War and Peace p.10 (Book 4, Part 1)

Shownotes:

This week, Matt and Cameron start on Book 4, Part 1 (after diverging from our original plan to combine parts 1 and 2) and do a deep dive on how we can really analyze wisdom, on the horror of war collapsing into peace, and whether self-sacrifice can ever be a true ideal of Christianity. That’s right, it’s the big ideas section! Well - the whole book is the big ideals section, but this is a great survey of some of Tolstoy’s most interesting ideas. Grab your Youtube video of Slavoj Zizek and tune in! 

Major themes: Collapsing War and Peace Together, The Nature of Wisom, The Banality of Evil

15:12 - I meant to say “Andrei,” not “Nikolai” here

18:48 - “Cry” not “die”

26:30 - Well, the prisoner per capita ratio is still high in China - just nowhere near as high as the U.S. 

30:20 - I learned this in class sometime back, so I’m going to hedge this claim a bit. Here are some comparative numbers on draft dodging, but I’m unclear on how they got to these numbers (analyzing data from the U.S. gov vs. independent analyses) so I won’t say this is a definitive answer. If I can locate a study or similar research that uses a consistent methodology to analyze draft dodging these two periods, I’ll add it here. 

51:57 - Some more information about Dostoevsky’s almost-execution

53:24 - Surprisingly, I was right. 

The music used in this episode was “soviet march,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Buy this book with our affiliate links on ⁠Bookshop⁠ or ⁠Amazon⁠!

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠Facebook

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands