Richard Jacobs: Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast. My guest today is Dr. Nicolas Laos. He’s a philosopher, a religious visionary, mathematician, a new politics expert, and a consultant and we are going to talk about his work. He’s written multiple books. He’s also the author of a book called “The Meaning of being Illuminati”. So Nicolas, thanks for coming. How are you doing?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: Thanks for having me. I’m fine. How are you?

Richard Jacobs: Good. Your background is very diverse, what is the main focus of your work?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: I could definitely say philosophy because it gives me the opportunity for grand synthesis, which is my main goal. And it covers all areas of research that you have just mentioned.

Richard Jacobs: So what is a grand synthesis means? What are you trying to understand?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: Oh, this is a rather challenging question, but I could say that I am deeply and systematically concerned with the interplay between fundamental motions such as time and the eternity, the relationship between a bean or thing and its meaning the source of the significance of the banks and things that exist in the world as well as the ontological potential of the human being. And in fact, I tried to elucidate the difference between time and what is essential in noble in absolute, namely the good in itself. And furthermore, I am also concerned with the sociopolitical ramifications of these issues. So that’s why I highlight the importance of philosophy.

Richard Jacobs: So where do you look for answers? Do you look to religion? Do you compare religions and what they say or how do you begin to find answers about any of this?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: I could rather use the term spirituality to encompass everything formed by human consciousness and everything that transcends physical or biological necessities. This includes spirituality of course, includes religion and it’s most elevated aspects of philosophy and science. And I would dare to save and technology because even technology as an aspect of applied science is a manifestation and an expression of the creativity and more broadly of the intentionality of human consciousness. Therefore I would use the term spirituality to cover all these aspects of human life that transcend basic, natural, physical reality.

Richard Jacobs: Do you think that only people have consciousness or do you think that other living things have consciousness as well?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: They are conscious living things as you mentioned. And if I may seize this opportunity, I would like to say that I find as a starting point, philosophically speaking, I find Hegel’s philosophy very inspiring, thought-provoking, and it is one of my main areas of research. Even though I try to somehow reverse certain aspects of Hegelian thinking.

Richard Jacobs: What is Hegelian thinking mean? What’s the summary of it?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: Oh, yes. I could summarize it as follows. Gail Kegel, the German philosopher who is one of the paradigmatic representatives of modern philosophy, Hegel identifies, started thinking, the following, started thinking about what is spirit, what is the human being, how the human being relates to the world. And so Hegel identified three different types of spirit, subjective spirit, objective spirit, and absolute spirit. So according to Hegel spirit is initially subjective spirit, namely self-consciousness, which has built up in each individual person. But gradually an objective spirit emerges too since we exist in society and we opened ourselves up to one another through various institutions, including language. So in general, objective spirit refers to the world of the natural sciences, the world of customs, the world of laws, and in general to everything that is shaped by human beings in their unity, mainly civilization. That’s what Hegel calls objective spirit. However, Hegel pursued the synthesis between subjective spirit and objective spirit, and therefore he argued that objective spirit has another side as well.

The opposite of objective spirit is not only subjective spirit but also what Hegel calls absolute spirit manifested among others as art. So indeed the work of art fascinates us so much that we recognize ourselves in it according to Hegel in the context of art. This self-recognition does not mean recognizing ourselves in our individual details, but by what is expressed within and through all of us. From Hegel’s perspective, art reminds us that a world that has become mundane cannot completely call itself a world and that the world must also include the transcendence for our existence is really meaningful only if we think beyond that which is fixed between birth and death.

And in particular, Hegel identifies the absolute spirit with the logic of historical becoming.

And here is where I start departing from the Hegelian philosophy. I follow up to that point, but I start departing from Hegelian philosophy from the point at which Hegel identifies the absolute spirit with the logic of historical becoming vast worship in history. Why is that?

Richard Jacobs: What existential questions do you think Hegel was troubled by or trying to answer then? You know, and I want to talk about how you think differently, but again, first, what do you think he was trying to answer or figure out?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: Hegel was very much challenged by the argument of Immanuel Kant that we cannot know the reality itself that we cannot have access to the essence of beings and things. This was something that was very challenging for Hegel. And furthermore, he tried to address the issue of the relationship between consciousness and the world or inner reality and the external or outer reality.

And these two men issues led him to his dialectic this triple dialectic based on the distinction between subjective spirit, objective spirit and absolute spirit or thesis, antithesis, synthesis. And these are also very, very crucial questions. The questions of weather, the weather reality itself is knowable by the human being and how the reality of consciousness relates to the reality of the world.

Richard Jacobs: Okay. So what important issues do you differ from Hegel on and why? Maybe talk about that briefly.

Dr. Nicolas Laos: Yes, very briefly, because this will help us also contextualize other questions. So as I said Hegel correctly identifies the difference between what you called subjective spirit and objective spirit. And he highlighted the significance of the historical action of the human being, but he identified absolute spirit with the logic of the historical, the common, and here is where problems begin to emerge. And where I differentiate my perspective from Hegel’s philosophy of history. In Hegel’s philosophy truth, like rational reality is a living logical process. As Hegel wrote it, what is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. The core of Hegel’s concept of logic is the absolute idea, the namely universal reason which Hegel in fact identifies with God which is the potential universe. That the transtemporal totality of all the possibilities of evolution and which is historically objectified in the nation-state in philosophy, in art, and in religion. So Hegel calls the realized absolute idea, spirit. Why is this a problem? Because ultimately Hegelianism reduces to a peculiar form of Nikkilistic historicism. History is meaningful when it is not the realm of necessity, namely when it can be rejected in the same way that every conscious being can reject the idea of God. This is not the case in Hegel’s philosophy of history since Hegel identifies the divine reason the divine loggers with the impersonal, coercive logic of socio-historical becoming. So from Hegel’s perspective, the Lord’s history has an inner logic of evolution. History develops according to its own inner logic. And from Hegel’s perspective, this inner logic of historical becoming is what we call divine reason. So history has its own logic of evolution.

Richard Jacobs: Why would history have it on anything? I mean at the start of this podcast between you and me now, I mean, history is human action. It’s just human action, not at this moment. So why would it follow any different path or logic than everything that goes on right now?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: Indeed. But Hegel would actually say that there is logic hidden inside the way we behave, we think, and we interact in the context of this discussion which transcends us just because it is part of the cultural formation of our educational background, which in turn reflects the logic of the absolute spirit as this absolute spirit is manifested in our dominant and preeminent civilizational structures, which has quit in term have formed our consciousness. But my objection is stress in aspects of personhood. Like the ones that you have just mentioned and the fact that historical action, as you said, is a really creative if and to the extent that people strive to transcend themselves and seek truth in being, namely genuine truth rather than truth in becoming named the logic of history. And in this way, we can be, as you said, really creative by opporchanising time rather than being determined by the logic of temporality, whether physical or historical. So I definitely, I agree with your objection and therefore I am concerned, deeply concerned, and systematically concerned with the aspects of genuine creativity of the human being.

Richard Jacobs: So most people walking around, I don’t think they think much about this at all. What kind of a thought process or operating system do you think that most of humanity is running with right now? And are they missing out? Are there things that they should contemplate that they don’t?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: This is indeed the challenge and question and that invites us to open foundational questions. But I definitely agree with you that if we just study history, we will realize that indeed, most societies throughout history do not open. Not to mention delve into at least widely into foundational questions. And indeed what you mentioned is a fact. But on the other hand, the fact that certain issues are not discussed or analyzed does not mean that they do not affect us and even these are significant yet of course highly elusive issues. And for this reason, I believe that it is very important to reconsider the importance of investigating foundational issues about what is worthwhile, what is not what is the meaning of a thing or an action and how such foundational issues determine our everyday life, our conceptions about ourselves and the world, about our potentials, about what we can know, what we cannot know but what we do know, what we do not know which is the best way of action.

Richard Jacobs: I mean, what do you want to achieve? Do you want to achieve a shift in people’s consciousness and the things that they think about or you simply want to understand what’s in the mind of most people and what’s your overarching goal with your work?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: My marching goal is to provide, first of all, a systematic reinterpretation of important segments of philosophy and political theory and to try to propose a reinterpretation of pre-modernity, modernity, and post-modernity and achieve a new synthesis between pre-modernity and post-modernity, what we call in this through these terms. And my point is to highlight the significance of metaphysics, namely ontology, which is silenced and heavily and the research issue and contemporary academic life and contemporary social life more broadly. So first of all, many people follow or they are guided to follow I think, the existential path of the biblical issues. Who sold his birthright for red lentil pottage. And so by making this remark, I mean that many people have a distorted perception of the things that are valuable and about the hierarchy of values. And indeed many people live, or even worse, they are trying to live according to two issues, ethos and mentality. Therefore as the highly educated American scholar and Statesman’s big Nick Brzezinski pointedly are getting his book out of control in the early 1990s even the great powers of the international system cannot avoid lamp lapsing into a state of chaos and decay. Exactly because their spiritual underpinnings are rotten. Economic, political, and security crises are reflections and historical objectivations of spiritual crisis. Furthermore, I never stopped being amazed by the extent to which the contemporary ruling elites like intrinsic nobility and are pervaded by what I could dare to call spiritually plebeian mentalities. So I feel that I need dioxygenases lump in order to find a member of the contemporary ruling elites worthy of the respect that his or her position of authority commands.

Richard Jacobs: In your studies, there are philosophical ideas and then there’s just, I guess what I would call human nature. Is this philosophy, this philosophy look to human nature, or has it always looked to higher ideals and platonic forms and things like that? What is it called when you’re studying actually what happens versus what the thinking is about a thing.

Dr. Nicolas Laos: This is a very important distinction, of course. But my approach is heavily focused on the aspects of human nature as you mentioned. But of course, it is an issue for heated debates. What is human nature and how can one address issues related to nature anyway. So that’s why I mentioned the importance of metaphysics. Metaphysics is another name for ontology and ontology is the realm of philosophy dealing with the reality of being, namely with what we call nature but these are very difficult questions and they have very demand and hardly controllable consequences. So they are often silenced. That’s why today’s philosophy is about thinking about thinking or in the context of analytical philosophy it is mainly related to reason. But it is less concerned with what you very pointedly mentioned, namely human nature or the reality of being in general, which is the essence of metaphysics. And it has surrendered its privileges dealing with issues to the natural sciences which follow their own way and their own methodologies. But if philosophy is considered in its totality philosophy is among other things, a science of science. Namely, it is concerned with what actually is scientific about science. And that is the ultimate judge of scientific methodology and scientific reasoning. Therefore, philosophies should not resign from one of its core realms, which is exactly studying the nature of beings and things. And of course, human nature above all. So indeed we have to emphasize the significance of this issue in the context of what philosophers call ontology.

Richard Jacobs: What about this current Coronavirus craziness? Do you look it through the lens of what you know? Is it rational? Does it make any sense? What do you think is going to happen based on the philosophy that you know and knowing about human nature and things like that? I mean, what’s your perspective?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: The issue of coronavirus can be approached at different levels. At the level of biology, it is indeed an objective challenge and an objective problem, which has to be scientifically addressed through biology, biochemistry, and medicine. At the political level coronavirus has different attitudes which include unfortunately drastic measures aiming not at fighting this specific disease that at structurally change in societies and when certain historical actors want to bring about a major historical change, I believe that this should not take place and the threat or under conditions of policies that clash with humanities fundamental liberties and liberal institutions. But major historical changes should be evaluated and pursued in the context of irrational, fair public debate. So at the political level Coronavirus has been mistreated, if I may say so in the sense that it has been used as an opportunity to impose historical changes in a way that clashes with fundamental human freedoms. At the economic and business level, I could say that Coronavirus has again, been operationalized by certain corporate actors who see this as a new opportunity for speculation. And of course, Coronavirus is a test for societies, intellectual and moral status, and qualities because by triggering by humanities fundamental existential fears and irrationality. I think that Coronavirus is also the factor, a massive test of humanities, intellectual and moral condition. And this is something that should be systematically investigated and evaluated.

Richard Jacobs: Well, very good. Nick, we’re just about out of time. What’s the best way for people to find out more and to start reading, you know, your book, and taking a look at what’s your philosophy?

Dr. Nicolas Laos: My books have been published by Pickwick Publications, which is an imprint of a Wipf and Stock Publishers. So if they visit Wipf and Stock Publishers, they can look for my books there. And my other book has been published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. So if they visit Wipf and Stock Publishers in the United States and Cambridge Scholars Publishing in England they will find my books there.

Richard Jacobs: Okay. Well, very good Nicolas. Thank you for coming. And in times like this philosophy is very important when there’s all this irrationality. So I appreciate you being here.

Dr. Nicolas Laos: Thank you.