The story of CIVILIZATION

July 1944, this is the Bretton Woods Hotel in New Hampshire. Forty nations get together, and they discuss what the post-war peace will look like. Everyone knows that Nazi Germany will eventually be defeated as well as Japan. So the question now is how does the world build peace

I want to make the argument to you that Joseph Stalin is probably the greatest man who ever lived, for three reasons. The first reason is that Joseph Stalin, he is a poor high school dropout from Georgia, which is on the fringes of the Russian Empire, and he leads

The nation-state is composed of two words, nation and state. State is easy to understand. It is just the supreme executive authority sovereign to a territory. The nation is a new idea, and it's the idea of a people with a shared identity, whether it's

Freud in the Western Tradition First, what I will do is I will put Freud in the context of the Western religious, intellectual and literary tradition. In the beginning, the main religion for us humans during the Ice Age was animism. The idea of animism is that we humans are

Two Scenarios Karl Marx is one of the most influential thinkers in human history. His contribution to intellectual thought cannot be overstated. What I'm going to do first is a thought experiment. It's just going to be a fun experiment. Let's pretend there are

Kant and Dante My main argument is that Kant is really taking the main thesis of Dante, which is the imagination is the animating force of the universe and love is the unifying force of the universe. What he will do is he will use his epistemology. Epistemology just means

The Unity of Will We will do Germany and thus conclude our discussion of the four great civilizations that are fighting for global dominance. Russian civilization is very distinct from Anglo-American civilization, and German civilization is also distinct as well. We're going to focus on the idea

Three Modern Civilizations Let's simplify the differences between these three great modern civilizations that are struggling for world domination even today. The defining characteristics of the Anglo-American civilization are their belief in utilitarianism. They want to know what is practical, what works. Their idea of Christianity is

We are discussing the American Revolution. So to review what we've done so far, after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, there are now four major civilizations that are competing against each other for world domination. So the Americans. When you think of America, there's a

We are focusing on William Shakespeare. But before I do that, I want to give you an overview. We will focus on the four great modern civilizations that have fought for global dominance these past 200 years. These four great civilizations are the Russians, the Germans, the British and the