. Is the escape irreversible

53:21

or not? Because if you think it's

53:24

irreversible, okay fine, let's close down the

53:26

podcast, go home, get drunk and wait for

53:28

everyone to die. If you say

53:30

it's reversible, the next question is what

53:32

are you doing to reverse it? And

53:35

that's the question that people need to ask themselves.

53:37

It's no point just going around everyone beating each

53:39

other up and say, oh it's so terrible, it's

53:41

escaped, it's out of control. These machines,

53:44

they are designed by humans and we know they

53:46

have all the biases of humans because you go

53:48

and you ask them certain kinds of questions and

53:50

they regurgitate back all the biases which shows that

53:52

there is a kind of design flaw. They could

53:54

be designed differently, yes or no, yes. If

53:57

they could be designed differently, what are we doing to design

53:59

them? It's very simple. Who are you voting for?

54:01

Who are you campaigning for? What are

54:04

you saying? What kind of arguments are you

54:06

making? We all have individual responsibilities in upholding

54:08

the kind of social structures that make up our

54:10

lives. And it's just we don't get out of them

54:12

by just saying it's so terrible we can't do anything

54:14

because actually we can do something, all of us. Do

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54:38

soon to accompany this series, there'll be

54:40

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54:42

talk about what freedom means in the

54:44

age of thinking machines and

54:46

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PPF Plus, just click on the link that

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54:55

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55:00

there are videos coming

55:02

up next on the history of freedom in

55:04

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55:06

talking about the idea of the free market. Just

55:09

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55:11

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55:14

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