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That's botoxcosmetic.com. Hello,

0:39

my name is David Runksman and this is

0:42

Past, Present, Future. We've reached

0:44

episode two in our new series about

0:46

the history of freedom with

0:48

the philosopher and writer, Lea Ippi. Today,

0:51

I'm talking to Lea about ancient ideas

0:53

of freedom, going back to the beginning,

0:55

at least in the Western world, to

0:58

Plato, to Socrates, to the Stoics, to

1:00

the Christians. What

1:03

do those ideas of freedom mean to

1:05

us today and how, if at

1:07

all, can they help? Past,

1:12

Present, Future is brought to you in

1:14

partnership with the London Review of Books

1:16

and the LRB has got a brand

1:18

new must-listen podcast out now. It

1:21

tells the story of the sinking of

1:24

the General Belgrano, the bloodiest and most

1:26

controversial military action of the Falklands War,

1:29

and of a diary written on board

1:31

the British submarine that fired the

1:33

torpedoes. Andrew

1:36

O'Hagan talks to the man who

1:38

wrote it, the man who leaked

1:40

it, and the journalists, submariners, civil

1:42

servants, and politicians who got caught

1:44

up in the cover-up. The

1:47

Belgrano Diary, a new

1:49

six-part podcast series from the LRB. Listen

1:53

at lrb.me slash Belgrano,

1:56

wherever you get your podcasts. We're

2:09

going to try and do this as a history now,

2:11

but we're not going to do, I think, all of

2:14

the great thinkers in order history. We'll

2:18

try and do it chronologically. I think history has probably

2:20

worked best when they're chronological. And

2:22

we're going to start in a relatively

2:24

familiar place for history as a Western

2:27

philosophy anyway, which

2:29

is with Plato and with Socrates.

2:31

Not because it all has to start there,

2:34

or this is the foundation of everything, but

2:37

because I think the ancient world

2:39

is so distant from us in

2:41

so many ways, and many of the things that

2:43

we're talking about don't actually fit our categories of

2:45

freedom at all. But you can hear the echoes,

2:48

and occasionally it's almost spooky. You

2:51

feel parts of the ancient

2:53

world in the modern world in often quite

2:55

surprising ways. We can't keep explaining how and

2:57

why maybe this conversation is in that chronistic

2:59

and Plato wouldn't have the first idea what

3:01

we were talking about. We're just going to

3:03

have to jump in. And

3:05

let's do it through Socrates. Plato,

3:08

Socrates, whichever. Socrates

3:10

is the character here. And

3:13

Socrates can embody an ideal

3:15

of freedom in two

3:17

ways. One, because

3:20

of the arguments that he made, and we'll come on

3:22

to those arguments. He has things to say, often

3:24

not actually in the language of freedom, but I've

3:27

certainly seen to many people I can account of

3:29

what it would be to be a human being

3:31

living to your full liberated

3:33

potential. But also because

3:36

Socrates embodied a

3:38

certain way of approaching the problem,

3:41

which was to keep asking questions. And

3:43

so that's another way you might think about what it

3:45

means to be free, which is not what arguments you

3:48

wind up with, but the quest

3:51

and the Socratic dialogue, which is an

3:53

ugly term for something that's pretty familiar

3:55

to people, which is just talking about

3:57

it. But talking

3:59

about it. it through questioning

4:02

each answer with another question. Is

4:04

itself a model of freedom? You're

4:07

a philosopher. Does that speak to

4:09

you as a model of freedom when you think

4:11

about maybe what it means to be free in

4:13

the fundamental human way we talked about a bit

4:15

last time, that actually it just is the business

4:18

of asking a question of each answer

4:20

that you get? Yeah, that's a really

4:23

good way to start with this question because

4:25

I'd say the answer is yes and no.

4:27

It's true that asking a question and giving

4:29

an answer is in some ways paradigmatic of

4:32

freedom, but there is also something else that

4:34

Socrates does. It's not just that he's thinking

4:37

about, okay, I'm giving you a question, you're

4:39

giving an answer. There's something further to the

4:41

Socratic dialogue which is about there

4:43

is a right and a wrong answer and

4:46

there is a kind of ideal. There

4:49

is an answer about every single question that we ask. It's

4:51

just we may not know it yet and we may have

4:53

to come to an understanding and we have to perhaps

4:55

inquire further on where we're coming from and

4:58

so on. But I think just saying that

5:00

the Socratic notion of freedom is just

5:02

giving question and answers, I think

5:04

it doesn't do justice to the Socratic

5:06

model because it also doesn't really take

5:08

seriously what Socrates was responding to which

5:11

is the sophists and that's what the sophists

5:13

were also already doing. And they were never

5:15

stopping, right? That was the point. Socrates thinks

5:17

at a certain point you've reached your answer.

5:20

But also I think it's more that there was a

5:22

kind of relativism about the sophists that

5:24

Socrates was objecting to. And so

5:26

while both of them embraced this

5:29

idea of dialogue and conversation and

5:31

philosophy as a vehicle to some

5:33

sort of self-awareness, the

5:35

sophists were prepared to be

5:38

relativistic about the answer in a way in

5:40

which Socrates was insisting, no, there

5:42

is actually a truth and Plato further articulates

5:45

what that means and how it needs to

5:47

be unpacked and so on. But the sense

5:49

that there is a difference between what we

5:51

might call knowledge and opinion. So any

5:53

one of us has an opinion on everything

5:55

but we don't necessarily have knowledge and Socrates

5:57

really insists on this difference between knowledge and

5:59

opinion. and it's central to the Socratic dialogue and to

6:01

the way in which these conversations unfold that there is

6:03

this answer that is

6:06

premised on that difference between

6:08

opinion and knowledge. And I

6:10

think it's really important also because, yes, I

6:12

agree with you that there is something about

6:15

freedom which is about disruption. And

6:17

Socrates was a very disruptive character. He

6:20

was already very disruptive in his appearances,

6:22

if you think about the

6:24

ideas of Greek bodies and Greek

6:26

beauty and the Greek citizen

6:29

and the polis and so on. Socrates

6:31

was none of that. The way he looks, he

6:33

was always depicted as being very ugly

6:35

and it's kind of large nose, long

6:38

hair, slightly disheveled, wore

6:40

the same clothes, go to sleep and

6:42

then woke up. He just didn't care about

6:44

the way he looked. Which is not unknown

6:46

among philosophers then or now. I

6:49

mean, Sartre is the classic 20th century

6:51

version of that. But there

6:53

is a sense in which the Greek model of

6:55

how you ought to be, in some ways this

6:57

is also kind of like in our societies

6:59

where there is a sense of how you

7:01

appear and how you behave and there is

7:03

a notion of what's proper

7:05

and improper and there are social norms and

7:08

social conventions. And Socrates, the

7:10

way you just looked at him, he was

7:12

not that. He was not the Greek body

7:14

and he was not the Greek sculpture and

7:17

he made no pretense to be that.

7:20

He didn't pretend to be something that he wasn't. In

7:23

fact, this is also why he had this pull on

7:25

the, let's call it the dissidents in the polis,

7:27

in the city, on the young. And

7:29

some people will know that one of the charges that

7:31

Socrates gets when he gets trialed by the Greeks is

7:34

that he was corrupting the young and he was teaching

7:36

gods that were different from the gods that

7:38

were already in the city. And

7:41

that's all to do with the fact that he

7:43

was a challenger of convention. And maybe

7:45

there is something about the Socratic attitude, which

7:47

is about, you know, maybe he was one

7:49

of the first dissidents. And there is

7:52

something to that attitude which is about freedom as

7:54

disruption. So he didn't necessarily, I don't

7:56

think Socrates spoke of freedom very much as

7:58

such as a concept. And nor

8:01

did Plato that much. They were interested

8:03

in justice and other things, but freedom

8:05

as a concept isn't necessarily particularly central.

8:08

But there is something about the free spirit and the

8:10

free attitude and the free inquiry that

8:12

is part of what Socrates was after.

8:14

And that also is why he's

8:17

so important to us and to philosophy. And

8:20

these things put in different directions. So Socrates

8:22

the dissident, they're not using the

8:24

language of freedom, but you can see, you

8:26

can extract from them Plato,

8:28

Socrates, and from some of these ideals, a version

8:31

of freedom that speaks to us and the dissident

8:33

is one. Like I said, Sartre,

8:35

the French are on the whole

8:37

often concerned with how things

8:39

look, Sartre wasn't. And that's the 20th

8:41

century version of the same thing. And

8:43

the glamorous are drawn to it. So

8:45

like with Socrates, surrounded by good looking

8:47

young men or in Sartre's case, women,

8:51

we can completely recognize it. And

8:53

yet it's incredibly challenging to a modern

8:55

sensibility, maybe to my sensibility to go

8:58

back to our last conversation. The idea

9:00

that actually if you're serious about among

9:02

other things, freedom, you have to believe

9:04

in the truth. And

9:07

you have to believe that truth and opinion

9:09

are very, very different things because there is

9:12

a version of the modern conception of

9:14

freedom, which it is freedom of opinion. It doesn't

9:16

matter if what you believe is true or not,

9:18

you've got to be able to say it. You've

9:20

got to be unconstrained in how you say it. You

9:23

mustn't have other human beings telling you that you're

9:25

wrong. And all of those very

9:28

modern ideas. And this pushes

9:31

incredibly hard against that.

9:34

Do you think you personally as a philosopher

9:36

or as a human being, do you think

9:38

that absent a belief in

9:40

truth, it's

9:42

not really possible to be free? Well, it

9:44

depends on what we mean by truth. And I

9:47

don't think Socrates, and there's a difference between

9:49

Socrates and Plato on that difference may be important

9:51

to this conversation actually. I

9:53

don't think Socrates had the truth that

9:55

he wanted to convince people of. He

9:57

wanted to convince them to suspend... and

10:00

what is on the surface the truth that

10:02

they take for granted. So when we articulate

10:04

our opinions, we actually believe in them and

10:07

we often articulate them as truth. So

10:09

behind every opinion is a person's conviction that

10:11

what they are saying is true because otherwise,

10:13

why would you make a claim to validity

10:16

or to plausibility or everything

10:18

we say, we are convinced of it. Really?

10:21

I'm not sure that's true of me. I

10:24

think often it's because you are fulfilling

10:26

a social convention which is that's

10:29

how conversation goes, opinion and opinion.

10:32

But when pushed, you wouldn't defend it. No, hang

10:34

on. I think we have grounds for

10:36

holding different opinions, right? So why are we holding

10:38

this opinion rather than the opposite? Because

10:41

it works in this context. This is

10:43

the relativism, right? This is the, I'll take it so

10:45

far, but then if you really push me, I'll

10:48

be full of doubt about it. Yeah, I

10:50

don't think so. I think this is what the

10:52

selfies were doing. So I see where I'm being

10:55

pushed in this conversation. So

10:57

and it was very important in the context of

10:59

democratic Athens just as it is really important in

11:01

our context. And this is also a way in

11:03

which for all the differences Socrates

11:05

is also our contemporary and these

11:07

discussions are really important now regardless

11:09

of all the contextual nuances because

11:12

a part of the Socratic move and of

11:14

the Socratic revolution in of the mind, if

11:16

we want to call it a revolution, is

11:19

exactly that he was pushing against this

11:21

idea in democratic Athens that, you know,

11:23

all citizens have opinions. They just voice

11:25

their opinions. And then it was really

11:27

important in the assembly that they had

11:29

that capacity. And this is actually what

11:31

distinguished Athens from alternative regimes, like Sparta

11:34

or whatever. So it was fundamental

11:36

to Athenian democracy that citizens

11:38

had opinions, that they would come to the

11:40

assembly and voice those opinions and that

11:42

rules and decisions would be adopted on

11:45

the basis of conversations in the Agora.

11:47

And the sophists were the kinds of

11:49

people who would go around for money

11:52

telling people and teaching them how to

11:54

make arguments more effective, which is not

11:56

that different from I don't know if you think

11:59

about contemporary training or... of politicians or leaders or

12:01

the importance of comms. You usually pay some

12:03

person or firm or company who come and

12:05

teach you how to make a good argument

12:07

and how to pitch your party and how

12:09

to respond to the media and all this

12:11

kind of stuff. So that's, to

12:13

me, very similar to self-history and to what the

12:15

sophists were doing, which was to get money

12:17

for – it didn't matter what the

12:19

sophists themselves thought. They were just

12:22

training people to be more effective at

12:24

articulating whatever opinion they held on

12:26

whatever grounds. They held that opinion for

12:28

whatever reason. The reason didn't matter. And

12:31

Socrates starts to challenge that by saying, first

12:33

of all, he always refused to be paid.

12:36

So he wouldn't go and people

12:38

said, okay, let's pay Socrates and he'd say, no, this

12:40

is not – philosophy is not for sale. And

12:43

because he thought there was something about the

12:45

critical spirit that is about self-knowledge and

12:47

encouraging self-knowledge and education, none of these

12:49

things could be commodified. Let's put it

12:51

that way, this kind of modern word,

12:54

but in a way in which the sophists did. So

12:57

he stood for a model of something different

12:59

from way of relating to your opinions and

13:01

querying your opinions and interrogating yourself. That was

13:03

very different to what the sophists were doing.

13:05

And that, in fact, was

13:08

the opposite of what people think when they think,

13:10

well, he had or someone who has a kind

13:12

of platonic, Socratic attitude has a truth that they

13:15

want to convince other people of. Socrates

13:17

did the opposite. Socrates said, I am the one who

13:19

knows least of all. But actually,

13:21

it turns out that I am the most knowledgeable of

13:23

all because I am the one who knows

13:25

that their opinions shouldn't be always taken for

13:27

granted and that I'm always the one who

13:29

is querying myself and interrogating and

13:31

putting pressure on my arguments, whereas

13:33

all my adversaries, they just take

13:36

convention for granted or take some source of

13:39

authority or other. I am the

13:41

one who is really challenging authority here. And I'm not

13:43

telling you what you should think, but I'm telling you

13:45

that you should know yourself better and you should know

13:47

the reasons for why you're upholding these different

13:50

opinions. And that was really,

13:52

I think, was distinctive of the Socratic methods

13:55

and why it's so important. But

13:57

does it rest on an assumption that you

13:59

are... striving towards something, that

14:01

there is something out there. Because again,

14:04

in modern settings it's not always clear

14:06

to me that that is a shared

14:08

view, that a lot of this is self-referential

14:11

internal. So there's the questioning of the self

14:14

and there's the thing that you won't take

14:16

your own assumptions for granted. But there's got

14:18

to be something out there for the, like

14:20

you say, for the Socratic method to work.

14:23

You've got to believe that you're getting

14:26

closer to the truth. Absolutely. And I

14:28

think it's really important to the

14:30

Socratic method and to that way of

14:32

thinking that there is a difference between

14:34

knowledge and opinion. Now how you get

14:37

to knowledge, to true knowledge, and the

14:39

roots, the communication, the mechanisms, how we

14:41

engage each other, these are

14:43

different than in a way the whole philosophy is

14:45

about trying to understand that. But yes, that there

14:48

is a difference between knowledge and opinion I

14:50

think is important. And that

14:52

also there is a notion of some

14:54

things are not just relatives. We can come

14:57

to an understanding of what is not relative.

14:59

That's also important. But I also think it's

15:01

right. I mean, we do now think that

15:03

there are things that are just wrong in

15:06

our society. So we wouldn't say if someone

15:08

says, oh, slavery is fine. Well, so that's

15:11

all right. That's their opinion. They can say

15:13

that. We tend to think that's a wrong

15:15

opinion. And we do often

15:17

make arguments that are based on this

15:20

distinction between warranted opinion

15:22

and unwarranted opinion. Let's call it that.

15:24

And then maybe knowledge is something that

15:26

builds and develops on warranted opinions. But

15:29

I have this instinctive response to that.

15:31

It's not a very sophisticated response, but Plato

15:34

thought slavery was fine. So

15:37

Plato is both the person I know with

15:39

Plato Socrates, but I'm talking about Plato here.

15:41

Plato thought it was fine in a society

15:44

that thought it was on the whole natural.

15:46

And yet this is our model for

15:48

the belief that not all

15:51

truths are real.

15:53

But they were really wrong about

15:55

that. And part of that

15:57

makes me feel that there is something relative

15:59

going on. here that the people who were

16:01

both our models for the seekers after the

16:03

truth were so wrong. Because

16:06

I think there is a way in which they are

16:08

contingently wrong about contingent things, but not

16:11

necessarily wrong about the method of coming

16:13

to an understanding of what's right and

16:15

what's wrong. And I think with most

16:17

philosophers, this is the case of the past, right?

16:19

So most of them were in favor

16:21

of slavery, or they were sexist, or they

16:23

were racist, or any model that we pick

16:25

as a model from

16:27

Plato to Kant to John Stuart Mill

16:30

to whatever, we'll find some elements in

16:32

those writings that will tell us that

16:34

these people didn't always stand up to

16:36

what they were teaching. But in a

16:38

way, that's contingent. There

16:40

are things that we also take from their teachings

16:42

and from their philosophical work

16:45

that has the relevance,

16:48

and that relevance is still instructive for us

16:50

now, regardless of the other details of their

16:52

thought. I think, going back

16:54

to the question of what makes Socrates distinctive, which

16:56

is this idea of dissidents and

16:58

questioning convention, questioning authority, the

17:01

instinct behind that is really important.

17:04

And it's just as important now as it was

17:06

in the times of Socrates. And I

17:08

also think that what he was responding to, which

17:10

is this tendency among the sophists

17:13

or among the ruling elites in

17:15

democratic Athens to just say, well,

17:18

opinions, democracies premised on the exchange

17:20

of opinions, and there's no way of

17:22

saying who's right and who's wrong, and so we

17:24

just make decisions. That

17:26

can't be the case that we need to actually

17:28

discuss further and come to an understanding of where

17:30

are these opinions rooted and where do they come

17:32

from and how do they connect to. Then

17:35

what later would go on to complement with ideas of

17:37

the good or of the just or whatever. So

17:40

if he was sitting here now and I said to him, why

17:43

can you even get close to seeing using

17:45

your method that slavery was wrong?

17:47

You didn't seem to have any

17:50

way into that question. And

17:52

would he say back to me, well, that's because you

17:54

have the advantages of what, another

17:57

2000 years of people questioning and questioning and

17:59

questioning. questioning. And

18:01

I can see it now. I can completely

18:03

see that that was our mistake and we

18:05

should have been questioned more. It just seems

18:08

like such a... There are things

18:10

we know that people who lived in different

18:12

eras didn't know. So if people thought that

18:14

you are created unequal and you didn't have

18:16

a story of how you were created and

18:18

you didn't have science behind it and you

18:21

didn't have general knowledge, then

18:23

that obviously plays a really

18:25

important role. Where I'm born, which family

18:27

I'm born, which state I'm born into,

18:29

if I don't have a story about

18:31

human beings coming, being evolved and

18:33

coming from certain features and

18:36

developing into certain other features, that's

18:38

a whole scientific theory that then

18:40

feeds into a knowledge of humans

18:42

that's very different from the knowledge that these

18:44

authors had. So that's scientific

18:46

knowledge. So most people again in the

18:48

modern world would think that's not philosophical

18:50

knowledge. That's scientific knowledge. In pre-modern and

18:52

even early modern settings, that distinction didn't

18:55

hold. Scientific knowledge and philosophical knowledge were

18:57

similar. Is it that this

18:59

quest after a never fully known but

19:01

potentially knowable truth has moved

19:04

from philosophy to science? I don't know in what

19:06

position I am here, whether I'm in the minority

19:08

or in the majority. I think there is a

19:10

lot of philosophy to contemporary science as well. So

19:12

I think in general, this distinction between philosophy and

19:14

science is just as such is a little bit

19:16

crude. And I think our scientific

19:19

paradigms are grounded on certain

19:21

philosophical assumptions and our internal

19:23

philosophical theories are developed on the basis

19:25

of what we know from science. So I

19:28

wouldn't say that there is a sharp boundary still now

19:30

between the two. I mean, of course, there

19:32

is a realm in which philosophy now makes

19:34

claims is narrower than what it was in

19:36

the past when we didn't know certain things

19:39

about the universe and so on. But in

19:41

more generally, I think the relation between the

19:43

two is similar because I think

19:45

there is something to science, as I said,

19:47

that's grounded on philosophical assumptions. Something

19:50

else that's distinctive about the Socratic method

19:53

is it requires an individual

19:55

and individual philosopher. Socrates is a unique

19:57

character for the reasons you described. being

20:00

willing to question his, it was always his in

20:02

that setting, doesn't always have to be, his

20:04

own beliefs. There's something not

20:06

remotely solipsistic about it, but there's something

20:09

deeply personal about it. It has to

20:11

be an individual human being conscious of

20:13

their own individuality. And it's a public

20:15

thing. It's a collective thing in that

20:17

you do it with other people. I

20:20

don't think you can do it on

20:22

your own. Certainly the way it's described

20:24

there, he's not setting his own questions

20:26

and answering his own questions. He needs

20:28

them partly as foils sometimes to make

20:30

fun of them, but also to push him on.

20:34

So it is a public thing. It

20:36

happens among other people

20:39

and various modern versions of the pursuit

20:41

of the truth are quite distant from

20:43

that. There are also lots that aren't

20:46

and a university is still a place

20:48

in which you think that people exchange

20:50

ideas collectively. But that version

20:52

of it, the doing it

20:55

among other people bit, and if this

20:57

is in any way about freedom, this

20:59

is freedom in a joint

21:01

setting. I mean, collective is probably the

21:03

wrong word for it, but joint, it

21:05

needs other people. There are lots of

21:07

modern versions of that where it doesn't.

21:09

You follow your thoughts and you can

21:12

question yourself. You can be brutal and

21:14

ruthlessly self questioning, but

21:16

it doesn't require other

21:18

people. I'm taking from what you

21:20

said that you think it does require other people. I

21:24

also think that in every time and

21:26

in every society, our

21:28

understanding as individuals is always based

21:30

on our relations to other people.

21:32

So it's not possible. We don't

21:34

actually have solipsism ever. I mean,

21:36

it's very rare. So

21:38

even if you go off to your room and

21:42

because you're writing your great novel about freedom

21:44

or whatever it is, and it is really

21:47

you interrogating your own thoughts, what you're actually

21:49

doing is ventriloquizing other people. Yeah. And your

21:51

thoughts are always the product of other social

21:53

relations. So you can never have thoughts in

21:56

a vacuum. I mean, of course, there is

21:58

something about Socrates, which is that... It

22:00

takes this sharp form of dissidents that it

22:02

takes that is in part also the product

22:05

of democratic Athens and of the Athens of

22:07

Pericles where citizens are empowered. As we said,

22:09

that's a very restrictive understanding of

22:11

citizenship because it's usually just free

22:13

males and property owners and so

22:15

on. But it is

22:18

still empowering for people understood

22:20

even in this restrictive way and that's why

22:22

we have character of Socrates that emerges in

22:24

that context. And we then take that to

22:26

a radical form and becomes a quintessential

22:29

dissident. And so in that sense,

22:31

yes, I think there's something about the politics of Athens

22:33

that produces this and it may be

22:35

that in general these very sharply dissident

22:37

figures emerge in particular historical circumstances that

22:40

are connected to where their societies are

22:42

at. But I also think that more

22:44

generally all of us as individuals, all

22:47

our thoughts, all our writings, everything

22:49

we produce is connected to a

22:52

social setting and comes and if anything I'd

22:54

say that the flaw of our liberal societies that

22:56

we are often not aware of the deep ways

22:58

in which we are pervaded by others, by the

23:00

presence of others, by the presence of thought that

23:02

was there before us and that will

23:04

outlive us and we just tend to think that

23:06

it's just us and our thoughts. But I don't think

23:09

that's the case. It seems

23:11

to me it's a very

23:13

restrictive way of understanding also the

23:15

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24:22

paradox of the relationship to democracy is this

24:24

is a quintessential product of democracy, this kind

24:26

of dissidence. To be

24:29

a dissident in a democratic society for

24:31

Socrates was to make the arguments against

24:33

democracy. Socrates'

24:36

arguments against democracy

24:39

do, as I understand them, also

24:41

include the idea that democracy

24:44

settles too easily for easy

24:46

answers to difficult questions. It's

24:49

a kind of pandering form of politics. It's

24:52

not looking for the hard

24:54

answers. It's looking

24:56

to settle on the answers

24:58

that will work for now, including

25:00

to the biggest question. So in the Republic,

25:02

one of the arguments is that what you

25:05

get in a democracy is

25:07

people claiming to answer

25:09

questions like, so this isn't one of

25:11

them, but it could easily be what

25:13

is freedom. So think of contemporary democracy.

25:15

Contemporary democratic politicians are always telling people

25:18

that there is a shared answer to the question, what is

25:20

freedom? And so we can

25:22

then say that this is good because it

25:24

will make you freer. This policy, this

25:27

way of organizing a society of

25:29

deciding who belongs, who doesn't belong,

25:31

of organizing our economy is

25:34

conducive to freedom. And

25:36

the trouble with democracy is that it allows

25:38

those big questions to

25:41

be answered very quickly. And

25:44

the test of the answer is whether it will

25:46

hold for now. So you'll take a

25:48

word like freedom, you'll tell people it's freedom-free. And

25:51

because you have license, that would be a

25:53

classic platonic version of this, because license is

25:55

not freedom. License is a kind of indulgence.

26:00

people that licenses freedom

26:02

and it will hold long enough for

26:05

your purposes, which is presumably to

26:07

exercise some form of power. So

26:09

this is a really radical critique

26:11

of democracy. And it's

26:13

not though ancient democracy was so different

26:15

from ours in so many ways, mysteriously

26:17

different from ours. It

26:19

still holds in the sense that

26:21

you can still feel its bite,

26:23

its force, that the trouble

26:26

with democracy is that it

26:28

encourages politicians and citizens to look to

26:30

the answer to these questions that will

26:32

do for now. And

26:34

yet, I think there are many things to be said

26:37

for democracy. But on

26:39

that account, this is a deal breaker. I think

26:41

there's so many interesting things about that, both the

26:43

overlaps and what we learn and how the story

26:45

is both good and bad in a way. I

26:48

was thinking, and I wanted to say something about

26:50

go back to Socrates and connect it to the

26:52

story of how Socrates is in some ways

26:55

the product of democratic Athens. But I think

26:57

it's the end of Socrates is also really

26:59

telling about democracy because Socrates

27:01

gets killed by his fellow citizens. So

27:03

in this society that is supposed to be

27:05

the one where freedom of opinion flourishes, where

27:08

all citizens have equal views and where all

27:10

views are respected, the one

27:12

who is the fundamental dissident who doesn't say

27:15

to them, don't respect the laws of the

27:17

city. It just says, ask yourself where these

27:19

laws are coming from and what is their

27:21

foundation? Is the one that is executed?

27:25

And the trial of Socrates is so

27:27

interesting because it shows you

27:29

how he's the result of democracy, but

27:31

also in a way what

27:34

the limit of democracy is, which is

27:36

that it panders to the common sense

27:38

and whoever departs from then this common

27:41

sense is at risk of, you

27:43

know, it's not going to be killed, but will be considered

27:45

a fool or will be considered someone who

27:47

is not to be taken seriously or be

27:49

ridiculed or will be in a position of

27:51

minority one way or another. So I think

27:54

what Socrates was saying about democratic Athens was,

27:56

yes, you have to listen to each other,

27:58

but you have to also. make good arguments,

28:01

and good arguments aren't just the arguments

28:03

that are rhetorically persuasive and powerful, which

28:05

is often the case now. We're driven by

28:07

rhetoric. Our politics is driven by rhetoric. It's

28:10

not really driven by the pursuit of truth,

28:12

of real values in a way. There's a

28:14

lot of talk about values, but

28:16

I don't think it's taken seriously.

28:18

And I think he was saying, look,

28:20

fellow Athenians, it's all good to have

28:23

democracy, but our opinions need to be

28:25

scrutinized further and needs to be critically

28:28

examined. And at some point, he has the

28:30

sense of the unexamined life is not worth

28:32

living. So it's telling

28:34

both in the way in which democracy

28:37

generates a Socrates-like figure, a dissident, but

28:39

also in a way in which that

28:41

dissident features and the fortune

28:43

of that dissident is unmade

28:46

by democracy in a way. He doesn't ...

28:48

His Socrates is not a hero. He's a

28:50

philosophical hero, but politically, it's complete catastrophe, the

28:53

way it goes. It's also, I

28:55

think, a tale of what perpetual dissident

28:57

will have politically, or the

28:59

fortunes of the perpetual dissident politically, I

29:01

think, are ... It's very interesting what

29:03

the Socratic story tells us about that.

29:06

Isn't the criticism, though, it's not just

29:08

that democracy panders to common sense. I

29:10

mean, panda, you shouldn't panda

29:12

on the whole, but common sense is okay.

29:15

The problem is dressing it up as though it

29:17

was the truth. And

29:19

democracies have a tendency to do this. They

29:21

inflate their talk about values

29:23

because that's the way you sell them. I mean, the

29:25

way in which you sell your version of it. And

29:27

this goes back to what you were saying earlier, that

29:30

behind the opinion is our belief that it's the truth.

29:32

A more cynical view is behind the opinion is

29:34

a knowledge that it's not the truth, but you

29:36

know it's much easier to sell if

29:39

you come across as believing it. If you

29:41

can fake sincerity in democracy, you've got it

29:43

made. That's the democratic method. It's

29:45

a really radical critique. And

29:48

it suggests to me that actually what you

29:50

need in democracy, and this is the opposite

29:52

of what you said earlier, is a bit

29:55

more relativism. That is a bit more awareness

29:57

that these are on the whole inflated claims.

30:00

democracy really is, is an

30:02

understanding that different people's point of

30:04

view, however passionately held, is profoundly

30:06

contingent. And that's the thing that

30:08

in democracies we tend to lose sight of because

30:11

we get so carried away and also because the

30:13

route to power is to come across as

30:16

someone with certainty. I can think of so

30:18

many contemporary examples. So there's the example of

30:20

Tony Blair in the Iraq war,

30:23

where he knew that if

30:25

he really learned the

30:27

truth about how messy and complicated it was

30:29

going to be, it would be much harder

30:31

to sell it. So he deliberately,

30:33

there's a lot of accounts of this

30:35

that suggest this was a deliberate policy,

30:37

he deliberately insulated

30:40

himself from quote unquote the truth

30:42

in order to come across as

30:44

more sincere. And that you can

30:46

criticize him for it, but that seems to me a quintessential

30:50

democratic move. And

30:52

therefore what we need is less

30:56

sort of Socratic seeking after the truth and

30:58

just more self-awareness that if we're going to

31:00

live in a democracy, we

31:02

mustn't inflate these claims. Okay,

31:05

but then here is the criticism of

31:07

democracy, which is actually the criticism that

31:09

both Socrates and Plato articulate of exactly

31:11

that ideal because they said, so this is

31:14

what's happening in the fifth

31:16

century Athenian democracy. And

31:18

in this world where the sophists are paid

31:20

to teach people to make whatever arguments, acknowledging

31:23

that this is all relative and anyone's answer

31:25

is as good as anyone else. And

31:27

then Plato says, well, in the Republic, in

31:30

the voice of Socrates, then democracy

31:32

becomes a kind of constitutional bazaar. So

31:34

people are there and anything goes and

31:36

then someone will emerge that

31:39

will tell the masses, okay,

31:41

now I'm now going to help you make

31:43

sense of this. So instead

31:45

of the philosopher, you have the demagogue

31:47

and the populist leader who will then

31:49

come and say what you truly want, because

31:52

there is a sense in which people actually

31:55

you say to them, well, it's all relative, but it's

31:57

not true. It's part of our

31:59

urge. The of are inside of our

32:01

instinct is too long for authenticity. And to

32:03

we have a desire for truth and will

32:06

You can't be satisfied with just being told.

32:08

Subs. You know it's all relative. First out

32:10

because it. Isn't and be. There are many reasons

32:12

of life and which we operate. Not. On the

32:14

basis of everything is relative, we have rules and

32:16

within those rules of justifications and we don't think

32:19

those us to the cases. Are there

32:21

just because someone convinced us of that?

32:23

justification? With think they are there because there. Is

32:25

a good reason behind that Justification So

32:28

I think Socrates in the Republic says

32:30

at some point okay, fine, we can

32:32

go. Along with the story of it's all

32:34

relative anyone says what they once and the

32:36

Celsius are being given money. It's before sought.

32:38

The people who pay more money and will

32:41

be more will be heard more and songs

32:43

of the system. Even leaving that aside which

32:45

also has parallels with our contemporary world in

32:47

terms of influence and ability to articulate and

32:49

have voice and sauce. But even leaving the

32:51

all About. A sites there will be someone

32:53

at some point some leader who will. Come.

32:56

Out until the masses. Okay, What You

32:58

really want, what you really needs and

33:00

will help them articulate their grievances and

33:02

such a way that. Will then in

33:05

power that individuals for no particular reason

33:07

other than just t happens to be

33:09

the one that the masses listen to.

33:11

That point on, that will be how.

33:13

Democracy descends and tyranny And it's not of

33:15

i don't play two hundred and and separate

33:18

as wants to criticize democracy. It was

33:20

more the connection with. And democracy and tyranny

33:22

that made them so concerned about democracy. and

33:24

I think maybe there is a versatile democracy

33:26

where that doesn't have to happened which is

33:28

the one where and in the the one

33:31

that they both trying to articulate were philosophers

33:33

have more of a role in understanding and

33:35

helping Arctic claims, claims and the public sphere

33:37

and were not as blaze more of a

33:40

role than opinion. The content reverses argument from

33:42

new do in the Shooters show how impossible

33:44

but you hear it. Which. is

33:46

you let postmodernism in fact american universities

33:48

and you'll get from but there's a

33:50

line that runs from the first session

33:52

was exactly matches what you just described

33:54

i'm not saying that that's true and

33:56

as good as much as more complex

33:59

months but certain there are people who

34:01

believe it, right? The relativization of

34:03

American life, particularly

34:07

intellectual life and public discourse is what opens

34:09

the grounds for a demagogue. But

34:12

on the other hand, I think it's also true,

34:14

to go back to what I was saying before,

34:17

that in the absence of at least some skepticism

34:20

about democratic claims, truth

34:23

claims, you get a bastardized

34:26

version of democratic politics too. This

34:29

is exactly why it's so important to distinguish

34:31

between knowledge and opinion. And this is

34:33

why holding on to the search

34:36

for truth is so important, because

34:38

that's exactly on that basis that you can then

34:40

say, okay, let's try and all find out what

34:42

the truth is here and let's make it more

34:44

complicated. Let's give it more nuance. Let's try

34:46

and open up the conversation. And that's where

34:48

the role of what Socrates was, the role

34:51

of philosopher or, you know, might say scientific

34:53

experts or whatever, or just

34:55

general education in democratic societies like

34:57

ours, where it's not necessarily about

34:59

having a Socrates character, because fortunately,

35:01

we've moved away from this idea

35:03

that there are individuals that can

35:05

enlighten us. And we think there

35:07

are institutions and education and processes

35:09

and procedures through which we can

35:11

come to this understanding. But

35:14

I think it is important that we hold on to this

35:16

difference and that we do think that

35:18

truth is important and that it's not anything

35:20

goes. One more question about

35:22

democracy. So then is the problem with

35:24

democracy that it thinks of this too

35:27

much as, in

35:29

our modern sense, a political project? That is, this

35:31

is the bizarre

35:34

of contested opinions in which you

35:36

arrive at a version of the

35:38

truth through the outcomes of certain

35:40

procedures and methods and elections and

35:42

so on, collective decision-making of various

35:45

different kinds. So you're talking

35:47

about, say, a democratic education, which might

35:49

be closer to a Socratic version of

35:51

this and a democratic education at

35:54

a deep level. And I'm sure you would use

35:56

this word is political, but it's not what most

35:58

of us mean by democratic. democracy, which is political

36:00

in a very different way. It's a way of taking

36:03

all the different things that people think and

36:06

producing outcomes that will last for four

36:08

or five years. Yeah, and I think

36:10

maybe that's because we are at a contemporary stance

36:12

and the one that I'm trying to resist in

36:14

what I'm saying with this notion of

36:17

democratic education and this Socratic model reworked

36:19

for the contemporary world is

36:21

that it's ethics

36:23

connected to politics. Well, there

36:25

is a politics that is completely devoid of ethics, but

36:27

it leads to horrible results.

36:30

At the very fundamental level, it's really important that

36:33

there is moral constraints on politics. And then the

36:35

question is, okay, what are the moral constraints? How

36:37

do we get to these moral constraints? What kind

36:39

of institutions can help us elaborate those moral constraints?

36:42

But we can't say the political helps

36:44

us find the moral. It has

36:47

to go both ways. And in fact, there's

36:49

this really interesting paragraph in the Republic, again,

36:51

where Socrates is talking to Trasimachus about what

36:53

is justice. And Trasimachus says, justice

36:55

is just the rule of the stronger. It's

36:58

just a powerful. They make the rules. They

37:00

decide, you know, they win the wars in

37:02

that case. They decide what kind of constitution you

37:04

will have. The constitution will make the

37:06

norms. The norms will decide how people should conduct

37:08

themselves in their daily lives. So you have laws

37:10

and so what is justice? It's positive law.

37:13

Fundamentally, it's the rule of the stronger. And

37:15

Socrates is really resisting that and saying, well,

37:17

justice can't just be convention. It can't just

37:19

be what society is telling you, what authority

37:21

is telling you. And it

37:24

has to be something deeper

37:26

about our sense of reason

37:28

and the good and all the other things

37:30

that come up in the Republic. But at

37:32

this kind of more superficial level, it really

37:35

is about the difference between justice as a

37:37

result of convention and justice as something connected

37:39

to an ethical project. I

37:41

think it's really important. And I'm I don't know

37:43

if I'm in a minority and this is really

37:46

contrary to the kind of modern spirit, but I

37:48

think it's really important to recover that notion of

37:50

rooting the political and concept of right to this

37:52

notion of the ethical. You said when we started

37:54

this, this isn't in the bits of right that

37:57

we're talking about here often framed in the language

37:59

of freedom. yet as you describe it. It's

38:02

demanding, it's super demanding, but you can

38:04

see how maybe it

38:06

would be a way of

38:08

explaining why some of the

38:10

frustrations with democratic freedom require

38:13

a deeper look at what lies behind

38:16

them. But it is really demanding. Last

38:19

time we talked very, very briefly, you

38:21

mentioned in relation to your grandmother about

38:24

stoicism, which is another super demanding version

38:27

of freedom. But weirdly, what you've

38:29

just described, I think for most

38:31

moderns, 21st century people, is

38:35

it's quite alien to how

38:37

people think. The weird thing about

38:40

stoicism, and I'm just picking some random classical

38:42

ideas of freedom here, the weird thing about

38:44

stoicism is it has a real contemporary vogue.

38:46

So not in the way that your grandmother

38:48

talked about it, because she'd lived a life

38:50

where she really could say,

38:52

you know, I've experienced all of the different

38:55

ways in which a human being can feel

38:58

they've lost their freedom and yet here I am,

39:00

I'm still a self-possessed human being. But

39:02

it's almost a form of therapy

39:04

speak stoicism, which is if you

39:06

can acquire a certain relationship to

39:09

your own emotions, feelings, thoughts, desires,

39:12

you will be liberated from them. The

39:15

classical version is much more demanding than

39:17

that. I just want to read you

39:19

one passage that we're leaping across time

39:21

and space here, but this is Seneca.

39:25

For Seneca, stoicism is

39:27

about not succumbing to

39:29

the temptations of pleasure, among other things.

39:32

So Seneca says surrendering to pleasure

39:34

means also surrendering to pain, surrendering

39:36

to toil, surrendering to poverty.

39:38

Both ambition and anger will wish to have

39:40

the same rights over me as pleasure and

39:42

I shall be torn asunder or rather pulled

39:45

to pieces. And then he says, what is

39:47

freedom? You ask. It means

39:49

not being a slave to any

39:51

circumstance, to any constraint, to any

39:53

chance. It means compelling fortune to

39:55

enter the lists on equal terms and on

39:57

the day when I know that I have

40:00

the upper hand, her power will

40:02

be naught. When I have death

40:04

in my own control, to go back

40:06

to what we talked about last time, the first

40:08

question, shall I take orders from her? So

40:12

stoicism, here's another super demanding

40:14

version of freedom, which has

40:16

probably been diluted in the

40:18

modern retelling. So it becomes

40:20

a resource to relieve you

40:22

from some of the stresses and anxieties that I

40:24

want to be relieved from. I sometimes think if

40:26

I could be a bit more stoical, it would

40:28

be better. But this is

40:30

the super demanding version of

40:32

it. And it

40:35

requires being liberated, not

40:37

just from the bad stuff, but from

40:39

the good stuff too. And it

40:41

also requires really having

40:43

death front and center. So

40:46

here's another one, which I get

40:50

the connection from then to now, ancient to modern.

40:52

And yet when it's put in these terms, for

40:56

moderns, it's almost impossible. Yeah,

40:59

I mean, I think of it as demanding, but also

41:01

not very demanding in a way. So I think

41:04

it's demanding because it's

41:06

asking of us to suspend certain things

41:08

that we usually think we care about. Like

41:11

not wanting to die. In that

41:13

sense it is. But in another way, it's

41:16

also like self help. It's not asking you

41:18

to change the world. It's

41:20

asking you to just change yourself in

41:22

the face of a world that seems unchangeable. And

41:24

in fact, I think this is why the connection

41:26

is between Socrates and the Stoics. Socrates

41:29

is tragic, but it's still hopeful because there

41:31

is still a sense in which this is

41:33

a project for the community. And

41:35

I think the transition from that to the

41:38

Hellenistic period is that somehow there

41:40

is this giving up on the community and

41:43

it becomes a project of the person

41:45

who disengages from the community. And this were

41:47

also the connection between the Stoics and the

41:49

Cynics, for example, is where you start with

41:51

this idea of, I don't care about convention.

41:53

This is all rubbish. It's

41:55

all an illusion. The world is bad and

41:57

so on. So I might as well just

42:00

try and find ways of relieving

42:02

myself and releasing myself from that

42:04

and from the burdens of the world. If

42:07

I just go back to Socrates for a minute and then

42:09

back to the Stoics, the Socratic

42:11

ideal is it's not demanding when it's critical.

42:13

It's demanding when Socrates is asked to articulate,

42:16

which he never does and Platonists never

42:18

do and generally people who think like

42:20

them struggle to do is

42:22

to articulate, okay, what is the right society? You're

42:24

teaching me that this is not the right society.

42:26

What is the right society? That seems very demanding,

42:29

but I don't think it's demanding in the sense

42:31

in which Socrates urges his interlocutors to

42:33

just be critical, don't accept this, don't

42:36

take it seriously and continue to kind

42:38

of voice your criticism and

42:40

to try and change things, to operate,

42:43

to influence the youth and think

42:45

about education and so on. Now you

42:47

get this transition from Socrates to the

42:49

Stoics when even that is no longer possible.

42:52

It's the sense of a world that is in

42:54

crisis, in fragments and it's a

42:57

very different period, Hellenistic period

42:59

from the one in which Socrates was

43:01

operating and then you have this, the

43:03

only possible way out seems to

43:05

be the individual extrication from the

43:08

evils of the world. And

43:10

yeah, it's demanding in one way, but it's

43:12

not demanding in that you don't have to do

43:14

anything with other people. It's just you by yourself

43:16

and then training yourself and

43:19

helping yourself and controlling yourself

43:21

and at most you set the example, but you

43:23

don't really have a big obligation to

43:25

come up with solidarity or create

43:28

structures of relational engagement

43:30

or yeah. So I think in

43:33

some ways it is demanding, but in

43:35

another way, it's also defeatist. The problem I have

43:37

with it is the thing that you said last

43:39

time, which is there's a version of it which

43:41

says, yeah, you can be free even if you're

43:43

a slave because all of it's the same,

43:45

right? It's all chance, it's all fortune,

43:47

we're all going to die in the end and

43:49

in our different ways we can all come to

43:51

a mastery over that by sort of not caring

43:53

about it. It's more than that, but that's

43:55

at the heart of it. And

43:57

yet, so I don't know. been

44:00

a slave. But it doesn't seem to me

44:02

a persuasive argument for a slave who would say actually,

44:04

I don't think that's what freedom is. I think freedom

44:07

is emancipation. And that actually,

44:09

that line from Seneca, which

44:11

is, we will be liberated

44:13

from indifferent to circumstance, you

44:16

can only really make that argument in a very

44:18

particular set of circumstance. Like you have to be

44:20

someone like Seneca, the most famous of the Stoics

44:23

is Marcus Aurelius, who happened to be emperor.

44:25

You know, like it's a sort of emperor's

44:27

philosophy. You can from

44:29

a certain position of, for

44:32

want of a better word, privilege, think that

44:34

circumstance doesn't matter. And

44:36

then you can generalize that to say this is

44:38

available to everybody. This is available to slaves. Actually,

44:40

maybe this, if I was a slave, maybe that

44:42

would be a great philosophy to have because that's

44:44

a really shitty circumstance. So it'd be great to

44:46

think that that doesn't matter. But actually, to be

44:50

indifferent to pleasure and pain is something

44:53

that is only possible, for

44:56

instance, if you're not poor, or if

44:58

you're not enslaved, or if you're not oppressed.

45:01

And therefore, this thing doesn't make sense as

45:03

a political philosophy. It's completely self defeating. I

45:06

guess you can see it both ways. So there's a part of it that

45:08

is resignation. And so

45:10

it's teaching you to just cope

45:12

with the circumstances. And in that sense, even if

45:14

you're a victim, like my grandmother was a victim

45:17

for many, many years, and I think having this

45:19

attitude is what enabled her to survive

45:21

in circumstances where otherwise you might really

45:23

struggle. And she survived because he thought,

45:25

well, I'm always free, I can rise

45:27

above the circumstances, they can take my,

45:29

she came from this aristocratic family and was

45:32

expropriated and her husband was in prison.

45:34

Most of her relatives were either in

45:36

a different country or had committed suicide and

45:38

died in Albania. And she had this

45:40

extreme inner strength that made hers and

45:42

which she articulated by saying, well, you

45:45

know, they could take away anything from

45:47

me, they won't take away my dignity. And that made

45:49

her resilient. So it made her survive

45:51

and cope with the circumstances and be

45:53

there for when there

45:55

was in the world more change collectively

45:58

such that then you could still see

46:00

that happening. So there is a part of

46:02

it that, as I say, is resignation. There's

46:04

a part of it that is resilience. And

46:07

then how you think about those two will

46:09

depend on actually factors that not just an

46:11

individual person can control, but that will depend

46:13

also more generally on what happens in society.

46:16

So the problem I have with stoicism

46:18

is that I think this notion of

46:20

the sage or the philosopher or the

46:22

person who is in control of their

46:24

fate, it seems to be very individualistic.

46:26

And you don't just own yourself, other

46:28

people own you as well. You have

46:30

responsibilities to other people. And I remember

46:32

when I was reading a few months

46:34

ago Kant's argument against the stoic argument

46:36

for suicide. And Kant had this line

46:38

where he was saying, what makes you think that you're in

46:41

control of your life? There's other people that have claims on

46:43

your life. So this sense that it's just

46:45

you and your desires and your wishes and

46:47

how you think about extricating yourself from the

46:49

world was very selfish. And

46:52

there is something about the human being which isn't

46:54

just what the individual wants and likes. And I

46:56

mean, this is a crude now rendition

46:59

of the stoic and I think there

47:01

may be more sophisticated versions. But on

47:03

this particular example of suicide, I completely

47:05

agreed with him and thought,

47:07

yeah, this is right. It's

47:09

very indulgent. It looks like it's

47:12

a quintessentially heroic thing to do, but

47:14

actually it's a very resigned way of

47:16

operating and not heroic at all. I

47:19

completely get how it works as a

47:21

support for a life like your grandmother's

47:23

life, which is a life of profound

47:26

dramatic change containing within it the possibility

47:28

of more change. It doesn't

47:30

work for a slave because the life of

47:32

a slave does not contain any of that.

47:34

You might be freed if you're lucky, but

47:36

there is at least potentially in slavery, the

47:38

complete absence of the possibility of

47:41

change. I may be extrapolating

47:43

from experiences I can't understand. It doesn't make

47:45

sense to me. And part of the evidence

47:47

for that is that the philosophy that

47:49

then becomes the philosophy of freedom

47:53

for slaves, which

47:55

is an inversion of almost all the

47:57

things that we've been talking about, is

47:59

Christianity. Because Christianity becomes

48:01

the philosophy of freedom as

48:04

salvation, as love. These

48:08

are not ideas that fit into the philosophies

48:10

we've just been talking about, I don't think.

48:13

Salvation, love, service, community

48:16

service. They're not the communal quest

48:18

for the truth, but in

48:20

love of your fellow man. And it is

48:22

what Nietzsche called the slave revolt in morality.

48:25

This is freedom for the

48:27

profoundly unfree. And

48:32

it's also the basis of the modern world. I

48:34

mean, the modern world is both based on, in

48:38

some sense, ancient Greek

48:40

philosophy. You can hear echoes of it in

48:42

our world, and you can hear people striving

48:44

for the things that the ancient

48:46

Greeks were striving for, that that version of

48:49

personal emancipation

48:51

or liberation through thought and knowledge

48:53

and so on, or acceptance of

48:55

circumstance. And this is also

48:57

Christian and a post-Christian world, the Western world.

49:00

And it's built on the idea of freedom

49:03

as liberation. And if not in this life,

49:05

then the next life, there is a thing

49:07

that you will pass through that

49:09

will make you free. And

49:11

in the meantime, what you should do is

49:13

find freedom in love. And

49:16

Nietzsche thought that was the basis of democracy.

49:18

He didn't think the basis of democracy was

49:20

anything that came from Plato

49:22

or Socrates. He thought modern democracy was

49:24

a watered down version of Christian love.

49:27

And that's why in the

49:30

end it was hopeless. Yeah,

49:32

I think I have a much more charitable reading of

49:34

Christianity and maybe also a more political

49:36

one. I was channeling

49:38

each other, don't say than me. But

49:41

I think also a more political one

49:43

in a way in that I think

49:45

the Christian message is really important at

49:47

that stage, in part because exactly this

49:49

is a world of status hierarchies that

49:51

seem deeply ingrained and this message that

49:53

you are all free. And

49:56

genuinely this is a universal possibility, right?

49:58

Anyone can find freedom in Exactly. So

50:01

I think that's a really important and empowering message.

50:04

And I think, yes, you know, there is the whole narrative

50:07

of this is the afterlife and so on. But

50:09

then there are philosophical articulations of what the

50:12

afterlife means, where I think there is a

50:14

message of Christianity or indeed any religion which

50:16

has this sense of the afterlife and

50:18

this message of redemption through faith and

50:20

through community that is, I think, really

50:22

important when you're thinking about action and

50:24

moving beyond this individualist paradigm of the

50:26

Stoics into something more robust and also

50:28

more meaningful for freedom. Now for Christians,

50:30

this was the after world and the

50:32

afterlife. But I think the sense of

50:34

the future and the future that is

50:37

populated by many people who become

50:39

somehow in control of their faith

50:42

and finally free, it's

50:44

a really important liberating message. And

50:47

I think I'm channelling here my liberation

50:49

theology. But I think it's really important

50:51

and I just disagree with actually the

50:53

Nietzschean assessment of Christianity that is just

50:55

the morality of the slaves. It's the opposite. This

50:58

is actually a morality that tells the common

51:00

person in a world that is a world of

51:02

slavery, that is a world of hierarchy, that is

51:04

the world of the Roman Empire and so on.

51:07

Actually these hierarchies are not important because

51:09

there is something to the human predicament that

51:11

is very, very different from this. And

51:14

then, you know, we can interpret what Jesus

51:16

means and the revolutionary hero and all

51:18

of that. But just at this level,

51:20

I think, well, I just don't agree. When I hear

51:23

you talking about freedom, so I

51:25

sometimes feel that the thing that I lack

51:27

that you have, and I think you've just

51:29

articulated it, is faith. It's

51:32

almost a religious faith

51:34

that you have. And you've talked about it

51:36

today and in the episode that we've

51:39

already put out. You've talked about the

51:41

different things that you are striving towards.

51:44

And sometimes you say maybe this is a minority

51:46

opinion and maybe it is, maybe it isn't,

51:48

I don't know. But I feel like I'm

51:50

on the other side of something from you on this.

51:52

And maybe the thing that I'm on the other side

51:54

of, I'm not sure I agree with Nietzsche either, but

51:56

the thing that I feel is a certain kind of

51:59

modern, abused,

52:01

disillusioned absence of

52:03

faith. And maybe people like Nietzsche are to

52:05

blame for that, I don't know. And

52:07

so I don't know if I'm a relativist or

52:09

I'm not a relativist, but I struggle to hold

52:12

on to what I think

52:14

your version of the pursuit of

52:17

freedom requires, which is

52:19

faith. And it is faith in the future apart from

52:21

anything else. It doesn't have to be the afterlife, but

52:23

it's the thing beyond. I feel

52:25

like I'm stuck in this world. Yeah,

52:28

I have faith. I'll tell you what I have faith and I

52:30

think I agree with you. I've also thought a lot about

52:32

this and I think, yes, it does come down

52:34

to a type of faith. I wouldn't call

52:36

it religious faith. I'd say it's more like

52:38

a philosophical faith and there is a difference there

52:41

because it's rational. Well, insofar as you

52:43

can have a faith that is rational, I think

52:45

this is more rational faith than the one that

52:47

tells you something will happen after you die to

52:49

you and to your soul and so

52:51

on. It's really not about the individual. It's not about me.

52:53

I think my faith is, I guess, more generally

52:55

a faith in reason and the fact that,

52:58

yes, human beings all

53:00

are flawed and maybe

53:02

we go back to where we started with Socrates. We

53:04

have all these temptations and these evils

53:06

and there is ideology and there's manipulation,

53:08

there's propaganda. But fundamentally in all of

53:11

us, there is also the capacity to resist all

53:13

of that, which goes back to having reason

53:15

and what is freedom as this

53:17

fundamental sense of what makes

53:19

us different from animals. And I

53:21

think what faith is then is

53:24

holding onto that element of the

53:26

human and thinking, okay, then this

53:28

might produce something different from what

53:30

we have. And being able

53:32

to hold onto that thought so

53:35

much that it actually helps you

53:37

overcome the disasters and the obstacles and

53:39

the difficulties and gives you courage in a

53:41

way to act in a world that is

53:43

otherwise seems completely not amenable. And

53:45

that's how I would define my faith. And

53:48

I often do call it my self-faith because I think

53:50

it is a kind of faith you have to hold

53:52

onto this thought that reason is capable

53:54

of emancipating us somehow or moving us

53:56

beyond where we live and the constraints

53:58

of our lives. There is

54:00

something that we can all do with other

54:02

human beings as well in our social relations

54:04

to change things. And in that

54:06

sense also, there is a sense of the world to

54:09

come that will be different from the world in which

54:11

we live. And again, that's – if you give a

54:13

philosophical interpretation of Christianity and the after-world and the afterlife

54:15

and so on, it could be – there

54:17

could be a version of that that

54:19

is some form of ethical living and

54:22

ethical community. Kant has a

54:24

lot to say on that in religion, in

54:26

the limits of reason alone. So he can

54:28

put that back for some other discussion. But

54:30

yeah, I think you're right to call it a form

54:32

of faith. And I'd be happy to defend

54:34

that as well. Do

54:58

also follow us on Twitter, at

55:00

PPF Ideas. On Instagram, at PPF

55:03

Ideas, there are video clips that

55:05

come from this series too. Next

55:08

time, I'm talking to Leia about

55:10

Machiavelli and Republican ideas

55:12

of freedom then and now.

55:16

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