History is a complex interplay of progress and catastrophe, driven by the human capacity for reason and the pursuit of liberty, which, though often accidental and fraught with peril, offers a path towards a better future.
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in December of 1940 a 43-year-old
policeman in London scratched his face
on a rose bush the small wound quickly
turned septic his face ballooned with
abscesses and purse one eye became
infected and had to be removed and the
infection spread to his arm and lungs he
was in a huge amount of pain an
escalation like this seems like extreme
bad luck to us today but before
antibiotics lifethreatening infection
was so common that life expectancy was
just 47 years
old the policeman's doctor decided to
try a brand new drug penicillin he was
the first person in the world to receive
it around 10 years earlier Alexander
Fleming had returned to his lab from
holiday and found that one of his Petri
dishes was contaminated with mold he
noticed though that the mold had
inhibited the growth of the bacteria in
the dish so we took the mold and added
it to other dishes finding the
same after 4 days of treatment the
policeman was making what his doctor
described as a striking recovery
temperature returned to normal and he
was eating well on the fifth day though
the supply ran out and a month later he died
died
di it's been estimated that since
penicillin has saved the lives of maybe
200 million people and saved countless
others from excruciating pain it's
probably the most important life-saving
Discovery in human history but it also
points to a paradox in thinking about
progress in history Not only was it
discovered by accident the mold had
floated up through a window accidentally
left open onto a petri dish left
accidentally out on a bench rather than
in an incubator while the exceptionally
cool weather for that time of year had
encouraged its
growth if the discovery of such a
life-saving drug is the result of chance
how can we think about progress at all
what drives it is it guaranteed or is it a
a
myth of course it wasn't just chance
Fleming was a practice iing scientist
embedded in a context of Institutions
aims methods in a particular culture and
so on and compare this story to what was
going on at precisely the same time only
a few hundred miles away in Germany and
Poland Millions were being
systematically murdered while the
Innovations of Science and Technology
were being put to good use by European
slaughtering each other on
battlefields how do we make sense of
this paradox that the most important
innovation in history and other medical
and scientific advances were happening
at the same time as the most devastating
catastrophe in [Music]
history the historian will gerant wrote
that Civilization is a stream with banks
the stream is sometimes filled with
blood from people killing stealing in
shouting and doing the things that
historians usually record while on the
banks unnoticed people build homes make
love raise children sing songs write
poetry and even Whittle statues the
story of civilization is the story of
what happened on the banks historians
are pessimists because they ignore the
banks for the
river is Durant right do we all ignore
the good in history are we all
pessimists how do we even begin to
understand the good in History how it
unfolds what drives it what could
promote it what we could learn from it
there are countless difficulties here
the first is what does good even mean
what's the measure what's the
criteria some say health others
happiness others wealth stability
Community equality a postmodern critic
that it's impossible to rank these
values to compare and classify or to
place any hope in a grand narrative
what's a long life if it's lived under
tyranny what's a wealthy life if those
around you live in
poverty however if we were to begin with
a loose matter Criterion that I think
most would agree on while nevertheless
disagreeing on precisely what it means
we'd land on something like Liberty
Liberty broadly speaking is the freedom
to think to speak to do to act to be
oneself to go where one chooses to
strive in the way one wants to strive to
have as many as the primary Goods of
life as possible in order to do so food
shelter transport even things like good
relationships friendships opportunities
and so on most I think would agree that
generally more of these things is better than
than
less broad Liberty in this sense is
neutral between competing ideological
beliefs or political systems it begins
from a simple premise that more
possibility is better than less the
society that has better access to
penicillin is better than the one where
you're more likely to be sent to a gas
chamber the historical question then is
to understand which historical
conditions institutional political
cultural philosophical lead to an
increase in Liberty and which diminish
it which ideas about Liberty seem to
work where did they come from who built
on them improved them what diminished or
restricted them the historical question
is to search for the causes of Liberty
so that they can be identified and built upon
upon today
today [Music]
[Music]
Hegel argued that history was the
unfolding of Reason Through Time Martin
Luther King who read Hegel argued that
the moral Arc of History bends towards
Justice Marx building on Hegel that
economic contradictions resolve through
history leading to a more equal society
and more recently once again drawing on
Hegel some have claimed that liberal
capitalism is the end of
History all of these claims are in some
sense hegelian and the philosopher Terry
Pinkard has recently argued in a work on
Hegel that the end at work in history is
the securing of justice as
freedom freedom is the relationship
between desire reasoning acting on your
desires and recognition and Authority in
other words our desires don't exist in a
vacuum we're in constant negotiation
with others and their desires with
figures and systems of authority that
act upon and direct our own desires and
so on freedom is inter subjective social
Consciousness culture and institutions
arise out of the interplay of all our desires
desires
socially with this in mind Pinker asks
does history make sense is there logic
in the way the interplay of desires
plays out is history comprehensible or
is it contingent subject to chance random
random
messy but the totality of that interplay
is meant to be directed towards
increasing Freedom Hegel was a figure of
the Enlightenment like K before him he
believed in a scientific approach to the
world and that included history he
argued that science was bringing the
phenomena of the world around us in
nature in humans in everything under
what he called the
concept what he meant by this was that
we have ideas of things we have ideas of
ourselves our desires of others of
History we categorize things we look at
the qualities of things the causes of
things the historian looks at the causes
of World War II for example and builds
up an idea of World War II importantly
it's this ability to go about the messy
work of building up ideas that makes us
human and provides the possibility of
place a mouse has a past but it has no
real history we have ideas of how we
acted why we acted what we've changed
since for example a mouse might have a
drive to eat which it acts on but a
human has a concept of eating under
which reasons for eating what to eat
when to eat what's healthy how to farm
where to shop are categorized under the
idea or concept of
eating what hago is trying to show is
how we make sense of the world that from
our ideas and Concepts we make judgments
about how to act once we understand this
we can understand that the idea of salad
say is a historical one we've brought
more understanding under the concept of
salad how it looks its chemical
composition its effects best ways to
distribute it and eat it so it's most
flavorsome and so
on humans develop conceptions over time
at times ideas Fall Apart and are
discarded and at other times they
develop and are adopted the biblical
idea that the sun went around the earth
fell apart as it was observed that the
opposite was true so the idea that the
Bible was the guide to wisdom was slowly
superseded by an emphasis on observation and
and
empiricism Pinker writes that the
components of the idea arise in history
but as humans reflect on those Concepts
put them to use and modify them in the
course of their Collective lives they
refashion them into overall schemes of
intelligibility Hegel was expanding on
Spinoza's point that modern scientific
and rational inquiry expands outwards
towards what he called the perspective
of infinity by looking at the causes and
the qualities of the things that help us
expand upon our desires and
interests Pinker writes that Hegel
concludes that freedom is the capacity
to make what truly matters effective in
one's life and in modern times that more
or less comes down to acting on our
reasons rather than on vague feelings or
guidance from nature the gods or those
who claim to rule Us by natural
right but again this is obviously not
just an individual process our own ideas
and desires come into conflict with
others there are agreements and
disagreements that play out in culture
in institutions in norms and practices
in political decisions Etc but the point
is that over time we tend to try and
work up ideas of things that work and
ideas of things that don't Pinker writes
that history is an arena in which people
seek and have sought reconciliation that
is a kind of justification for their
lives when it comes to the meta
Criterion of Liberty denouncing fascism
is thought of as the same as trying to
eat more salad an individual directed by
education cultural context social
information makes a judgment that the
former had the effect of reducing
Liberty in the past and the latter has
the effect of increasing energy and
lifespan Hegel says that we emerge from
a realm of Shadows and move towards the
reasons if this is true then we should
be able to establish some points of
historical progress Which shapes of
Consciousness to use hegel's term which
ideas practices instit utions in history
have promoted
Liberty for Hagel the process developed
as history unfolded from one being free
a king or an emperor free to make their
own decisions about Society while the
others had to follow to many being free
I.E an aristocracy to all in principle
at least being free Hegel argued that
preek societies were paternalistic and
authoritarian that they were rule
followers and that they didn't
interrogate the reasons for following or
abandoning certain rules and that the
Persians Egyptians Indians and Chinese
civilizations that preceded the Greeks
didn't approach the world and people as
ideas to be studied but instead were
absorbed in the world around them they
didn't have any reflective critical
distance without these mechanisms for
self-criticism there can be no movement in
in
history it's important to note his
interpretation of ancient history has
been criticized a lot since but for our
purposes the important point is less
where it started but the idea of a
reflective distance on the world being
important the questioning of why some
ideas or rules are adopted and why
others are discarded the Greeks he
thinks were
self-conscious they had a particularly
acute idea of the self and asked
questions about
it it's under these conditions that the
question can be more forcefully asked
who are the people what does freedom
mean who rules and so on
Pinkard writes the Greek Miracle as it
were was its creation of the poce a new
form of social and political
organization in history in which the
ability to defend the community United
with an ancient conception of Justice
into a new kind of unity that broke with
the past and thereby combined the
advantages of the emotional closeness
and solidarity of traditional tribal
life with the reflective and economic
advantages of an urban life that these
circumstances were crucial for the
developing of an idea of
freedom for the Greeks what made someone
free was self-sufficiency that they
weren't under the sway of others that
they had the means to make decisions and
live by their own means own desires that
in Aristotle's phrase a person was a law unto
unto
himself Aristotle continued that it's
the mark of a free man not to live at
another's Beck and cool Freedom meant
not being compelled it meant being
self-directing and crucially it meant
not being a
slave but of course women and slaves
were excluded the community had ultimate
authority over the individual and the
Greek poce and its face-to-face direct
democracy struggled to grow as Benjamin
constant wrote the problems of the
ancient idea of Liberty if this is what
the Ancients called Liberty they
admitted as compatible with this
Collective Freedom the complete
subjection of the individual to the
authority of the
community in some ways Rome expanded on
the Greek idea of Liberty and managed to
grow by granting citizenship to many of
the areas it conquered but eventually of
course ruling was left to the
aristocracy the Senate and the
emperor but Pinkard writes that once the
Greeks had put freedom on the map as a
way of thinking about Justice there was
a push towards justice as equality and
as the mutual recognition of the freedom
of all an actualization of the idea of
person if we acknowledge that poit iCal
Liberty the right to contribute to and
to be part of the political process to
have rights is an important part of
Liberty then it must be true to say that
the so-called Dark Ages between the
collapse of the Roman Empire in the
fifth century to the Renaissance in the
15th are a regression broadly speaking
historians no longer use the term the
Dark Ages using the Middle Ages instead
with many pointing to achievements in
architecture and Agriculture and Mining
and much more nevertheless monarchism
absolutism even the Catholicism of the
period don't fit well under our broad
means in forms of organization like
monarchy or the medieval Church the
right to act move and worship freely to
contribute towards the decisions that
affect your life are quite clearly
restricted in important ways social
positions are carefully orchestrated
from above different rights powers and
privileges are distributed depending on
one's standing and social position from
above economic activity religious
freedom education and so on is or at
least can always in principle be
above we should look briefly then at
four interrelated moments the
Renaissance the Reformation the
Scientific Revolution and the
enlightenment when Constantinople was
taken by the Ottoman Empire in
1453 an influx of migrants into Europe
fleeing led to the discovery of many
ancient Greek and Roman texts on
everything from music and art to
politics and philosophy the resulting Renaissance
Renaissance
impossible without the printing press
invented in
1463 led to a flourishing of commentary
on Old ideas and new ideas being
produced across the
continent it was essentially an
explosion of ideas the discovery of
America by Europeans in 1492 also
revolutionized attitudes of many across
the continent it showed that the world
was much bigger than previously assumed
that there were more peoples more ideas
and possibilities than had long been
assumed it also proved the usefulness of
Technology the compass and ship building in
particular the Reformation would not
have been the same without the
Renaissance the German priest Martin
Luther's rejection of the Pope's supreme
authority set off the Reformation across
Europe in
1517 encouraging Christians to read the
Bible themselves elves despite the
church forbidding it no single person or
group should have a monopoly on
interpreting God's will the new
Protestants argued protestantism was
important because it began to
democratize the interpretation of morals
and ethics and spirituality similarly
the Treaty of West failure signed after
the fighting between Catholics and
Protestants during the 30 Years War
contained the seeds of the modern idea
of the sovereignty of Nations that each
nation has the right to determine its
own laws its own course of action that
each to go back to Aristotle's phrase
was a law unto
himself the Scientific Revolution was
happening at around the same time and by
1700 the world looked very very
different to how it did in
1400 kernus is Discovery that the Earth
revolved around the Sun rather than the
other way round expanded the universe in
people's minds in the same way that the
discovery of America expanded the Earth
in European mind kernus made the Earth
just another Celestial body and this
naturally refuted biblical texts and
legitimized the further study of the
physical universe and the laws of motion
and matter Galileo and Newton
revolutionized and formalized the laws
of motion and physics and many began
proving that these principles could be
applied to Innovation through projects
like Canal building and better
architecture and Road Improvement and
navigational instruments Francis Bacon
argued that an inductive method should
be used in science the careful
observation of the
world all of this led to an interest in
and the Improvement of instruments like
the barometer the telescope the
microscope the compass cartography
medical instruments the steam engine
electricity and modern engineering and
science more broadly leading to
today Paul Hazard says that the focus on
reason was Central although many would
dispute this and he writes that the
enlightenment's essence was to examine
and its first charge was to take on the
mysterious The Unexplained the Obscure
in order to project its light out into
the world the world was full of Errors
created by the deceitful powers of the
Soul V saved by authorities beyond
control spread by preference for
credulity and laziness accumulated and
strengthened through the force of
time the point is that the enlightenment
aimed to uncover to shine a light on to
broaden out our understanding of
ourselves and the universe although as
we saw in the last video it had a dark
side too but pink card says that the
major turning point in world history has
to do with the advantages gained by
modern Europeans who have come to
comprehend the Eternal justice of their
world as consisting in a kind of
all the enlightenment according to many
may have been contradictory inadequate
misguided the idea of equal freedom for
all conveniently not being applied to
colonies slaves women the proletariat
but the question is despite it taking a
painfully slow amount of time was it the
nent animating principles of freedom
justice equality Etc that slowly
unfolded complexified became more
forceful more convincing more nuanced
from the ancient Greeks through to
Christianity and the reformation and the
Scientific Revolution the Enlightenment
and onto things like Marxism manism
decolonization human rights and debates
about freedom and Justice today is there
a through Line Is It ideas that matter
is it economics is it Innovation or is
[Music]
else I think it's worth pausing here to
reflect on a problem though this is a
common eurocentric story and as we
discussed in the dark side of History
the expansion of Liberties for some has
led often to the domination and the
reduction of Liberties for
others I'm not suggesting a simple
triumphalist narrative and there is much
to include that traditionally isn't the
Islamic Golden Age the prosperity of the
mugal Empire before the East India
Company moved in science leading to
pollution as much as new tools just to
furthermore it's much easier to measure
something as distinct as death or
violence than it is to measure Liberty
what someone sees as Liberty varies so
much across the world as we move into
the modern era everywhere the different
methods Technologies political Solutions
languages we have developed for choosing
freely to do things has expanded
exponentially so let's return to our
initial question question briefly what is
Liberty the philosopher Thomas Hobs
described some places as having more or
less Liberty Frederick Hayek said that
the poor in a competitive Society are
much more free than a person commanding
much greater material comfort in a
different type of society John
Somerville said that during the Cold War
in a communist World there was much more
freedom from the power of private money
and periodic
unemployment a brief look at the history
of the concept shows the difficulty in
even agreeing what Liberty means whether
it can be measured like height or weight
say in his book a measure of Freedom
philosopher Ian Carter writes that
freedom is the absence of preventing
conditions on agents possible actions
those preventing conditions can be many
we might be physically prevented coerced
or threatened unable because of a lack
of Education or resources or being born
in the wrong place but a broad point for
me is that a measure of freedom is the
availability of choice you might not be
free to climb a mountain if you are
incapable but a better Society I'd argue
is the one that if that is your choice
out of many many choices you'll have
easier access to the resources and
education and time and energy to do so
the same measure can be applied to jobs
health Innovation cooking art religion
travel politics a good measure of
freedom is one that should be applicable
to anything a society then that has
broad access to scientific research is
an improvement on one that doesn't one
that has the widest availability of food
ingredients is an improvement on the one
that doesn't the easiest access to
healthcare we could go [Music]
on moving into the 19th century the new
scientific Enlightenment liberal
rights-based order was becoming dominant
throughout Europe but especially towards
the end of the century contradictions
began to appear was it really capitalism
as a system that was responsible for
progress of any kind could capitalism be
made ethical could rational State
organization better direct the
Innovations of Science and Industry
could Empires be [Music]
[Music]
overthrown the problem then and now is
the difficulty in agreeing on the causes
of Liberty if we say science or at least
some of it medicine tools architecture
has been fundamental in improving the
lives of the most people people then the
focus should be to discover protect and
emphasize the conditions that lead to
the rise and proliferation of science to
oversimplify but it's not too much of an
oversimplification you can look to
history to see the causes of the
Scientific Revolution the causes of
medical revolutions to which countries
have the best healthc care outcomes
historians of the Scientific Revolution
for example emphasize the activity of
ofies outside of mainstream universities
on collaboration on the emphasis on
empiricism on the scientific method on
developing new ways of reporting
experiments so that a reader far away
could witness the experiment the start
of peer review the printing press the
cross dissemination of information I'm
using a broad example but making a
historical point we use history we know
these things work in the past and we
further them into the future in through
public discourse in the classroom in the
lab another example of this problem
comes from the study of the decline of
violence it's mostly agreed now that
there was a decline in homicide and
violent crime from the end of the Middle
Ages through roughly speaking to today
with quite a few blips in between some
like like historian Peter speenberg
argued that the cause was the
monopolization of state power as
monarchs across Europe became more
secure and Consolidated their Authority
the Royal Court became a politer and
more civilized place as Lord sat to
Josel for favor and the Monarch was able
to capitalize on their power by being
more intolerant of volatility others
have pointed to the rise of Commerce and
the need for more civil interaction
between people to make one's way in
life but on the other hand the historian
Mark MAA has argued that this state
monopolization of power led to the death
toll of the two world wars in the
Holocaust and the nuclear bombs in the
20th century contradicting this story of civil
civil
progress The Point again is that the
causes of any type of progress are
always difficult to identify just
because a monarch imposed order where
Elite violence would have previously
gone unpunished say that doesn't
necessarily mean the premise absolute
monarchy causes less violence is
universally true like a physical
statement or a mathematic formula and so
we should support absolute monarchy
Forever This is a laughable error in
attribution Steven Pinker who relies
heavily on these sorts of arguments in
his better angels of our nature why
violence has declined falls into this
trap historian Gregory hon notes that
while Pinker is correct to quote
underline the vertiginous drop in
violence since the end of the Middle
Ages he's also prone to Wild
exaggeration hyperbole junk statistics
and reference to fiction as if it were
fact and that he has exaggerated of
often outrageously the contrast between
then and now and take a look at this
particularly damning critique in the
introduction to a special issue of
history and Theory looking at pinker's
work the overall verdict is that
pinker's thesis for all the stimulus it
may have given to discussions around
violence is seriously if not fatally
flawed the problems that come up time
and time again are the failure to
genuinely engage with his hisorical
methodologies the unquestioning use of
jubia sources the tendency to exaggerate
the violence of the past in order to
contrast it with the supposed
peacefulness of the modern era the
creation of a number of Straw Men which
Pinker then goes on to debunk and its
extraordinarily Western Centric not to
say wigg is view of the
world and so they point to a broader
problem any attempt to make sense of
History requires understanding multiple
disciplines has unavoidable ideological
biases simplifies things out to the
extreme and quickly gets very very
complicated you just have so many
variables in
play but doesn't mean we should just
give up to discern a drop in violence
and to roughly Identify some causes to
know what encourages scientific
discoveries to discern the conditions
that have led to increases in democracy
y to know what protects against
totalitarianism to be able to understand
however imperfectly many other questions
like these is pretty good progress
enough but history is obviously not a
story of easy to understand simple
progress we try things get things wrong
give power to the wrong people go down
wrong turnings we're prone to accidents
and the misuse of ideas we forget or
lose things new problems develop
freedoms for some lead to catastrophes
for others or for ourselves in the
future this is why Hegel said that the
owl of manura flies at dusk only in
retrospect as we try and make some sense
in 1854 The Physician Jon Snow mapped
the houses hit by a Cera outbreak in
London he discovered that the cas is
centered around one water pump Snow's
Discovery was a huge breakthrough in the
prevention of communicable diseases
proving that chera was not Airborne as
people thought but was caught from
contaminated water it led to an
unprecedented moved towards a focus on
sanitation sewage Works clean water and
toilets and in doing so saved countless
lives snow was looking at the causes of
something in the past to make
conclusions about how to prevent it in
the future it was this tradition that
Alexander Fleming was working into and
one that led to a vast range of advances in
in
health history is in some ways a
scientific discipline it's different to
say physics but it's still the study of
objects Diaries letters newspapers memos
images and so on to try and create an
accurate picture of the past it can then
be close to object if and it can still
be an attempt to try and find
generalizable patterns from a set of
observations it's much more open open of
course to interpretation than many other
disciplines to find the causes of
poverty the causes of affluence the
causes of Happiness there's a lot of subjective
subjective
interpretation and it's much more
difficult to apply because we're not
germs or rocks we respond as humans but
historians have avoided making strong
claims about the use of history for
things like policy for politics for
thinking about the future and I think
that's a mistake we should still use
history to try and understand the likely
outcomes of scenarios and conditions and
to be able to try and predict what works
and what doesn't by looking at the past
and applying it to the present with a
mind to the
Future in the aftermath of the Holocaust
many argued it was grotesque to talk
about progress about hago about the
cunning of reason the horrors weren't to
be made sense of the unpredictable evil
of it disproved any inevitable progress
it disproved an intered benevolent God
disproved the natural goodness of
mankind disproved a lot of things it
left a hole in our human
nature but if hego was in in any way
right about what progress means the idea
of the cunning of reason is not that the
Holocaust was some cunning way of
enticing and making progress but a
horrific veering off from reason that
demands instead a reasonable response
how might we avoid something like it happening
happening
again and since then there's been a lot
of good research on why genocides happen
I've explored some of it in this video
and it's research that helps us to see
the causes of genocide so that we can
try to institutionalize and protect or
culturalized or educate so that we can
avoid in the future to try and create
inoculations against genocide in the
same way we avoid chera
say as our ability to influence the
world around us as a species grows as we
become more advanced as we grow our body
of knowledge the trip wires that we lay
become all the more threatening the
stakes are higher as we become more
powerful we become more dangerous to one
another with AI the anthropos nuclear
weapons the large levers of state power
of big Capital we live in a crucial
moment and we must find ways to protect
against our worst impulses and
incentivize our best or we could quite
easily trip up and wipe ourselves out I
think the threats facing us are not
hyperbole if you look at history they're very
very
real but if we look to how people in the
past have capitalized on the possibility
for Liberty we have to I think be
cautiously but actively optimistic and I
think when we look at the dark side and
the pro press in history the word that
comes to mind is bitter [Music]
[Music]
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Transkriptlerin büyük çoğunluğu 5 saniyeden kısa sürede hazır
Chrome Uzantımızı Yükle
YouTube'dan ayrılmadan transkriptlere anında eriş. Chrome uzantımızı yükle ve izleme sayfasında tek tıkla herhangi bir videonun transkriptine ulaş.
