Professor David Peimer
The End of Enlightenment and Rationality?

Professor David Peimer - The End of Enlightenment and Rationality

- So just to say hi to everybody everywhere from a freezing cold Liverpool, grey and icy. And hope everybody’s safe and warm. Okay, so I’m going to dive into, this is part two as requested, just to extend some of ideas about the enlightenment and just to encapsulate a couples, and to look at some of the questions in a more, bit of a more in-depth way. Was the enlightenment a mirage or not? Is it the end of the past based on the 75 years since the end of the war and so on? I know this is not strictly chronological in terms of when historians regard the end of the enlightenment is, but to take a leap over a century orbit into our times now and trying to understand, because obviously the enlightenment was so utterly foundational to modern Western democracies and societies that we can look at it now, not only with the benefit of hindsight, but also to see, you know, where do we stand in relation to it today? Was it a mirage? Was it a failure? Was it naive? Has it given us a huge amount? Are there things that we can salvage or still use today? Things worth fighting for or not? All these questions that profoundly important, I think arise in our pretty disturbing times today. And I’m going to look at three basic threads today. And the first is that question, what’s the enlightenment of mirage? Secondly, and should we throw the baby out of the bathwater, basically? Secondly, world, even if it was a mirage or partly, what has it left us with today as a legacy that is worth holding on to, that is worth fighting for in whatever way, constitutionally, in a civil society, in many other ways. What is worth, you know, cherishing about it?

And then thirdly, I’m going to look a little bit at towards later in today’s talk relating Spinoza and questions around Jewish concerns, because I think that his ideas from hundreds of years ago still speak profoundly to the debates going on in amongst many Jewish persons around the world, not only around assimilation or not to assimilate, et cetera. Questions of belonging and some of the deeper questions that Spinoza raises. So my first point is that I do think the enlightenment obviously gave us a huge amount. And of course you reminded of the Great Monty Python’s scene. You’re in the Life of Brian. Well, what have the Romans ever given us? Aqueduct. All right, aqueducts, what else? Medicine. All right, medicine. What else? Roads. Safety. No crime. All right, besides aqueducts, roads, safety, no crime. What else have the Romans ever given us? Laws, okay. And so, you all know the great scene, but they never gave us freedom, okay? Anyway, that scene for me, in a way encapsulates some of this because was the enlightenment given us today. And I want to propose that partly it was a mirage, and partly it was naive, possibly very naive, but it has left West with an enormous amount. And it would be absurd, in my opinion, to throw the baby out with a bath water and say it’s all a failure. And that the enlightenment was a mere blip in history. I think that it gave rise through the ideas and what it did lead to change to very profoundly important institutions of rights, of human rights, of individualism, of democracy, separation of powers in a democratic state.

Not only the the coffee houses and the salons, but universities, and how it catapulted reading and books, literacy, education, medicine, science, et cetera. All through celebrating the one main idea, reason versus dogmatic religious beliefs. Reason versus traditional power, authority, I.e the divine right of kings, and the ruling aristocratic elite, the rise of the middle class, capitalist class, et cetera. And the rise and the emancipation of certain other human rights. I think these are profound. And I don’t think it’s… I think it would be equally naive to throw that baby out with that bath water. And at the same time, we have to be look at the balance sheet and say, well, there is the other side, which is a huge debit, which is that there were, you know, a lot of naivety and many things that were missed by the enlightenment thinkers. And to grapple with some of those today is part of my task. And then to speculate a way forward, looking at the Jewish situation. I think that perhaps a better metaphor for me was that the enlightenment contained within itself the seeds of its own demise. For me, it was like a Titanic shipwreck. It contained within itself the seeds of its own shipwreck. That doesn’t mean that other ships cannot be built, it doesn’t mean that ideas in building the ship are all lost, but it means a whole different approach to many things.

Or maybe if one prefers, if I can be indulgent, the metaphor, I think the enlightenment missed some serious parts of that boat, missed the boat in a very big way, but not completely. Okay. So we are faced with now, we are 75 years since the second World War. That’s quite a long time in modern history in a way, if we think it was what, 60 years, 65 years from the Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon. Now that’s extraordinary leap for humankind. In one lifetime, 65 years from the first few bits of wood to the first man on the moon. To give one and telephone, and so many other things. One extraordinary leap that I think human civilization has made in the last century or so, together with utter the worst disasters in human history as well. So I don’t, we have to question what were the values that that war was fought for? What values are still worthwhile fighting for today, can be cherished, and what can be… what is being seriously eroded. Without being specific about politicians, but, you know, in various parts of Western democracies I think. And I want to also include, and I’m going to today look it to the eyes of some of the artists and playwrights, and writers, not only some of the history. You know, that was a time in a way, if we look back on it, good versus evil, democracy versus extreme fascism is there much of a less kind. But anyway, democracy versus fascism, values of certain principles, you know, right and wrong of humanity, of human rights, et cetera. The individual versus, you know, mass conformity, et cetera, et cetera. So we can take a legacy, if I may. And there are certain core values around which people signed up to that war to fight, to take it on, realising the massive threat obviously.

And those values in whatever shape or form, taking a step back in the bigger picture, have lasted over decades and decades, overall, in certain societies, obviously. But now I think it’s under serious threat of erosion. I really do. And it’s not only a question of, you know, as I said, a few politicians, or this or that here and there, but the values, the beliefs, which the enlightenment, which in a way echos a little bit of the ancient Greeks under threat of serious erosion, of shipwreck without the planning of what ship to build next. It goes to as a key idea, which is that the enlightenment, ironically, in the enlightenment reacting against the dogmatism of the church and the tradition and authority of the king and the nobles, et cetera. That the irony of replacing that dogmatism with a almost equal dogmatism in reason, and they’re putting up on a pedestal of reason, and everything must bow before this idea of reason. Just solve that and we can solve the problem of violence, of war, of hate, and of the darkest side of humanity. And in that is part of what I’m saying, lies the demise of the enlightenment itself. It has its own seeds of its own destruction, as so many movements do. Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, which will happen. Communism contains the seeds of its own destruction, which has happened. Feudalism and many other isms. So they always have the blessing and the curse. There’s always the opposite is contained. The seeds of the opposite are contained within, you know, whatever it is. It’s part of being human and societies, I think, or I would suggest. So the idea for me is that you replace a central unifying idea of God, of kings, of rule by aristocrats, et cetera. You replace that with another central unifying idea of reason.

Well, what’s the reaction that’s going to come against that? And that’s the premise of everything I’m going to say today. For me, everything, and this is where I love theatre, and literature and art, because the artists, I believe, and I’m obviously biassed here. Artists and theatre and others, they always show the seeds of the opposite, the contradictions, you know, I’m very hesitant to use the word dialectic, but anyway. The opposite or the contradictions, the paradoxes, the ironies within whatever is being set up. And that is so profoundly human, that is part of absolutely for me, such a core of the human condition. It’s interestingly, Sarah Kane, who for me is one of the really great, brilliant writers of the la British playwrights of the last 30, 40 years. And Pinter was the one to idolise her and went out of his way to become friendly, as did many others of the great British playwrights of the pre apprentice’s generation, went out to help her and support her, ‘cause she was viciously by the critics in London and elsewhere for her early plays. And Sarah Kane wrote a play, which was about a Civil War happening in Leeds. And basically some characters hold up in a hotel in Leeds, and the war was happening in the streets. And the soldiers come in and I, et cetera, et cetera, the story. And she said that she was watching on TV, the war in Bosnia, and thought, well, that’s all far away, can have nothing to do with me, what’s all out there. You know, here I am in Leeds in a hotel. And suddenly she speaks about this and wrote about it, the seeds of the destruction that she could instinctively or in intuit, perhaps in her home country, were there.

The seeds of the war, of Civil War, of civil breakdown. Not necessarily war on a violence scale, obviously like in Bosnia, but internal war, division, fraction, fragmentation. Nobody listens, you know, we’re educated debate and civilised discussion resort to violence of some kind. And the inability or the lack of interest even to listen. So the fault lines, she saw. The seeds of the destruction of the Civil War in England itself she saw, which she wrote then about in a couple of her plays. And she said she understood that Bosnia lived in the human heart in Leeds in England, and the play came out called “Blasted”, and the others. Mark Ravenhill wrote a play of his generation. This is the seventies, eighties into the nineties. A play called “Shopping and Fucking”, if I may use the word. And it’s been staged everywhere, same as Sarah Kane’s plays, similar generation. And it’s all about whether you shop or you have sex, it doesn’t matter, nothing matters anymore. You can have some sex fine, whether you pay for it or not. You can shop and buy something in Tesco, it doesn’t matter. Everything he saw is transactional. Everything is a business transaction. Human relations are a transaction between individuals, whether in family, in love, children, parent, wherever, and obviously a much larger society and in business. So these players, I’m just giving some examples. There are many others written all over the world, America elsewhere.

Mamet, I think touches on this and many others. So what has happened that the artists of today, the playwrights have this vision, and how far away is that from the vision of reason Trump’s all in the enlightenment. And I want to look at it not only through a couple of these writers, but what has happened to these values from the post Second World War that millions died for, that millions were tortured, murdered, annihilated, exterminated for, what were values, where are they today for us? And for me, this is one of the most profound questions that, again, I think artists and writers intuit often, not necessarily intellectually understand everything. And I guess I try to, you know, work with both. And it is about this idea for me that this is a human nature, being tribal, requires a central unifying idea. It may be God of this religion or that religion or something. It may be the nation, the fatherland, the state. It may be the king, the queen, it may be the family, whatever, money, ambition, whatever. Something that human beings feel that is greater than themselves that the ego can be attached to. And when there isn’t that central unifying idea that can pull at least most of the people in a society together, the fault lines emerge and the seeds of its own demise will come out. And I think we are in that state at the moment. You know, in Yates’ Great Perm, things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Okay, so just to recap if I may, and that’s what I’m, you know, going to focus on here. A little bit on the Hobbes Locke debate, because it feeds directly into it, where as we mentioned last week, Locke arguing that, and he’s using the word God paradoxically here. You know, that we have God-given rights for individual liberty, freedom, and they will be realised through or manifested through reason, but they are God-given and governments can only govern by consent.

So the interesting twisted Locke Gibbs to satisfy the religious extremist of his time, he argues that it’s a God-given right is human right, it’s a God-given right to have democracy, et cetera, governed by consent, life, liberty, property, and happiness. He’s the one who brings in the word happiness, which of course picked up in the American constitution. So this is the basis, as we said last week of liberalism and the social contract being made. He and others would not see history as merely a transfer of power from bunch to bunch. But history was seen as a progressive improvement of society through reason, rationality, progress, cycles. Hobbes, of course, on the other hand, the top left, Hobbes sees human nature at the core as selfish. And I don’t only mean, you know, gimme, gimme, gimme, I want the sweet, I want the candy from the candy store and the chocolate, mommy, daddy, whoever, but profoundly act in our self-interest because that is necessary for our survival. So it’s not merely a quick moral idea of Hobbes. It said, what is essential for human survival is to act in self-interest. What else? And that leads to the idea of Hobbes. Life is nasty, brutal, and short, which we all know that phrase, but it’s about the question of self-interest is essential, otherwise the individual will not survive. So talk about individual liberty, freedom, all the other things doesn’t happen until you have that.

And Hobbes rejected Aristotle who argued that human beings would find that central unifying idea in the city state, in becoming a citizen of the city state. So they had something greater than their own ego to aspire to, Aristotle’s fascinating idea. So it is the essential requirement, whether it’s a king, or philosopher king, or Plato, whoever, or group of senators or whoever led the city state that the individual became a citizen in that and would find his or her position in relation. And that also that Hobbes argued against Aristotle’s idea and said, no, before aspiring to be a citizen of a political order of a politically organised society around certain values, war is more fundamental to human nature. And the drive for war because of that need for self-interest in order to maintain one’s own survival, war and violence will therefore need to be replaced. The need for a political structure. So all of these ideas obviously coalesce around the foundation of modern democratic values and institution of modern liberal societies. And Cons Great phrased “The emancipation of consciousness from its immature state of ignorance,” quite profound, “immature state of ignorance. And in fact, so much of education is supposed to lead to that.” You know, that we have, that they will be an individual emancipation when we get rid of the immature state of ignorance. But I think that can’t, and the others ignored, delayed states of delayed adolescent rebellion of passion of the human heart, of the Hobbes and self-interest and many of these other qualities.

And that education alone ain’t going to achieve what he thought it might, you know, for Immanuel Kant. We all know that that many of the SS leaders of the Einstein’s Groupon were highly educated and purposely chosen by Heydrich. You know, were university educated, highly educated, who were the captains or the leaders or the officers rather, going out and, you know, leading these Einsteins Groupon, you know, in the most grotesque, horrific event in human history. And so many of them coming from an educational elite, we know this debate so well. But, so education alone is not enough. It requires a set of beliefs and values inside whatever is being taught. That is the key to me. One can learn biology, one can learn astrology, medicine, biochemistry, drama, whatever literature, whatever architecture. But what are the values inside the society, which are covert inside the more overt course students may study at school or university, wherever. Interestingly, Jonathan Israel for me, whose books are on the enlightenment are fantastic, contemporary, I’m sure everybody knows, you know, contemporary cultural thinker. And he argues that there were two main lines of thinking in the Enlightenment. The Decar Locke line, which was to transform traditional systems of power and faith. So the idea of reforming was Locke’s. And that’s why I think Locke argued that these rights are God-given. So he was including a space for religion. Whereas Spinoza, who I’m going to come into more a little bit later, and what’s fascinating was Spinoza to me went much further, advocating full on democracy, full on individual liberty, freedom of expression, and eradication of all religious authority in terms of its alignment with its previous role for his society and his times. And its alignment with state authority and forms of violent coercion. Just as an interesting aside, I mean, what’s fascinating is that the British, interestingly, the British establishment at the time tended to ignore a lot of these ideas, because of course they had an economy and a society structured or often based on colonisation and the plantation economy.

In Germany, interesting that Gerta and Schiller and Herder, you know, took some of these ideas, but they turned it unwittingly I think, towards a furthering of a German nationalism. They argued that every folk had its own identity, which was particular, and this could be expressed through language, and culture, and music, and literature and so on. So the push towards the identification of a central idea with a fork, knowing the language and the culture and many other things, et cetera, of was pushed by them. Of course, they never wanted to take the German nationalist idea as to the mad and horrific extreme that it went to. But nevertheless, we can see the seeds again, of its own demise. None of this is intentional by any of these guys, these people. The seeds of its demise are planted because these ideas reach deep into the emerging middle classes of Germany where the nationalistic trope is starts to be expressed, starts to emerge in a way, not only out of the depression experience, but the others. And I don’t want to go into all that at the moment. What’s interesting is that the ancient Greeks, and we see this in ancient Greek theatre and Hermes, and the myths. For them, their central unifying idea was that it’s an unpredictable universe we live in and we are faced with choice and destiny almost every step of our life. And there are unpredictable gods in many of them who are utterly capricious, utterly immoral, couldn’t give a damn.

Some of them are self interested, some of them are forgiving, some of them are kind, some of them are witty, some of them get drunk. Even some of them are jealous as hell. They’re full of human attributes, which I think makes them so contemporary for us today, to then be replaced by this monotheistic, transcendental one God idea is quite a big step, you know, in the Judeo Christian tradition. But every step of the way, and you see this in all the literature of the theatre and the Hermes and the others, of choice and fate, choice and destiny. That was the fundamental obsession of the ancient Greeks. And I think to a degree that’s been lost, you know, it’s the enlightenment putting reason at the top of the tree. Well, the Greeks didn’t, and then religion, putting faith in God at the top, completely changing it. So Christianity and partly the Judeo-Christian tradition insisted, but in particular Christianity, that humans are not good enough on their own, only through God can they be good enough people. A radically different idea to the ancient Greek idea of all the gods running around. And I think often the core for me, of the Christian belief is not only the resurrection, but the idea of the original sin. It’s such a profoundly important idea for me because it presupposes that human nature is fundamentally flawed, fundamentally pernicious, fundamentally capable of evil and bad. And that humans only through, sorry, sorry, that were originally good and then through Adam and Eve, then the gardeners, you know, Eden, da-da-da, all that the myth, et cetera. And the disobedience not by obeying God, the innocence and the purity of humanity is lost. And humans are forever destined to live in the purgatory of the original sin and the fall, and forever needing penance and forgiveness. Now that’s a huge shift in a central unifying idea of a God or of any idea compared to the ancient Greeks or anywhere.

And this is what these guys were fighting against, Spinoza, Locke, all the others, Voltaire, you know, and saying no reason, but they made reason their God, of course. But I think and can’t put it in relation to this idea of the original sin. His response was in his phrase, “Man’s release from his self incurred tutelage. Man needed a release from the self incurred tutelage, which is original sin.” We’re all set up to fail. ‘Cause we were once pure, we were once innocent, we were once, you know, wonderful human beings in a wonderful garden of Eden. Wherever we disobey God, we ate one little apple, whatever, of the myth, and we forever cursed. And we forever had planned catch up to try and be better. That’s completely different to the ancient Greek belief. I’m not even going anywhere near ancient China, India, parts of Africa elsewhere and so on. You know, we’re looking obviously just in this context at the moment. So for Kant, his phrase was “The need to cleanse the European mind of religious superstition.” And let reason in my phrase, let reason take centre stage, close the curtain on religion, superstition. And the central idea under the spotlight on the stage would now be reason. And off stage, script finished, act one, scene five, finished, you know, off with the unenlightened from before. And Jonathan Israel puts it well where he says that the period… that the enlightenment is a period when Europe shifted from a culture based largely on a shared core of the idea of faith, tradition, and authority, to one in which everything was open for question in the light of reason.

We get that shift. Because what I want to suggest is that in that is the seed of its own demise, ignore religion, ignore culture, ignore faith, ignore tradition at one’s peril. One cannot ignore that because that’s what’s going to come back, is going to be the shadow which will come back to challenge and possibly overwhelm. You know, that when reason takes centre stage, always being of a theatrical bent, always the seeds of conflict are always found in the protagonist. Just going back to Spinoza briefly. For Spinoza, freedom of worship is a peripheral issue. And that’s brilliant for me. This is this guy thinking in the late 1600s, you know, that freedom of worship is peripheral. He’s not so interested in just the ideas of tolerance and other things and so on. His starting point, and this relates to the church of what I was saying about original sin, his starting point is not the salvation of the soul, but the promotion of individual liberty. And that’s a big shift in a more determined radical shift that Spinoza pushes the enlightenment in that direction. And then of course, we get the anarchy after 1789, the French Revolution. What happens? What’s an example? You know, I think the French Revolution is a model for pretty much most revolutions in human history. And certainly one we know a hell of a lot about. So I like to use it often as a reference. So after the reign of terror and what’s happening there, and chaos and disorder comes the rise of the Robespierre. And Jonathan is also alludes to this. And who is Robespierre? Robespierre is the character who encapsulates the strong man, the strong leader who will through reason and rationality, but through, you know, dictatorship reestablish order. Because if you have too much chaos and anarchy coming after the French Revolution of 1789, people will start to fear change and progress. Start to feel where are they in life?

Where’s their job? Where’s their family, the kids, the grandkids? What’s the future? Things are unstable, unsure, the interregnum, you know, the pastor’s gone, but the the future is not yet formed. The previous players exited the stage. The next player has not yet been cost what will happen on stage. And that’s precisely the age of erosion for me. It’s precisely the age where the central unifying idea has gone, because the previous one has been kicked out and the new one has to come centre stage, but it hasn’t yet been formed. Yes, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, life, liberty, equality, fraternity, et cetera. The French Revolution, you know, all the ideals of it, yes. But in that period of the interregnum is chaos and achy bloodshed, absolute fear at terror is the right word. So longing with that. So then of course, the seeds of its own demise are inside the revolution, as always. You know, in a phrase of Heiner Muller, very contemporary German playwright, remarkable playwright, wrote a play called 'Hamlet Machine" and others. The revolution devours its children, and in that haemanthus the seeds of everything, you know, are always inside what is set up. So, when this happens, there’s chaos and anarchy, there’s a longing for the safety. The safe anchor get that ship anchored. Please let me be safe, let me be secure. I can go to work, I can find a job, I can get my family, my kids, some educa… whatever. All the rest of it organised.

And along with that comes the resurrection of some of the ancient traditions and the myths and symbols of faith, of religion of some kind, of dictatorship of some kind, of order-order and security over the perceived chaos that freedom may generate. Call it irony, call it the seeds of its own demise, but the French revolution triggered inside it the conservative reaction against the enlightenment, which the enlightenment thinkers were not aware of. And so we come to a world, I’m going to jump now to our, you know, part of early part of the 20th century. In part of my questioning is the enlightenment of mirage, was it? We have Kafka. And what’s Kafka about, for me, again, I’m looking at through some of the writers, not just historians or theorists. Although, you know, I’m sure many people, and we all know that some of those well. But for me, what Kafka, what’s remarkably brilliant. Kafka understands that take the enlightenment to an extreme, reason is so privileged. Well, along with that comes technology, science, et cetera. What happens to human passion, human emotion, feeling, instinct, all the other things that come out of it, love, hate, fear, compassion, jealousy, whatever. If reason is a privilege, you would have massive scientific and technological advance, incredible. There’s no question. I just mentioned medicine, science, many, many other areas. Obviously the screen we are looking at right now, everything. But together with that comes what some philosophers in the early part of the 20th century called the reduced man, which in the jargon of today, the automaton, the reduced man, less of an individual, the irony, supposed to all be about individual, but technology, no, it can lead to a thousand people typing on the same typewriter, you know, in some big offers. The reduced man, a unit of human resource in today’s language.

A not only a unit of labour, but a unit of human resource, even worse. If you really think about what that means, if we really think, I think. And the Kafka idea, you know, not only of the clocking in clock out, the bureaucracy, the paperwork, et cetera, but what has become of the individual who was so prized and brought us into the open to come to the previous, through Spinoza and many of the other enlightenment thinkers, individual is a mere functionary, is a mere unit of human resource. A mere unit of much larger things may work for a corporation which has got thousands and thousands of employees everywhere, but doesn’t know another soul. May work for a government, which has got huge numbers of people everywhere. The anonymity that came comes with Kafka’s understanding, the anonymity of the individuals. And that for me, it puts a fire inside the idea of individuality. You know, and I’m an individual and I have rights and etc. The anonymity which is to me what Kafka instinctively or consciously perceives so well. I watched the other day again, Orson Welles’s, “The Trials”, brilliant. You know, it’s so contemporary, it’s extraordinary. In the images that he uses, you know, he captures this idea. And the individual is in headless chicken running around everywhere, you know, not knowing to turn left or right, not name where to belong, what to do. No tribe to belong to accept a faceless tribe of anonymity. That’s a free card for individuals.

They will then go for anywhere, or many places which offer them a central unifying idea which they can ascribe to bigger than their own ego. Stephen Hawking interestingly speaks about the need to colonise the planets. For him this planet is nearly finished, whether it’s nuclear war or climate change, whatever, et cetera. But you know, for him it’s going to be pretty much toast in the next 100 or 200 years. So get out there and get humans to other planets. But hawking suggests it because, not only of AI, but because understanding these ideas that I’m trying to grapple with right now, he sees it. And it ironically leads into the ancient biblical and ancient Greek myth of, you know, the death of one idea and the resurrection, or the regeneration of a society through a new idea. And as hawking, not him, but others have alluded to, you know, the dinosaurs lasted, you know, hundreds of millions of years, far more than human beings. The dinosaur was really successful species. And it only took them an asteroid to whack them off the picture. Off stage later come the humans, but far less time than they’ve been on stage, than than the dinosaurs were. So the dinosaurs are pretty well adapted to surviving in some way. You know, how adapted are we? Not only in terms of nuclear war, but because of all these contradictions inside the magnificent human soul. Magnificent in its violence, magnificent, magnificent in its forgiveness and love. The movements of Dadaism and Surrealism, Freudian, Freud, obviously against it. Why? Because reason is only one part of the house, as we all know, the unconscious, the non-rational, the irrational, all the passions of life which rarely drive us.

Reason is maybe one or two bigger or smaller, more lit unlit room in the house of the human psyche. So Freud, for me is crucially important and fascinating to read Freud-Einstein letters where Einstein and Freud are trying to just decide, how can we help eradicate or limit violence in human nature in society? And Freud much more pessimistic than Einstein to a degree. We get surrealism, a celebration of the unconscious, a celebration of passion, of the non-rational, et cetera. We get James Joyce stream of conscious and so on and so on. We get finally, of course, we get one of the… for me one of the great players of all time. And Mr. Samuel Becketts, which I’m just going to bring up here in a second. Okay . Two tramps around a tree waiting for salvation, waiting for some central unifying idea to believe in, to attach themselves to which will save them. This goes way back to what the enlightenment thinkers were reacting against with reason that their salvation from their original sin, salvation from the church, salvation from religion, dogmatic authority kings. You know, so we have two guys, these are just ordinary people hanging around waiting to be rescued, waiting for somebody to save them. Who or what or an idea, anything, desperate. For me this captures so brilliantly, the human condition of the value of what has happened to the erosion of a core value that the Second World War was foughtful. The value of good and evil, right and wrong, human rights individual against fascism, democracy, et cetera. What do we end up with?

Looking for somewhere to belong, looking for some bigger idea for us that we can all that most of us or some of us can ascribe to. Again, to replace reason, to replace the aim of the church, other things and so on. Now for me, what Becca is saying is the big idea is we waiting for God do who ain’t ever going to pitch. So, you know, and then of course we have other ideas of what’s happened to the enlightenment. Darwin, 'cause Darwin serial of evolution, our belief profoundly challenges the enlightenment thinkers, because for them so long as reason was the engine human behaviour could be predictable and constant, and therefore human society could become a predictable reality. Darwin, of course, there’s no, it’s about adaptation to survive. You know, adaptation is the definition of the fittest of survival and it’s a kind of a war of another kind. Very different to the idea of the enlightenment thinkers. And then of course, you know, there’s an idea which many, many writers often speak about. And not only literature but others, just a human need for war. You know, 75 years since the most catastrophic war, the most catastrophic event of human history, the holocaust happens. It’s a long time, I think. Anyway, you know, there hasn’t been a major war. It’s quite remarkable I think in human history, actually. There hasn’t been a major, major huge war. Many wars and many of them everywhere and pretty big, and brutal, and terrifying, obviously. But a massive, you know.

So, you know, somewhere in civilization and discontents somewhere lies the seeds of that as well. I’m purposely trying to stimulate debate here and discussion with this idea of, you know, the demise rests in the great idea anyway, which doesn’t take away from the achievements of the great idea of reason and the enlightenment at all. But by being aware of what is was ignored, that’s the key for me. When we are aware of the what was ignored, then we can try to take it on and bring parts of it back of the enlightenment, fight for it. Interestingly, Michael Ignatieff, everyone knows the Canadian novelist/author. He had a wonderful phrase. You said that, material we thought you’re rights, material progress would enable moral progress. It’s a fascinating phrase. We thought that material progress would enable moral progress. We eat well, we drink well, we live well in the west, but we do not have good dreams. He’s aware the seed lies, the seed of its own demise lies. Materially in the west by and large people are not mostly, anyway, starving and everything, et cetera, et cetera. Basic food, basic medicine, basic housing, home, et cetera, electricity, water, whatever, the basics of life are, mostly I’m saying there. Material progress would enable moral progress. Now that’s an enlightenment way of thinking, but we do not have good dreams. As James Joyce wrote in “Ulysses” opening line, “History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.” So yes, we have the material progress. Why are we not satisfied? From a washing machine to the fridge, to the car, whatever. Why are we not satisfied? Good enough is good, okay? What is it in human beings that’s still not enough? Because it doesn’t answer that question. What is the central idea that the human, that the community or the largest society of the state whoever can belong to. And it’s not good enough that it’s only technology driven or science driven.

It may be superstition, it may be religions of some kind. It may be the fatherland, it may be the nation, it may be whatever, but the need to belong. And I think this goes way back to the ancient idea of the Greeks. It’s tribal. You know, how far are we from the caves and all the other places? The tribe, not only do we watch us in watching football in my- you know, but you know, there is a need to belong to something which is greater than the individual ego, the individual self. And the others trying to ignore what they call the particularities of culture and society is wrong, is naive, you know? It’s precisely those that need to be taken into account, because otherwise people will always turn to religion or some kind of belief, which is not reason based, which will provide an anchor for the wreck ship, which will provide solace and comfort in times of disturbing uncertainty. People need a sacred narrative. This goes back to theatre for me. People need a narrative they can say a sacred in their lives. This is the tribal connection, of course, you know, whatever it is. I mean, reason itself can become a sacred narrative from the enlightenment thinking. But human beings need to belong to some narratives that they regard as sacred anywhere, that they think life is worth living for and fighting for. Nietzsche wrote, “God is dead”, which we know that phrase only too well. But what’s often forgotten is that he also said after that, “God is dead, but his shadow still looms large.” That’s exactly what I’m trying to say, is that when we say we set up some new ideas centre stage to unify a community or group, well what’s the shadow? It’s always going to be there and it always come to challenge, protagonist, antagonist, human drama, conflict, et cetera, what’s going to come.

And that in the end, post-enlightenment, God is a metaphor for the desire for authority beyond ourselves, by which we can frame and interpret our very existence. God never died in my opinion, because the desire for some external authority never died. Whether that external authority was a god, a nation, a religion, some other belief, many beliefs of many kind, you know, money, whatever, never died. Because the need for an external authority to belong to, to give meaning, to give interpretation, you know, particularities of a culture didn’t die. I want to show this picture here from Picasso, “The Charnel House” which I’m sure many people know too well. So going together with the writers I’ve mentioned, Kafka and all the others comes, you know, these are the artists. This is post-enlightenment. This is the picture from the 20th century, from one of the great artists of all time, you know? This is the image, right? You know, I know it’s very old and everybody knows it too well. It’s a bit corny by now maybe to look at it or, or kitschy for me to look at it. But I think it’s important. I mean, look at this grotesqueness of the body and the feet and other, you know, the twisting, the grt… You can see it all here to the artist’s eyes. And a picture, which is, you know, still one of my favourite, and you can accuse me of being indulgent, forgive me. And one of my corny ones, okay? But, you know, Munch’s Scream. These guys, this is even before the 20th century begins. These guys are intuiting something together with the Kafka and all the others. This is the response artistically to the Enlightenment. What does it say about us today? Yeah, speaking, this is over a century, obviously. Speaking through the centuries, you know, what are these kind of images saying?

What are the Andy Warhol images? What are all the others? The post Andy Warhol, you know. All the wonderful artists we know and the writers, what are they saying to us? Wake up, you know, from the nightmare, because everything is slipping, it’s being lost, you know. And I think that that’s what’s coming from the Kafkas or the Casos, the Munch’s, the Becketts, whoever, you know. They instinctively see the seed and try to alert in their own through metaphor and art of some kind. To move on, you know, the technology of today, the brave new world to use the jargon. But what it has is where even if you’re trying to put science at the top of the tree, not any reason, but science as the central unifying force, it’s not enough either. Not only the obvious anti-vaxxers, conspiracy, nonsense, and so on. But it’s again, it’s about science will ignores the anonymity of the individual. Going back to the Kafka idea, of course you can have entertainers as leaders, because then anything goes, you know, if science is a central idea for try and make a group to belong to, it’s too abstract for the human psyche, I think. And in will step the entertainer immediately, you know, to strut and fret their hour upon the stage as to quote Mr. Shakespeare, “As entertainer masquerading as leader.” You know, it’s a joke. We’re back to ancient Rome. Just give them bread and circus, finished.

Who cares? You know? So I think that all of trying to pull together, and I know this may seem disparate, but I hope that I’m trying to pull together ironically, through the idea of what is the seed of the demise? How is it shown portrayed? How is it shared with us as theatre goes, as readers of literature, as look in museums of art and other things, and knowing some of the philosophy and the psychology, et cetera. How do we receive and respond to that today? What is this telling us in a way? If we look at reason at the top of the tree, but we even have to unshackle that to find, you know, what happened to that? Therefore, what can we do to keep a hold on that? I want to… in a way gone with in the last little bit that I have here. You know, the little bit about the Jewish notion, which goes back to Spinoza that I was mentioning earlier. Just going to get his picture up again. And what’s interesting me with really with Spinoza in terms of the Jewish situation, and I think it does speak to the assimilationist debate, because for Spinoza much more radical than Locke and the others, you know, they tried to reform and keep a role for God and religion. As we know Spinoza was, you know, called the heretic by Rebaz, and basically wanted to excommunicate him in Amsterdam and so on. For him reason was for the unenlightened, people who needed consolation of faith. He didn’t believe in a transcendental God. He believed that God who equals nature to quote him. And along with this idea comes one of the big ideas last year that I want to mention in relation to the Jewish situation, is the idea of universalism.

That the enlightenment idea of Spinoza and others pushed the universalism or the universality of the individual right of reason, of liberty, individual liberty, et cetera. Ignoring again, culture, nation, mythology, spirits, spirituality, passion of the human heart, the dark side, all of that. But, and to a similar… but universalism means assimilation. Because if I’m Jewish and living in South Africa or England or wherever, if I believe in universal humanity, I’ve got to put that first. Cannot put Jewishness first, cannot run parallel, or it’s a Catch-22. That I’m going to constantly be playing with, you know, moving between the two of universalist liberal society belief, which is one of the foundations of a liberal democracy. It’s universal, human rights, yeah, et cetera, et cetera. And universalism. But then I’ve got to put religion and many other things and culture, I’ve got to put that second in a way. And Spinoza, I think, and Mendelson, you know, grappled with us. You know, it goes back to the French thing of Napoleon emancipation the Jews, but you’ll be French first, Jewish second. You know, it’s an old debate we all know only too well. But it’s captured, I think in Spinoza’s very own, in his own life and in his ideas because he would’ve gone, I think really for the idea of universality of reason and human right, individual liberty, et cetera. But then the culture, the history, the particularities of individuals in a community, in a group, and what they ascribe to belong to and their main central ideas, where’s that? So the demise of even Spinoza lies in his own idea.

The seeds of it are there, you know? Are we going to privilege later with Mendelson, the German language, a universalist approach to education, over the particularity of Jewish studies or Jewishness. So all of these questions come on, does one belong to some ancient tribal nation state? Does one belong to a modern European state? Does one et cetera or both? Are we caught inevitably in a theatrical way, you know, with feet in both? Theatre loves it. Is that reflecting life as we know it? Okay, I want to, you know, it was hoped that reason would displace authority and tradition, and that rationality would be independent of cultural and social particularities. But you cannot have an unprejudiced rationality, even itself. You cannot have an appeal to reason only. There has to be all these other things that come in. And I think finally, you know, if we look back at the, going back to the Second World War, the premise I started with the values that were fought and died for, the values that were so horrifically almost destroyed for a long time. And that’s…we’re so profound. Where are are those today? I think that today that some of those values are there. I don’t want to throw the baby out of the bath water. Those values underpinning it are there. But unless they take on some of the areas that the enlightenment thinkers were naive about, it’s a shipwreck again, it’s set up for another shipwreck. And that we’ve always got to be, and some of these ideas I’ve tried to allude to today, and that we’ve always got to be aware that in any new great idea, I always look for the demise, I always look for the seed of the opposite immediately.

And maybe it’s a theatre way of thinking, the protagonist, and I always look for the antagonist. So always going to look for the paradox or the conjuncture or the ironic opposite. And I think the enlightenment did not include that sufficiently. And my feeling, and just my own feeling is that we need to always be aware of the seeds of the opposite, of the destruction inside the big idea. And we’d know these now because history and life has taught us over the last century and a half two centuries, since the enlightenment so-called officially ended, story and say after the French Revolution, whatever. But I think that some of these things I’ve tried to allude to, which the artists, and the writers, and the painters, and the compose, they’ve tried to alert us too. And I think that’s where education and many other things in art can come in. I really believe that profoundly. So I want to thank everybody. And this has been quite a bit today, but thank you everybody and really appreciate sharing with you today.

• Another brilliant picture. Thanks David. And thanks Lauren as always.

• Okay, thank you. Do you want me to take some questions? I can’t hear you Wendy.

• [Host] Oh, Wendy you were on mute.

• Oh, sorry. Yes, if you’ve got the time, thank you.

• Yeah, with pleasure. With pleasure.

Q&A and Comments:

Okay. Let’s hear Arlene, feel better Wendy.

Okay. Esther, quite a few people saying feel better Wendy and I echo that completely.

Q: Esther, can we say that there might be a new enlightenment with a new web telescope?

A: Yeah, I think it’s a great idea. Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure there will be new ideas, as you say coming, and fascinatingly.

Q: Romaine, where’s the dialogue between reason and opposing forces outside of art and literature then and now?

A: It’s a great point. I think there art cultural thinkers, Jonathan Israel, there are many very contemporary cultural thinkers and philosophers who try to grapple with some of these ideas.

Q: David, but this ism, Judaism keeps on going. Do you wonder why?

A: Yes. Because I think we need a group to belong to. And I think that human beings need to belong. I think it’s an absolutely fundamental part of the human condition. And Judaism has its own very specific, obviously given the last 2000 years history, the Holocaust obviously, and the last 2000 years and probably before. And many other things, which I don’t want to go into now about Judaism, you know.

Q: Do I think it’s a chosen people?

A: Not so sure about that. But I think there are special things, you know, the importance of the rabbinical talmudic debating educational tradition in Judaism, the marginalised position of Judaism through, you know, the response of the church, Christian theology, et cetera. Many things that feed into it, I think.

Q: Maron, the name of the female playwright?

A: Sarah Kane, K-A-N-E.

Sandy, Spinoza didn’t have to deal with the dark internet. I think he had his own dark internet in his own QAnon version of his own times embodied in the darkness of the Catholic church and the Pope and certain rabbaz of his own time.

Monique, that was his dark web. Monique, what about responsibility. Responsibility towards others. Yeah, but they would say the responsibility is toward individual liberty and reason, reason must be used to solve everything. And responsibility, that if I value my freedom, I’ll value my neighbor’s freedom. Or rather, because that’s the reasonable approach or the reasoned approach.

Q: Marion, don’t you think that computer and smartphone have already observed many of our individual freedoms, the electronics of today?

A: Yeah, I think that, you know, in the way I’ve tried to allude to with the Kafka idea and the Holocaust is when you take science to such an extreme, the individual becomes an utter automaton. The individual becomes, you know, not the jargon of the cog, but the reduced man, the anonymity of the individual freaks them out. So they’re desperate to belong to some bigger idea, central unifying idea that I was speaking about earlier. And I think that way technology is going further, especially with AI coming more and more, it is happening. It’s Kafka taken to an extreme.

Q: What was the Greek concept of man basic nature?

A: The head one? Yeah, I think their basic idea was fate versus was destiny or fate versus choice. And you see it in every Greek play. Underneath everything is the value of theatrical and the dramatic. But the human conflict, you know, is it predestined, is it fate? Or is it, do we have choice? And the gods play on that all the time in the ancient Greek, you know, and that’s what makes Greek theatre so exciting and Greek society and culture I think so rich, the ancient Greek one. I think that was their concept of basic man, not original sin. The original sin means once purity, once innocent, and then comes the fall and then forever trying to play catch up, snakes and ladders. Always trying to go up the ladder, you know, get to the top, but you never get there to God, 'cause you’re going to fall down, you’re going to make a sin, come down, again snakes and ladders, confession, everything, you know. So there’s no chance, you know? That’s human nature, always playing catch up. It’s a very different kind of thing that I would like to look according to. Yuhrit. A great question Yuhrit, thank you.

Arlene, I think we have to take into account there is a strong, irrational, psychological component to people. Absolutely. Once the basic needs of food, shelter, and so on, yeah. Brotherhood, altruism and so on, yeah.

Okay, people who don’t have enough food or shelter. Absolutely. And very good point, Arlene, that’s why I kept saying this is in the western democracies, you know? The first world really that I’m talking about. I agree entirely. You don’t have enough food or shelter or medicine, you know, all the rest in Maslow’s, you know, hierarchy we all know, obviously that’s going to go out the window. I’m just going to look for food first. So I agree entirely. And I agree, that’s why I said don’t throwout the baby the bath water because the enlightenment led to so much of that which enabled, you know, in the end through reason, it enabled technological development for food, shelter, technological development, transportation, you know, et cetera, medicine.

Okay. Romaine, thank you. Freud enlightened. Yes. I mean the irony that he used rational thinking in his writing, but I think he completely understood it’s one room in the house of the psyche, you know? I think his image was the house, if I remember, I dunno if it’s the attic or the cellar or the dining room, but it’s one room in the house of the psyche. You know, the intellect. Michael, the psychoanalytic concept of splitting. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Many decline and object relation psychology. Brilliant. I love it. And splitting can be split between reason and emotion, yeah. And that’s part of what I mean, that it contains the seeds of it own demise. That the antagonist is already within the protagonist where reason and emotion cannot be held together. It’s an eternal conflict I think between the two. But instead of snakes and ladders of original sin, which pushes it in a pretty linear way. I prefer the ancient Greek idea of reason and emotion just perpetually in conflict on stage of human life. David, feel the western world, we end appear of the interregnum. Absolutely. As I said last week, I feel we are profoundly in the interregnum. And I think that these values fought for in the Second World War are profoundly under disturbing threat and under the possibility of a shipwreck. And I think it’s profound, the interregnum. Those values are almost gone, what we’re fought for, and what now?

Q: Okay hi, thank you. Contain the seed destruction does apply. Does this apply to Islamism, Zionism, Eurocentrism, Christianity and democracy exempt because they end and why?

A: That’s a fantastic question. That’ll be a fantastic topic for a whole talk or two. Thank you . Great idea.

Q: Bonnie, did Adam Smith unify some of the ideas of Locke and Hobbes?

A: Yes. Invisible hand of capitalism. Yeah. Yeah. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the bri… exactly. Which would require another whole talk to go into. Fascinating there Bonnie. Monty, the biggest con perpetuated in human conduct idea of equality, we’re not equal. What’s it in animal farm? We’re all equal, but some are more equal than others.

Okay. Yep. Emily, thank you for that. Your comment, Darwinism helped to get rid of religion. Yep. Monty, God isn’t dead, he’s just moved on. Maybe. Maybe God’s renting another space on the planet for a while, you know, comes and goes. Irene, thank you.

Dennis, God isn’t dead, he just doesn’t want to get involved. I love this idea. Ah, the satires on God is brilliant. Devora, thanks again.

Okay. Frida, thank you for your comments. But Hitler used the idea of belonging. Yes. That’s why I tried to say that it was taken to an extreme in the German nationalism in the further land was taken to horrific grotesque extreme. And under the Hitler period naturally. But the terrifying thing is how much reason is still used, you know, by the Nazis. You know, is so much reason into the Nuremberg laws, so much reason into the Nazi, you know, how this organised, the et cetera, et cetera. It’s the bringing, the terrifying use of rationality, you know, that’s why inside the Holocaust, that is part of the catastrophic protestants of it and linking it to the enlightenment. You know, it’s there, it’s part of it, because it is using reason.

Karen, but back in ancient room bread and circus, aye, Claudias. Yep. When in doubt bread and circus, when the splits and the faults and the seeds of the demise come. The ancient Roman empress did it. That’s for sure. Romania, thank you for your comment. Hazel, thank you. Recessions. Yeah. I mean, you know, the crash of 2008, but also the Great Depression, the gulags, not only the Holocaust, obviously, but all the, you know, we can see so many of these huge momentous events, as you say Hazel, shattering faith in enlightenment values. What I’m trying to do is tease out the specifics of what has been shattered and what can be, you know, taken from there.

Alison. Thanks. Thank you, Roberta. German, Jews hope that Spinoza would provide a common ground, desire to blend in but didn’t work. Yep. One of the huge tragic lessons is this whole question, which is why I think it’s so fragile today. The debate of the assimilationist debate, you know, amongst Jewish people, amongst us all. Of which… And that’s why I think Spinoza and Mendelson to a degree really capture the fundamental of this debate. Universalist versus the essentialist.

Q: Tom, can universality and identity politics coexist?

A: Great question. Be wonderful topic for a discussion Tom. I think when, yeah, when universalism, you know, takes centre stage and identity politics is a sort of side character, coming on stage a little bit peripheral, it’s a problem. And that’s exactly what I mean by the particularities of culture. When one ignores the particularities of culture, identity politics as you say, and only goes for universalism, we ignore identity politics at our peril. That’s part of what’s happening today. We’ve got to try and find that again, I keep going back to theatre, but, you know, and I’m indulging, but probably, but it is the metaphor for the human condition. You know, everything is, the conflict is built in, the antagonist is within the protagonist always. So identity politics must be part of a universalist idea, you know, however, that’s thought through.

Karen, it’s too much for one hour. Yeah, I agree. Yes, time for coffee.

Q: Tim, do you think that Jewish, do you not think you can be Jewish and Irish or Jewish and South African in equal matter?

A: Very hard. Yeah, I think that’s part of the ideal, but very hard to live day to day, tough one. Not sure how much is ideal and how much can be, when the crunch comes, what’s, you know, the bottom line. But great question Tim.

Q: Roberta, which of Jonathan Israel’s books?

A: “The Failure of the Enlightenment” Reva, universalism, with values respect for the other at its core, does not need to lead to assimilation, but rather celebrate the richness of diversity. I hear you Riva, but I think the universalist debate, assimilation, identity, politics, all these things we’ve been talking about, yeah, profoundly important. But I do think in the end there’s a crunch choice that individuals do make. I think that is part of human nature, whether to belong to the subgroup or the bigger group. Try to live with both, obviously. But if the real big crunch comes, where’s the choice?

Judy. Hegel’s thesis and antithesis. Absolutely. I didn’t want to get into too much of the dialectic, as you say, linked to ignitive’s idea. Yeah, absolutely. But that would be, it is absolutely the idea of ancient Greek idea actually, the dialectic is a philosophy of the ancient Greeks. Frio, I don’t know this book. “Modernity and The Holocaust” by Zigman Bowman. Thank you for that.

Gail, thanks so much and I hope you really well enjoy the… Peter, very different approach in enlightenment. Yep. I agree with you what you’ve said here. So I think what I’m trying to do here is take out some of the main ideas of the enlightenment because it’s such a buzzword today as well, link it to the wall, link it to the art and literature of the times and post-war, and what is that trying to say to us about there is the legacy of the enlightenment really. And yes, I mean I’m taking massive books and massive ideas over centuries and putting it, you know, brief in a way. And I apologise for maybe being a bit crude, but I think it is part of our contemporary consciousness, I really do. And I think profoundly so, you know, and I think we are faced with these questions. So I’m trying to give a contemporary approach to the enlightenment. Not in the way that I only studied it at university as well. I’m trying to be an enlightenment thinker in that way. I’m trying to follow my individual liberty.

Okay, Roberta. Yeah, they try to, philosophers try to demystify the world. Yep. Jack, people have got good at compartmentalising. Very much sir. And we have to, to survive, you know. We have to Darwinian, we have to to survive, compartmentalise be transactional. Mavis, thank you for your comment. Ethel, thank you.

Michelle, Thank you. Barry, Spinoza died at, I dunno what he died from. Not sure can check that. Marda, thank you for your topic. The cartoon. Yeah. Munch’s Scream, yeah.

Debbie we might have ahead of us a common cause to reduce tribalism. I mean a global common cause. Yeah, it’s possible. Thank you for your comment. Spinoza saw true consider his no free will idea. Yep, you’re right. He did see it.

Q: Bobby, what about the community of scientists? Wonder if they found science alone enough? The organising principle. They also have nightmares.

A: Well, Robert Oppenheimer had nightmares after the Holocaust. Holocaust after the atomic bomb. You’re right. I don’t know it. I guess it depends which scientists wear, et cetera. Anita, Steve, it does not rebuke enlightenment, we could go back to worse. Yup. Don’t throw the baby out the bathwater.

Okay, thank you Barry. Maslow’s hierarchy, we mentioned that.

Q: Yeah, Bernard. Counts with the waves of… What accounts with the waves of thought?

A: Rationality, then Trumpism, et cetera. I think there are cycles and we see resonant echoes in history. I’ve mentioned Rome, I’ve mentioned the Greeks often, and other eras I think we can take from these. I don’t think, you know, the old question of history repeats itself, not as a fast, but as a tragedy on the other way around. But I think there are nuanced differences every time. I think it’s a mistake to simply put one period next to the other period and say they’re the same. I think there can be similarities, but there are nuanced and it’s important in nuances, you know, differences to look at. Barbara, thank you.

Lillian, definitely anti enlightenment. Yep. The period we’re going through. And you recommend Sarah Kane, the one I mentioned were the Psychosis 4.48, which is remarkable. And the ones I mentioned, but it’s a mind blast to read it. I’m hesitant to mention it, but it’s a remarkable play called “Blasted”. If you can ignore some of the extreme physical things in the play, those are meant to be provocations with the actors and directors. They’re not meant to be done literally on stage. It’s a very contemporary way of thinking of theatre where you put very provocative stage directions, which, you know you, can’t do on stage. Rose, thank you. Yana and Alfred.

Okay. Such inherent is liberal philosophy rather than a benefit. Yeah, I agree. Have a good point Yana and Alfred, that there is a philosophical approach, which is the dialectic that, you know, the the protagonist contagious own antagonist. That the seeds of a demise is in the big idea. For me, when we are aware of those things, then we know what we are up against. Always to look for that. That to me is a value worth fighting for and a value worth doing. And that’s how we can take on the baddies. We’re trying to destroy everything in this inter.

Nicholas, reason, just like religion is subject to perversion. Yep, certainly is. Just look at the Nazis.

Yona, large problems there positions that felt recognised. Yeah.

Mickey, Spinoza is still forbidden in Amsterdam as recent years, a few months ago by a rabbi in Amsterdam. You don’t have the link to the article. Interesting. Didn’t know that. Douglas, it thought Spinoza died of TB. Ah, thank you for that.

Sandy, Spinoza died of silicosis. Okay, well thank you. I don’t know.

Okay, so I think that’s enough for now of the questions. Okay, so thank you so much everybody, and to Lauren, to Wendy really appreciate.

• Thanks David. Thanks Lauren. Enjoy the rest of the weekend David, and to all the participants to you too. Thanks Lauren.

• And hope you feel better from the . Take care, please, Wendy. Look after yourself when you walk, okay?

• Bye.

• Look after yourself. Cheers.

• [Wendy] Thank you. Bye-bye everyone. Thanks.