Course Structure
The course consists of five high quality recorded sessions with Jules Evans, with exercises to deepen your experience of the course material. Each session has a high quality workbook alongside with a digest of the key thinkers and ideas and links to extra reading if required.
Click on each session below to find out more about it.
Schedule
Session 1 – Identity Politics and Authenticity
We begin by looking at the genesis of our search for the real me and a collective We. We’ll explore the thought of St Paul, Augustine and the Christian search for the true self. We’ll see how this evolved in Romanticism, starting with Rousseau. From there, we’ll look to the civil rights movements and modern identity politics.
Session 2 – Rights, Free Speech & Cancel Culture
In our second session we’ll look at Liberalism versus tradition, including Tom Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft and Edmund Burke. We’ll examine the thought of John Stuart Mill and the arguments for and against free speech. And we’ll ask: is cancel culture about accountability or a vindictive search for scapegoats?
Session 3 – The Religion of Wellness
This session we’ll look at the concept of Eudaimonia in ancient Greek philosophy, and how it helped to inspire the modern politics of well-being. We’ll track the rise of therapy culture, and the triumph of ‘wellness’. Can we develop a post-GDP society dedicated to well-being rather than just material progress?
Session 4 – Truth, Myth & Conspirituality
Why are conspiracy theories so enticing right now? Can we find a balance between our need for myths and the capacity for critical thinking? Here we’ll see how the enlightenment challenged superstition in the name of rationality, and how the Romantic counter-enlightenment criticized the supremacy of rationality. We’ll link this to Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and the modern search for myths, and ultimately explore the concepts of re-enchantment and conspirituality.
Session 5 – Nature, Existential Risk and Transhumanism
In our final session, we’ll look at whether we should try and fix the Earth, or strive to become a multiplanetary species? Should we harmonize with nature or master it with technology? In this final session, we’ll look at how Romanticism made a cult of nature. We’ll study Malthus, Darwin and the rise of ecological thinking and track this directly to current conversations around existential risk and modern techno-utopianism.