2. Rick Roderick - How a Texan Philosopher's 90's Video Tapes Lit My Path to Enlightenment
The Power of Bringing Philosophy to the Masses
In my first substack post, I said that I am mostly going to be doing book reviews. In saying “mostly book reviews”, the emphasis should be on mostly, because this second post is about a philosopher whose written work I have not yet read. But I have watched his publicly available lectures from the early 90s, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. The reason I enjoyed them also offers an insight into my background and being my second post, I thought it would be good to pick a topic to write about that gives me an opportunity to introduce myself a bit too.
But first let me introduce Rick Roderick.
To start this introduction, I want to tell a short, funny story. On a humid evening in Hong Kong a few years ago, I was drinking at a bar and met a man there who was very excited to overhear me talking with someone about philosophy. “Wow! I love philosophy too!” I was really pleased to hear this, because I am always happy to talk with a new person about philosophy. “Guess who my favourite philosopher is?” he asked me, with a big, excited smile. I replied, saying that there are so many philosophers, that it is such a matter of personal taste that it is impossible to guess, given that I had only just met the man. He was absolutely busting to tell me who his favourite philosopher is, “who is it then?” I asked. “Joe Rogan!” My face contorted instantly, cringing. Yes of course, Joe Rogan can be good entertainment and sometimes yes, the conversations go beyond surface level banter, but come on…
I mention this story because had I known about Rick Roderick back when I was at that bar, I would have made sure the Rogan fan was made aware of his work. Rick Roderick is similarly accessible and entertaining, but much, much more insightful.
Rick Roderick is an American philosopher I stumbled across whilst trying to find content online to explain a philosophical concept that I was struggling with. He is the perfect person for this because making complex philosophical concepts comprehensible to a broad audience is his talent and what he is known for. He was born in 1949, and speaks with a Southern drawl, having gotten his PhD from University of Texas. He taught philosophy at Duke University, where he won an award for being one of the most engaging lecturers, but also eventually got kicked out on account of his unorthodox style and points of view (allegedly). He passed away in 2002.
Rick has three publicly available lecture series’ that were sold on mail order video tape back in the day. It isn’t lost on me how amazing having these tapes would have been in a world pre-internet. What I like about Rick is that you get the feeling that he really understands the power of philosophy to help people orientate themselves, he isn’t into super abstract rubbish that has no bearing on the lived experience. All the stuff he talks about, is about being human. And he thinks that you ought to know where we are at when it comes to philosophy, to live life properly, in the same way that you should know about history, science, etc. That resonated with me. And the reason he has made it his passion to explain complex things simply, is that he thinks every person should have access to this information. Not just the privileged and well read. After he was kicked out from Duke, he went west, to teach mostly unemployed, down on their luck people. There is a lot to like and respect about Rick Roderick.
General topics covered in his lectures are existentialism, postmodernism, philosophy of culture and philosophy of technology. But perhaps the most interesting lectures, are from the first series he did, titled Philosophy and Human Values. This series offers a general introduction to philosophy, with a focus on how the field offers insights to better understand the human condition, here are the lecture titles to give you an idea of what he covers:
101 Socrates and the Life of Inquiry
102 Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics
103 Kant and the Path to Enlightenment
104 Mill on Liberty
105 Hegel and Modern Life
106 Nietzsche: Knowledge and Belief
107 Kierkegaard and the Contemporary Spirit
108 Philosophy and Post-Modern Culture
Presented entertainingly with his funny Southern drawl, the lectures cover a lot of ground, but don’t feel heavy or hard to follow. Rick does an amazing job conveying what the philosophers were trying to say and why they thought what they thought. Even when he doesn’t necessarily like or agree with what they say, regardless of that, you can tell he wants to make sure you understand properly what they said. This is a great marker of integrity, exactly what you want in a philosophy teacher. Someone who is well read in many ideas, even in ideas they don’t like, and wants you to be able to understand them properly yourself, so that you can make up your mind. For anyone who is interested in philosophy, I highly recommend giving this lecture series a go. Even if you are well versed in philosophy already, his presentation is entertaining and will provoke thought. The works reviewed are classics and offer more insight into the human condition each time they are reconsidered.
But why did I find Rick Roderick so personally interesting?
I have been interested in philosophy since my early teenage years. I think one of the main reasons for this interest is that I was raised Catholic. I don’t consider myself Catholic anymore, but the impact of being raised Catholic is that you are exposed to metaphysics from the day you’re born, and you are conditioned to consider metaphysical questions that I suspect children raised irreligious are not necessarily exposed to or encouraged to take seriously. Questions like, what is the meaning of life, what is a person/self, what are your behavioural obligations to others, what is right/wrong, what is the meaning of it all, what is there outside the self?
Due to this upbringing, I used to interpret philosophical works primarily through the lens of Catholic fundamental beliefs/priors. This was first consciously so, but later on, subconsciously so. As I grow older I am more aware of the role my Catholic upbringing has had in structuring my identity and sense of purpose in life – both positively and negatively. I once thought that by not attending church anymore and abandoning many of the rituals and views ascribed to the Catholic faith, that I had moved on from that phase of my life. But I now see that this upbringing has had far more long-lasting impacts than I first expected. I anticipate exploring this theme further in future posts, but for now, I'll share an example to clarify my point succinctly.
A core tenant of the Catholic faith is the requirement to help others in need, though catholics are like all other humans and about as nice as anyone, many will have a very strong social justice bent. Catholics are generally speaking, easily motivated by concern for the poor, disabled, hungry, sick, etc. As a child I was taught that helping those in need is necessary because it is the right thing to do, and the purpose of life is to do the right thing. And of course, I was taught that there is a nice incentive offered by a loving God who will grant you access to Heaven on the condition that you do enough right things and not too many wrong things.
As a child, I was deeply motivated by social justice issues. If you asked me why I had this motivation, I would have given an answer referencing God. When I lost my faith in my late teenage years, I still retained this motivation, but if you had asked me why I cared about social justice issues, I would have said it was “just something I care about”. Only recently, having started probing my motivations more deeply, I’ve come to realise that though I tell myself I have moved on from Catholicism, the truth is that I still retain the metaphysical belief/prior that a core sense of my purpose in life is to do the right thing, and that it is right to help those in need. I don’t really have any other non-Catholic metaphysical fundamental reasons for which I could say I am honestly basing this motivation. Likewise, I don’t actually think that social justice is “just something I care about”. I care if my footy team wins on the weekend, but that isn’t even nearly the same thing as caring about whether the poor or needy have a chance in my society to better themselves or get the help they need from our community.
So what does this have to do with Rick Roderick?
Well, Rick Roderick gave me a new lens, through which I could understand enlightenment and post-enlightenment philosophy properly for the first time in my life. In past readings, I have found it easy to follow the work of early virtue ethicists, such as Aristotle for example. With careful reading, I could likewise follow the work of enlightenment philosophers such as Kant, who rationalised Christian moral teachings. But I couldn’t at all follow the work of some other philosophers, particularly moving into the 19th century, who had abandoned the concept of God. For example, I could not understand at all, Nietzsche’s thesis that “God is dead”. I really did try, but his writings came across as largely unintelligible. I was trying to bridge too far a gap. These works couldn’t reconcile with my metaphysical beliefs/priors, instilled in me from such an early age. I quickly concluded that these philosophers had simply gone down a silly and non-sensical path of philosophical enquiry. I couldn’t understand how any morality could be possible without a God figure, to make objective assessment. Without God, surely anything must be allowed – but this seemed like a silly proposition, both practically and more deeply.
But Rick Roderick, in his first lecture series, took me on a journey. He explains how the classical virtue ethicists provided the metaphysical framework for Christianity to be built upon. How the enlightenment philosophers attempted to reconcile free thought with Christianity. But also how in some ways they failed and consequently the enlightenment led many to abandon Christianity outright. Rick Roderick doesn’t have much sympathy for Christianity, but he offers a fair and logical historical account of its reduced influence in philosophy and in turn, society at large. By explaining how one thing leads to another clearly from first principles, watching the lecture series, I felt like I experienced the enlightenment myself, personally. Deeply held pre-enlightenment era beliefs/priors I inherited from my own upbringing were challenged properly for the first time.
Of course, post-enlightenment philosophy, where every person must play God on their own, has its own metaphysical conundrums. Rick Roderick doesn’t skirt around these, in fact he dedicates his second lecture series and third lecture series to exploring these conundrums in detail. Curiously, he is highly skeptical of our post-enlightenment society’s ability to address social justice issues that traditionally motivated Christians:
“It’s not utopian to demand that in a world with this kind of technology, that as a moral demand, a society feed, clothe and house its people. A society that doesn’t do it, with the kind of technology and the wealth we have, is beneath contempt and makes a mockery of all the previous history of civilisation.”
- Rick Roderick
I share this sentiment and in going through my own enlightenment and ensuring that my core beliefs are rational, I do fear that I may lose my motivation to do things that I believe are good. Contemporary philosophy often makes people feel small and ineffectual and modern, irreligious society often feels apathetic, whereas Christianity makes you feel like even the smallest individual actions take on cosmic significance. That being said, part of what makes Rick Roderick so engaging to listen to is that despite the fact that much of the post-enlightenment philosophy he explains can be soul crushing, his passion for the advancement of humanity is so clear, in the fuzzy video tapes. This gives me hope that a sound understanding of philosophy should be no barrier toward finding motivation to address social justice issues and lead a moral life.
Rick Roderick has helped me understand the position of those raised irreligious properly, a position held by an increasingly high number of people from the enlightenment onwards. Its funny to think that my parents, grandparents and many, many generations of great grandparents stuck with the Catholic Church over the past few centuries, whilst the rest of the world adopted new philosophical projects. I’m proud to be making the leap myself in the 21st century. It is not an exaggeration to say that in watching digitised copies of Rick Roderick’s 90’s video tapes, the enlightenment finally caught up with my biological lineage, hundreds of years after it first began. My mind is now home to some of the metaphysical beliefs/priors of the irreligious, rooted in post-enlightenment, contemporary and modern philosophy. That’s the power of bringing philosophy to the masses, thank you to a truely great philosopher and teacher, Rick Roderick!
John.
P.S. One more link to Rick Roderick’s work.