WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.060 Welcome in, everyone. We are so glad you're joining 00:00:03.060 --> 00:00:05.240 us for this custom tailored depth dive today. 00:00:05.559 --> 00:00:07.700 Absolutely. Thanks for being here. So today we 00:00:07.700 --> 00:00:10.660 have a really incredible mission. We're pulling 00:00:10.660 --> 00:00:13.179 from this incredibly fascinating Wikitutia article 00:00:13.179 --> 00:00:15.740 all about the British philosopher Stephen Priest. 00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:18.399 All right. And, you know, he was born August 00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:22.699 22nd, 1954, which makes him 71 years old today. 00:00:22.780 --> 00:00:24.649 Happy birthday to him. or well, happy birth year, 00:00:24.750 --> 00:00:27.809 I guess. Yeah, exactly. But our mission for this 00:00:27.809 --> 00:00:30.149 deep dive is to explore the life and work of 00:00:30.149 --> 00:00:32.609 a thinker whose entire career is pretty much 00:00:32.609 --> 00:00:35.810 defined by completely ignoring rigid intellectual 00:00:35.810 --> 00:00:39.149 boundaries. He really did. And it's crucial to 00:00:39.149 --> 00:00:40.950 look at his story, you know, not just as some 00:00:40.950 --> 00:00:44.159 standard academic timeline of like. degrees and 00:00:44.159 --> 00:00:46.579 jobs. Right. It's really a blueprint for how 00:00:46.579 --> 00:00:49.659 to navigate a world that is just full of divided 00:00:49.659 --> 00:00:52.140 opinions. We live in these hyper specialized 00:00:52.140 --> 00:00:54.539 isolated echo chambers today. Oh totally. Everything 00:00:54.539 --> 00:00:57.259 is siloed. Exactly. And Preece offers this master 00:00:57.259 --> 00:01:00.359 class and how to connect concepts that most people 00:01:00.359 --> 00:01:03.119 even experts just assume are totally separate 00:01:03.119 --> 00:01:05.400 and incompatible. OK. Let's unpack this because 00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:07.879 if you look at how his mind was formed chronologically 00:01:07.879 --> 00:01:10.120 it actually makes perfect sense that he didn't 00:01:10.120 --> 00:01:12.540 respect those academic borders. He definitely 00:01:12.519 --> 00:01:14.900 He took the scenic route. He did. He didn't start 00:01:14.900 --> 00:01:17.700 out as some philosophical prodigy, you know, 00:01:17.719 --> 00:01:20.579 locked in a dusty library reading Kant at age 00:01:20.579 --> 00:01:23.540 18. No, not at all. His early path was surprisingly 00:01:23.540 --> 00:01:26.040 varied. He spent his early 20s getting his hands 00:01:26.040 --> 00:01:28.519 dirty in the real world. Like, his first degree 00:01:28.519 --> 00:01:31.859 in 1976 from Lancaster University, it wasn't 00:01:31.859 --> 00:01:34.420 even in pure philosophy. Right, it was a BA in 00:01:34.420 --> 00:01:36.219 history, right? Yeah, history, but with French 00:01:36.219 --> 00:01:39.000 and archaeology mixed in. Wow. And then two years 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:42.040 later, in 1978, he gets a post -grad... a graduate 00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:45.319 certificate in education, a PGCE. And that was 00:01:45.319 --> 00:01:47.700 in history with social sciences. Exactly. So 00:01:47.700 --> 00:01:50.140 he's out there literally unearthing the past 00:01:50.140 --> 00:01:53.760 with archaeology and studying how societies work. 00:01:53.920 --> 00:01:55.879 Yeah, and getting that linguistic and cultural 00:01:55.879 --> 00:01:58.359 immersion with French. And he's even operating 00:01:58.359 --> 00:02:00.980 in the bureaucratic real world. Because around 00:02:00.980 --> 00:02:04.280 1977, he's actually working as an administrator 00:02:04.280 --> 00:02:06.459 for the Press and Information Department at the 00:02:06.459 --> 00:02:08.860 Council of Europe out in Strasbourg. Which is 00:02:08.860 --> 00:02:12.039 wild. for a future philosopher of mind. Right. 00:02:12.300 --> 00:02:14.560 He's watching modern European politics happen 00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:17.020 in real time. He doesn't even get his B .A. and 00:02:17.020 --> 00:02:18.939 philosophy from the University of Cambridge until 00:02:18.939 --> 00:02:22.900 1980. And then his M .A. follows in 1984. Yeah. 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:26.759 It's like priests spent his early 20s physically 00:02:26.759 --> 00:02:30.039 gathering the raw materials of human civilization, 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:33.159 you know, history, archaeology, European politics, 00:02:33.539 --> 00:02:35.659 before realizing he needed to go to Cambridge 00:02:35.659 --> 00:02:37.759 to forge the philosophical tools to actually 00:02:37.759 --> 00:02:40.020 understand what he'd gathered. What's fascinating 00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:43.000 here is how that broad, late -blooming entry 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:46.439 into pure philosophy likely protected him. Protected 00:02:46.439 --> 00:02:48.479 him from what? Well, from becoming trapped in 00:02:48.479 --> 00:02:51.909 a single, narrow academic echo chamber. When 00:02:51.909 --> 00:02:53.990 someone enters a highly theoretical field like 00:02:53.990 --> 00:02:56.990 philosophy too early, and they never leave that 00:02:56.990 --> 00:02:59.210 bubble, they risk just getting trapped in pure 00:02:59.210 --> 00:03:01.330 abstraction. Oh, like they only know the theory, 00:03:01.409 --> 00:03:02.930 but they don't know the real world. Exactly. 00:03:03.330 --> 00:03:05.669 But Kreese arrived at Cambridge insulated against 00:03:05.669 --> 00:03:08.430 that. His mind was already grounded. He had literally 00:03:08.430 --> 00:03:11.530 studied how societies rise and fall. And that 00:03:11.530 --> 00:03:14.110 real -world grounding really set the stage for 00:03:14.110 --> 00:03:17.050 what he did next, because he takes that worldly 00:03:17.050 --> 00:03:19.650 perspective and applies it to his most famous 00:03:19.650 --> 00:03:23.830 academic achievement, which is merging two notoriously 00:03:23.830 --> 00:03:26.310 separated schools of thought. Yeah, the analytic 00:03:26.310 --> 00:03:29.169 and continental traditions. Right. So the source 00:03:29.169 --> 00:03:31.750 notes that he's best known for bringing the rigorous 00:03:31.750 --> 00:03:35.030 methods of analytic philosophy to complex continental 00:03:35.030 --> 00:03:37.909 thinkers. Right. Heavyweights like Hegel, Husserl, 00:03:38.069 --> 00:03:40.830 Sartre, and Merleau -Ponty. But let me push back 00:03:40.830 --> 00:03:44.830 on this for a second. Because to you, the listener, 00:03:45.210 --> 00:03:47.810 or just to someone outside academia, combining 00:03:47.810 --> 00:03:50.289 analytic methods with continental thinkers just 00:03:50.289 --> 00:03:52.889 sounds like, I don't know, mixing two types of 00:03:52.889 --> 00:03:54.550 textbooks. Right. It sounds like an administrative 00:03:54.550 --> 00:03:58.009 task. Yeah. Why is this actually a monumental 00:03:58.009 --> 00:04:00.729 feat? Well, to really appreciate it, you have 00:04:00.729 --> 00:04:03.289 to understand the deep friction between these 00:04:03.289 --> 00:04:05.669 two approaches. They were basically rival factions 00:04:05.669 --> 00:04:07.810 for most of the 20th century. They hated each 00:04:07.810 --> 00:04:10.219 other. They really did. They refuse to speak 00:04:10.219 --> 00:04:12.500 the same language. On one side, you have the 00:04:12.500 --> 00:04:14.699 analytic tradition, which is fierce in the English 00:04:14.699 --> 00:04:18.660 -speaking world. It's all about logic, clarity, 00:04:19.259 --> 00:04:22.220 philosophy of language, formal proofs. Very math 00:04:22.220 --> 00:04:24.879 brain. Very math brain. They want to strip away 00:04:24.879 --> 00:04:27.060 all the poetic ambiguity and just figure out 00:04:27.060 --> 00:04:29.259 exactly what is logically true. And the other 00:04:29.259 --> 00:04:31.199 side. The continental tradition is rooted in 00:04:31.199 --> 00:04:34.199 Europe, Germany, France. This is your Hegel's, 00:04:34.300 --> 00:04:38.379 your Sartre's. They deal with massive messy concepts. 00:04:39.239 --> 00:04:42.459 existential dread, human experience, the flow 00:04:42.459 --> 00:04:45.639 of history. They're the artists. Exactly. And 00:04:45.639 --> 00:04:47.660 the analytic guys looked at them and said, your 00:04:47.660 --> 00:04:50.779 work is vague and logically undisciplined. And 00:04:50.779 --> 00:04:52.680 the continental guys looked back and said, you're 00:04:52.680 --> 00:04:54.500 missing the forest of human experience because 00:04:54.500 --> 00:04:56.480 you're too busy doing math equations. So they're 00:04:56.480 --> 00:04:58.660 completely walled off from each other. But then 00:04:58.660 --> 00:05:00.560 Priest acts as this intellectual translator. 00:05:01.040 --> 00:05:03.100 You see this bridge building in his editorial 00:05:03.100 --> 00:05:06.970 work, like, He edited Hegel's critique of Kant 00:05:06.970 --> 00:05:09.730 in 1987, and then John Paul Sartre's basic writings 00:05:09.730 --> 00:05:13.209 in 2001. He takes a thinker like Sartre, who 00:05:13.209 --> 00:05:15.550 writes about sweeping concepts like nothingness, 00:05:16.250 --> 00:05:18.769 and forces analytic clarity onto him. He demands 00:05:18.769 --> 00:05:21.430 precision from the poets. Yes, beautifully put. 00:05:21.810 --> 00:05:24.069 He proves you can be rigorous without sacrificing 00:05:24.069 --> 00:05:26.750 the big mysteries of human existence. And his 00:05:26.750 --> 00:05:29.790 main interests span so widely because of this. 00:05:30.009 --> 00:05:32.610 Vetaphysics, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, 00:05:33.189 --> 00:05:35.029 history of philosophy, philosophy of religion. 00:05:35.149 --> 00:05:37.410 You get a massive output. Yeah. Having established 00:05:37.410 --> 00:05:41.350 himself as this master synthesizer, he actually... 00:05:41.240 --> 00:05:43.920 applied these translated ideas to the mysteries 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:46.220 of the human mind, the concept of the subject. 00:05:46.439 --> 00:05:49.560 Right. And he authored or edited 19 books. 19. 00:05:49.800 --> 00:05:53.540 19. With heavy focuses on Kant, the post -Kantian 00:05:53.540 --> 00:05:55.779 continental tradition, and the philosophy of 00:05:55.779 --> 00:05:58.319 mind. That is a staggering amount of work. It 00:05:58.319 --> 00:06:00.439 is. I mean, notable authored works include The 00:06:00.439 --> 00:06:02.800 British Empiricists, which had editions in 1990 00:06:02.800 --> 00:06:06.680 and 2007. OK. Theories of the Mind in 1991. Myrtle 00:06:06.680 --> 00:06:10.180 Pawnee in 1998 and 2003. and the subject in question 00:06:10.180 --> 00:06:13.160 in 2000. He also co -edited a dictionary of philosophy 00:06:13.160 --> 00:06:16.139 with Antony Flew in 2002, right? He did. And 00:06:16.139 --> 00:06:18.639 what's amazing is his global footprint. He held 00:06:18.639 --> 00:06:21.420 fellowships and lectureships at Manchester, Bradford, 00:06:21.860 --> 00:06:24.579 Leeds, Salzburg, and Edinburgh. And visiting 00:06:24.579 --> 00:06:26.839 professorships in the US, Europe, and Asia. Yeah. 00:06:26.990 --> 00:06:29.629 and his work is translated into Japanese, Korean, 00:06:29.910 --> 00:06:32.110 Macedonian, Russian, and Spanish. So what does 00:06:32.110 --> 00:06:34.370 this all mean? Like for you, the person listening 00:06:34.370 --> 00:06:36.470 right now, a book like The Subject in Question 00:06:36.470 --> 00:06:39.129 might sound dry, but it's clearly tapping into 00:06:39.129 --> 00:06:41.550 something huge. If we connect this to the bigger 00:06:41.550 --> 00:06:45.149 picture, a book like that resonates from Macedonia 00:06:45.149 --> 00:06:48.709 to Japan because the fundamental inquiry of who 00:06:48.709 --> 00:06:51.670 are you is universally human. Right. He isn't 00:06:51.670 --> 00:06:54.310 just writing for other academics. Those widespread 00:06:54.310 --> 00:06:56.509 translations prove he is tapping into questions 00:06:56.509 --> 00:06:59.029 that everyday people globally are desperate to 00:06:59.029 --> 00:07:01.709 answer. Exactly. The subject is the conscious 00:07:01.709 --> 00:07:05.389 self, the eye experiencing the world. By analyzing 00:07:05.389 --> 00:07:07.870 the mind, he's giving us a framework to understand 00:07:07.870 --> 00:07:10.509 our own existence. It's like he took that analytic 00:07:10.509 --> 00:07:13.189 scalpel and trying to dissect consciousness itself, 00:07:13.290 --> 00:07:15.670 which is the ultimate locked room mystery. Totally. 00:07:16.629 --> 00:07:19.870 But just when you think priest's career is neatly 00:07:19.870 --> 00:07:23.069 defined by the philosophy of mind, we hit this 00:07:23.069 --> 00:07:27.310 dramatic plot twist. Yes. The inevitable shift. 00:07:27.410 --> 00:07:29.550 Right. Because when you study the human mind 00:07:29.550 --> 00:07:31.769 deeply enough and you push the boundaries of 00:07:31.769 --> 00:07:34.050 consciousness, you inevitably brush up against 00:07:34.050 --> 00:07:36.819 the divine. You really do. In the 2000s, priests' 00:07:37.019 --> 00:07:39.379 focus shifted dramatically to the relationship 00:07:39.379 --> 00:07:42.360 between philosophy and theology. A massive pivot 00:07:42.360 --> 00:07:44.160 for an analytic philosopher. And here's where 00:07:44.160 --> 00:07:46.399 it gets really interesting. He actually wrote 00:07:46.399 --> 00:07:49.899 a manuscript titled Philosophical Questions Theological 00:07:49.899 --> 00:07:53.120 Answers. Right. And an entire symposium was held 00:07:53.120 --> 00:07:57.100 at Oxford in April 2008 just about this manuscript. 00:07:57.240 --> 00:07:59.399 Which is a huge deal. But yet, according to the 00:07:59.399 --> 00:08:02.379 source material, as of January 2020, it remarkably 00:08:02.379 --> 00:08:04.339 remains unpublished, even though talks on the 00:08:04.339 --> 00:08:06.959 subject are online. That is fascinating. Is it 00:08:06.959 --> 00:08:09.139 the ultimate perfectionist's dilemma? I mean, 00:08:09.399 --> 00:08:11.480 imagine writing something so profound that Oxford 00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:13.560 holds a symposium on it, but you keep it locked 00:08:13.560 --> 00:08:16.319 in a drawer for over a decade. This raises an 00:08:16.319 --> 00:08:18.240 important question regarding his intellectual 00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:20.839 courage, really, because keeping a manuscript 00:08:20.839 --> 00:08:22.980 unpublished doesn't mean he was hiding from the 00:08:22.980 --> 00:08:25.360 theological debate. Oh, not at all. Which brings 00:08:25.360 --> 00:08:27.980 us to the Sheldonian Theater Showdown in October 00:08:27.980 --> 00:08:30.980 2011. This is such a wild moment. Picture this. 00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:34.980 You've got this highly publicized debate on theology 00:08:34.980 --> 00:08:37.899 and atheism. You have the philosopher and Christian 00:08:37.899 --> 00:08:40.860 theologian William Lane Craig. ready to go. But 00:08:40.860 --> 00:08:44.179 the famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins 00:08:44.179 --> 00:08:46.799 refused to debate him. Right, Dawkins outright 00:08:46.799 --> 00:08:50.259 refused, leaving this massive, intimidating empty 00:08:50.259 --> 00:08:52.960 chair on stage. And stepping into that crossfire 00:08:52.960 --> 00:08:55.779 as a stand -in is incredibly risky. Academic 00:08:55.779 --> 00:08:57.879 suicide for a lot of people. I want to be clear 00:08:57.879 --> 00:09:00.039 to you listening, we are absolutely not taking 00:09:00.039 --> 00:09:02.940 sides on the political or religious views of 00:09:02.940 --> 00:09:05.259 Dawkins or Craig here. We are just reporting 00:09:05.259 --> 00:09:07.820 on the historical event. Exactly. The point is 00:09:07.820 --> 00:09:10.019 the courage it took to sit in that chair. Right. 00:09:10.399 --> 00:09:13.059 Priest was one of three speakers asked to bravely 00:09:13.059 --> 00:09:15.799 stand in for Dawkins, and he did it. The video 00:09:15.799 --> 00:09:18.500 is even immortalized on Craig's reasonable faith 00:09:18.500 --> 00:09:21.460 website. It proves Priest is willing to jump 00:09:21.460 --> 00:09:23.919 into the most heated, high -stakes intellectual 00:09:23.919 --> 00:09:27.240 arenas of our time. He doesn't just theorize 00:09:27.240 --> 00:09:30.490 about friction, he steps right into it. He really 00:09:30.490 --> 00:09:33.850 does. He thrives in those spaces where complex 00:09:33.850 --> 00:09:36.289 human realities intersect. Yeah, he ignores the 00:09:36.289 --> 00:09:38.809 walls. Which gives us this really cohesive picture 00:09:38.809 --> 00:09:42.789 of his journey from starting in history and archaeology 00:09:42.789 --> 00:09:45.769 to bridging the transatlantic divide of philosophy 00:09:45.769 --> 00:09:49.090 to mapping the human mind and then stepping right 00:09:49.090 --> 00:09:51.470 into the crosshairs of these intense theology 00:09:51.470 --> 00:09:54.210 debates. It's an incredible nonlinear life. But 00:09:54.210 --> 00:09:56.950 there's one final beautiful biographical detail 00:09:56.950 --> 00:09:59.659 we have to reveal before we wrap up. my favorite 00:09:59.659 --> 00:10:04.240 part. Despite this extremely rigorous logic -driven 00:10:04.240 --> 00:10:06.659 academic life, I mean, he was a senior research 00:10:06.659 --> 00:10:08.720 fellow at Blackfriars Oxford and a member of 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:10.440 the faculty of philosophy at the University of 00:10:10.440 --> 00:10:12.480 Oxford. Right, very serious, very structured. 00:10:12.820 --> 00:10:15.340 Very. But he is married to the poet Carey Priest. 00:10:15.460 --> 00:10:18.759 It's just so perfectly fitting. Isn't it? A lifelong 00:10:18.759 --> 00:10:21.139 bridge builder uniting philosophy and poetry 00:10:21.139 --> 00:10:24.919 in his own home. He's taking the raw human experience 00:10:24.919 --> 00:10:28.220 and applying philosophical rigor in his professional 00:10:28.220 --> 00:10:30.779 life and sharing his personal life with someone 00:10:30.779 --> 00:10:33.860 who turns that exact same experience into art. 00:10:34.440 --> 00:10:36.840 It proves logic and poetry aren't enemies. No, 00:10:37.019 --> 00:10:38.929 they're just different tools. Which brings me 00:10:38.929 --> 00:10:42.049 to a final provocative thought for you to ponder. 00:10:42.549 --> 00:10:45.129 Priest spent his entire life successfully applying 00:10:45.129 --> 00:10:48.230 the tools of one discipline, like analytic philosophy, 00:10:48.750 --> 00:10:50.710 to the problems of another, like continental 00:10:50.710 --> 00:10:53.269 thought and theology. He borrowed tools from 00:10:53.269 --> 00:10:56.169 everywhere. Exactly. So look at your own life, 00:10:56.309 --> 00:10:59.029 look at your job, or maybe a problem you are 00:10:59.029 --> 00:11:02.610 currently stuck on. What is a completely foreign 00:11:02.610 --> 00:11:05.110 tool or perspective you could borrow from a totally 00:11:05.110 --> 00:11:07.610 different area of your life to finally crack 00:11:07.610 --> 00:11:10.350 that problem wide open? Sometimes the answer 00:11:10.350 --> 00:11:12.909 isn't digging deeper into your own field. It's 00:11:12.909 --> 00:11:15.429 looking over the fence. Yep. Ignore the borders. 00:11:16.129 --> 00:11:17.909 Thank you so much for joining us on this deep 00:11:17.909 --> 00:11:19.950 dive. Keep borrowing those foreign tools and 00:11:19.950 --> 00:11:20.929 we'll catch you next time.