The Philosophy of Jesus - ft. @laborkyle

Jesus of Nazareth is arguably the most resolving, present character in western civilization's history. Yet, he is often relished as just that, a character. Away from immanent materiality. A very immanence seen within the Cynic school of thought in Ancient Greece. From here, we see Jesus as not a mere character, but something of lived experience and history.

Same exact perks if you prefer to support via the YouTube member section:

Socials:

Timestamp:
Intro 0:00
Humanity, History and Lived Experience: 2:55
Jesus and Cynic Philosophy: 11:55
Ascetic Life-Affirmation and the Demand of Everything: 15:44
A Message: 19:48

[CasualPhilosophy]

I think an important lesson we can take from Jesus is the importance of forgiveness to any radical movement. We can't at once demand transformation, atonement for past injustices, and adapting our values to a better world if we don't also believe in forgiveness and mercy as basic values

[danielholdridge]

this is really beautiful and simple, I love your essays so much. speaking as a current biblical theist and Hegelian it's so cool to see this type of analysis from standpoints! keep up the incredible work and maybe do a video on GK Chesterton lmao

[hadi.elzein]

You never disappoint, epoch. Thanks for a great year of content. Much love and happy holidays ❤️

[azulfin]

It is always a pleasure to see a notification from you. Yet again another great video.

[telosbound]

As a Christian myself, I welcome all (specifically philosophical) confrontations with the life and thought of our Saviour. There’s no Biblical, theological, or even logical reason to think of Jesus Christ as an abstract ideal or someone somehow outside the historical moment he was born into. Also, thank you for emphasizing the emptiness of a lot of new atheist rhetoric :)

[lizardgams]

As someone who was raised Christian and grew up in organized religion and then ended up becoming disillusioned by the rampant hypocrisy and weaponization against minorities. (Mostly LGBT groups)

I still found myself fascinated by Jesus as an icon and philosophy. I was always dumbstruck how one man who valued community and loving of the undesirable through his recorded words was then twisted and used by organizations to be used as a rallying cry for the exact opposite of his teachings.

So watching this video talk about Jesus through historical and philosophical lenses was honestly a treat.

[jacquiecotillard]

Your formulation of these things was just the right thing for me a couple of weeks into this year
It was just perfect
Thanks

[natewikman]

I majored in religious studies and it's also interesting to point out that bread and wine are important symbols to both the Greeks and the people in the near east of the time. Wine has been associated with Divinity for a long time, Moses tends to a vineyard after the flood, and is found naked by his sons while drunk, this implies that divinity was accessed through wine because it threw off his knowledge of his own nakedness, which was one of the first signs of sin in the garden of Eden (they realized they were naked). In Greece this tradition can be seen in the early Dionysian cults, where Dionysus is embodied in wine, and they would drink to attain his essence.

Bread as a symbol is almost universal in near eastern mythology, especially in the myths of Sumer and the Babylonians. Jesus was born in Bethlehem which is an ancient Canaanite town whose name literally means 'house of bread. The connection between bread and war and gods probably goes way way back.

If we're historicizing Jesus, a way to view his incorporation of bread and wine, could be seen as cross cultural synthesis of greek symbols and near eastern symbols.

[kevinrombouts]

Very interesting. There is much here I have not grasped but I will listen more and more to it. I feel in love with Jesus when hearing the gospels as a child and reading them more assiduously in my 20s. That love has grown and grown.

[thevoiceofthelost]

I used to be a mega neckbeard "new atheist" type
Now, I'm more so agnostic, but I have a lot of respect for the original philosophies and teachings of Jesus.

Cause as it turns out, contrary to what today's institutionalized religions and prosperity gospel ideologues peddle, Comrade Christ was actually based as fuck. 👌

And you can see the real uplifting aspects of his philosophy through figures like Mr. Rogers, or Câmara.

[nikolademitri]

I loved it, man, and I’ll definitely look up Kyle’s work too!

For a couple years now, I’ve called myself a sort of, “anti-orthodox”, “Kierkegaardian”, and/or “heretical” Christian, and I don’t even like the word “Christian” bc of all the baggage attached to it, but Christ follower of Jesus freak don’t flow quite as nicely. I just started reading Nietzsche, as one of my Christmas gifts was a box set of his work, and I’ve been meaning to actually get around to reading the actual source material for a while (though I’m pretty familiar with much of his work via lectures). I get the feeling that “Nietzschean” might be the next descriptor that I add, as the more I learn about Nietzsche’s views regarding Christianity, the less I see him as unfairly critical, and the more I see his position as being rather similar to Kierkegaard’s, in that it’s not an attack on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, so much as it is very necessary criticism of Christianity (but again, I’ve not dug into his writings very deeply, so maybe I won’t think this in a couple months).

I’m someone who grew up in an evangelical, fundamentalist setting, later became a “new atheist” (I LOVED the “Four Horsemen”, as cringe as that is.. though Dawkins and Harris are the more embarrassing of the four, I agree), then after a few years of studying Christian history, getting into Kierkegaard, liberation theology and radical Christian history, and just living a lot more, I found myself drawn back, not to the church, but specifically just to Jesus and his early followers (pre-Constantine, and so on), and I eventually became a believer once again. Kierkegaard’s conception of faith had a massive impact on me in that regard, to the extent that I have to give most of the credit to ya boy, Søren, and to reading early Christian history (NT scholar/historian Bart Erhman has some great lectures and books on the early Christians).

Anyway, I wanted to say, as someone who’s seen many sides of all this, been a fundamentalist, now is a radical/anti-orthodox Christian Marxist, and has been a hardcore anti-theist/New Atheist, that the Sam Harris, et al, criticism of Christianity is so convincing to so many people because it’s actually not that bad at all of an attack on fundamentalist Christianity, especially the kind of modern, American brand that is extremely reactionary. In fact, I’d almost recommend that stuff to anyone who is a fundamentalist, just because the best of it really does eviscerate the fundamentalist worldview, specifically the way it’s based on a literal interpretation of the Bible (typically KJV). As far as an attack on Christianity period, or at least Christian faith, those works are pretty trash, and confuse modern fundamentalism as the one, true, authentic version of Christianity, but the reality is that it’s simply the easiest version to deconstruct and do away with. (That said, one can also just read Paine’s “The Age of Reason”, and get a pretty great attack on fundamentalist Christianity from his deist perspective, and skip a lot of nonsense with someone like Harris imo.) Faith, however, is a much more complex matter, it’s not an epistemic approach, and so their attempts to use logic and empirical science against Christian faith, or any faith, are definitionally nonsensical, because those tools have nothing to do with that which transcends material reality.

Anyway, this is a mess, and a lot of it is TMI, and I don’t know why I’m actually going to post all this, but there it is. Again, this was really great, as is all of your work, and I look forward to checking out Kyle’s too! ✊✌️❤️🏴♾

[kaduku]

This morning I thought it was weird I hadn't seen you on my homepage, so I came to your channel. I'm really happy I did. As a Christian leftist, you've put into words what I've been struggling to. This was incredible. Thank you for what you do.

[porfavoralguemmemata]

A masterpiece of video! Great work, dude!

[rishabhchauhan]

Have u engaged with the works of Rene Girard ? I think you will like it . He tries to show how Christianity is anthropologically true and tells us something about the nature of man that other myths( which are often used in atheist circles to show the similarities between Christianity and other previous pagan myths ) do not .

[xMav]

As a philosopher, this video moved my life into a whole new beautiful perspective of everything being connected and one

[BritikoBeats]

Thank you for this wonderful video - interestingly I watched it on Christmas Day. Your explanation has helped clarify why, I whenever I reflect on the Love that is implied in Jesus's philosophy as you've stated here, I genuinely experience a moment of heavenly joy ('kingdom of heaven?). Moving forward into 2022 I shall more mindfully apply this philosophy of ascetic Love within all the relational and institutional contexts I am involved with. My new tagline: 'I believe in Christ but I ain't no Christian'.

[dunningdunning]

Heya, this has to be your best video yet. Keep up the good work.

Interestingly, before writing Being and Time, Heidegger was working on a thesis that was a historical deconstruction of Jesus to reach the originality of Jesus, similar to one of the goals he intended to work out in Being and Time, which was to deconstruct the history of metaphysics to reach the question of the meaning of Being and re-establish it as the important but vexing philosophical mystery it was for the ancient Greeks. Just as he intended to work backwards through Kant, Descartes, Scholastic philosophy, Aristotle and the presocratics, he planned to work backards through Martin Luther, St. Augustine, etc.

[stewiepid]

As an atheist, former Christian, this is where I reside. The vocation and philosophy of Jesus, without the worlds' religion, is a salve for the human creature. I love my Christian brothers and sisters! Merry Christmas, continued success and safety. May your 'hedge' be shored up by the might of Agape Love.

[LogicGated]

Will definitely be looking at more laborkyle vids in the future.

[vallewabbel]

I have recently started delving into the gospels, cool to see this video pop up!