924
Lectures Watched
Since January 1, 2014
Since January 1, 2014
- A History of the World since 1300 (68)
- History of Rock, 1970-Present (50)
- A Brief History of Humankind (48)
- Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science (35)
- The Modern World: Global History since 1760 (35)
- The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future (28)
- Introduction aux éthiques philosophiques (27)
- Jesus in Scripture and Tradition (25)
- Roman Architecture (25)
- Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender (23)
- Descubriendo la pintura europea de 1400 a 1800 (22)
- Introduction aux droits de l'homme (19)
- Buddhism and Modern Psychology (18)
- Calvin: Histoire et réception d'une Réforme (17)
- The Ancient Greeks (16)
- À la découverte du théâtre classique français (15)
- The French Revolution (15)
- Letters of the Apostle Paul (14)
- Key Constitutional Concepts and Supreme Court Cases (14)
- Christianisme et philosophie dans l'Antiquité (14)
- Egiptología (12)
- Western Music History through Performance (10)
- The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture (9)
- The Great War and Modern Philosophy (9)
- Alexander the Great (9)
- Greek and Roman Mythology (9)
- Human Evolution: Past and Future (9)
- Phenomenology and the Conscious Mind (9)
- Masterpieces of World Literature (8)
- Villes africaines: la planification urbaine (8)
- Greeks at War: Homer at Troy (7)
- Pensamiento Científico (7)
- MongoDB for Node.js Developers (7)
- Fundamentos de la escritura en español (7)
- Introduction to Psychology (7)
- Programming Mobile Applications for Android (7)
- The Rooseveltian Century (6)
- Karl der Große - Pater Europae (6)
- Fake News, Facts, and Alternative Facts (6)
- Reason and Persuasion Through Plato's Dialogues (6)
- The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (6)
- A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior (6)
- Lingua e cultura italiana: avanzata (6)
- L'avenir de la décision : connaître et agir en complexité (5)
- Understanding Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity (5)
- Dinosaur Paleobiology (5)
- Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (5)
- War for the Greater Middle East (4)
- Emergence of Life (4)
- Introduction to Public Speaking (4)
- The Kennedy Half Century (4)
- Problèmes métaphysiques à l'épreuve de la politique, 1943-1968 (4)
- Designing Cities (4)
- Western Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Europe (3)
- Paleontology: Early Vertebrate Evolution (3)
- Orientierung Geschichte (3)
- Moons of Our Solar System (3)
- Introduction à la philosophie de Friedrich Nietzsche (3)
- Devenir entrepreneur du changement (3)
- La Commedia di Dante (3)
- History of Rock and Roll, Part One (3)
- Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life (3)
- Initiation à la programmation en Java (3)
- La visione del mondo della Relatività e della Meccanica Quantistica (3)
- The Music of the Beatles (3)
- Analyzing the Universe (3)
- Découvrir l'anthropologie (3)
- Postwar Abstract Painting (3)
- The Science of Religion (2)
- La Philanthropie : Comprendre et Agir (2)
- Highlights of Modern Astronomy (2)
- Materials Science: 10 Things Every Engineer Should Know (2)
- The Changing Landscape of Ancient Rome (2)
- Lingua e letteratura in italiano (2)
- Gestion des aires protégées en Afrique (2)
- Géopolitique de l'Europe (2)
- Introduction à la programmation en C++ (2)
- Découvrir la science politique (2)
- Our Earth: Its Climate, History, and Processes (2)
- The European Discovery of China (2)
- Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communication (2)
- Philosophy and the Sciences (2)
- Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity (2)
- The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem (2)
- The Science of Gastronomy (2)
- Galaxies and Cosmology (2)
- Introduction to Classical Music (2)
- Art History for Artists, Animators and Gamers (2)
- L'art des structures 1 : Câbles et arcs (2)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (2)
- The World of Wine (1)
- Wine Tasting: Sensory Techniques for Wine Analysis (1)
- William Wordsworth: Poetry, People and Place (1)
- The Talmud: A Methodological Introduction (1)
- Switzerland in Europe (1)
- The World of the String Quartet (1)
- Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1)
- El Mediterráneo del Renacimiento a la Ilustración (1)
- Science of Exercise (1)
- Социокультурные аспекты социальной робототехники (1)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (1)
- The Rise of China (1)
- The Renaissance and Baroque City (1)
- Visualizing Postwar Tokyo (1)
- In the Night Sky: Orion (1)
- Oriental Beliefs: Between Reason and Traditions (1)
- The Biology of Music (1)
- Mountains 101 (1)
- Moral Foundations of Politics (1)
- Mobilité et urbanisme (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Thinking (1)
- Making Sense of News (1)
- Magic in the Middle Ages (1)
- Introduction to Italian Opera (1)
- Intellectual Humility (1)
- The Computing Technology Inside Your Smartphone (1)
- Human Origins (1)
- Miracles of Human Language (1)
- From Goddard to Apollo: The History of Rockets (1)
- Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (1)
- Handel’s Messiah and Baroque Oratorio (1)
- Theater and Globalization (1)
- Gestion et Politique de l'eau (1)
- Une introduction à la géographicité (1)
- Frontières en tous genres (1)
- Créer et développer une startup technologique (1)
- Découvrir le marketing (1)
- Escribir para Convencer (1)
- Anthropology of Current World Issues (1)
- Poetry in America: Whitman (1)
- Introducción a la genética y la evolución (1)
- Shakespeare: On the Page and in Performance (1)
- The Civil War and Reconstruction (1)
- Dinosaur Ecosystems (1)
- Développement durable (1)
- Vital Signs: Understanding What the Body Is Telling Us (1)
- Imagining Other Earths (1)
- Learning How to Learn (1)
- Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics (1)
- Web Intelligence and Big Data (1)
- Andy Warhol (1)
- Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life (1)
- Practicing Tolerance in a Religious Society (1)
- Subsistence Marketplaces (1)
- Physique générale - mécanique (1)
- Exercise Physiology: Understanding the Athlete Within (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1)
- What Managers Can Learn from Great Philosophers (1)
- A la recherche du Grand Paris (1)
- The New Nordic Diet (1)
- A New History for a New China, 1700-2000 (1)
- The Magna Carta and its Legacy (1)
- The Age of Jefferson (1)
- History and Future of Higher Education (1)
- Éléments de Géomatique (1)
- 21st Century American Foreign Policy (1)
- The Law of the European Union (1)
- Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society (1)
- Introduction to Data Science (1)
- Configuring the World (1)
- From the Big Bang to Dark Energy (1)
- Animal Behaviour (1)
- Programming Mobile Services for Android Handheld Systems (1)
- The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art (1)
- Care of Elders with Alzheimer's Disease (1)
- Contagious: How Things Catch On (1)
- Constitutional Law - The Structure of Government (1)
- Narratives of Nonviolence in the American Civil Rights Movement (1)
- Christianity: From Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200-1650) (1)
- Age of Cathedrals (1)
- Controversies of British Imperialism (1)
- Big History: From the Big Bang until Today (1)
- Bemerkenswerte Menschen (1)
- The Art of Poetry (1)
- Superpowers of the Ancient World: the Near East (1)
- America Through Foreign Eyes (1)
- Advertising and Society (1)
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:




Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:
Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info
Notes on video lecture:
The Code of Hammurabi and Other Imagined Realities
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on September 24, 2013 (go to class or lectures)


Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
Jericho, inequality, stable, Marduk, foragers, equality, justice, drought, fertile, stories, arbitrary, sufficient, 282, Hammurabi, mirages, cooperation, Iraq
impact of the agricultural revolution on humans
led to far more complex human societies
lived in small bands of a few dozen individuals
farmers and peasants lived their lives in towns of hundreds, thousands and ultimately millions of people working on a daily basis towards common goals
a reason for this growth was that agriculture could support far more people
more food is a necessary condition but not a condition
having all of the food doesn't mean that the large number of people can agree how to divide and share the food, how to settle disputes, and how to act in times of crisis such as a or war
if people cannot reach a census, then conflict spreads, even if the storehouses and granaries are full
it was not food shortages that caused most of the big war and revolutions in history
WWI and WWII did not begin because of a shortage of food in Britain, Germany of France
in Yugoslavia in 1991, there was enough food to feed all the people there, their conflict arose on other issues
in Israel and Palestine, there is no shortage of food to feed the people, but many parts of these countries have not seen a day of peace in decades because of the disagreements on the issues of land, politics, and religion
the root of these wars and calamities is that Homo Sapiens have no natural instincts for cooperating with large numbers of strangers
humans have evolved living in small bands comprised of a few dozens individuals at most
sapiens had to rely on inventing and imagined realities that can regulate the cooperation on such a huge scale
just as hunter/gather bands began to create stories of spirits in order for hundreds maybe thousands of people to live and fight together under a common cause, peasants and farmers began to create similar stories which allowed this on a much larger scale
8500 B.C. the largest settlements in the world were villages such as which contained a few hundred humans at most
3000 B.C. you had cities and kingdoms ruling 10,000 to 100,000 of people
1000 B.C. you had the Roman and Han empire (206BC-220AD) which rules 10 million and more people
these societies were held together by imagined realities
imagined order
the social and legal laws which sustained these kingdoms and empires were based not on natural instincts or personal acquaintance, but on beliefs in shared stories and imagined realities
two of the best known imagined realities in history fundamental for the establishment and maintenance of large social order
1772 B.C.: Code of
1772 B.C. sixth Babylonian king Hammurabi enacted the code
Babylon was the largest political entity on the globe
it's king ruled more than 1 million subjects
controlled most of what is today is , huge areas in Iran and Turkey
the Gods Anu, Enlil, and appointed Hammurabi "to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak"
there were laws
an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, depended on social status
one-half of the Code deals with matters of contract, establishing the liability of a builder for a house that collapses, for example
the Hammurabi laws are quite , one had to pay "20 shekels for killing a woman"
this code asserts that universal of justice is dictated by the gods
people are divided into two genders and three
superiors
commoner
slave
children are the property of their parents
if everyone accepts this then the million inhabitants would be to live together peacefully, protect itself against enemies and have enough food to feed all his people
1776 A.D. Declaration of Independence
13 colonies got together in Philadelphia
declared universal laws of justice
where Babylonian laws dictated , the laws of the American colonies dictated
also promises that if people act according to these principles, they will be peaceful and prosperous
200 years after this Declaration are still copying and learning this text by heart
both of these claim universal and eternal laws
both Hammurabi and Thomas Jefferson imagined immutable principles of justice, one that equality is higher than hierarchy and the other that hierarchy is higher than equality.
the only place that exists is in the imagination of Homo sapiens
there are no objective laws of justice which are true everywhere for everybody
declaration of independence states that all men are created equal
yet biologically, every person is different
people are created through evolution pursuing its goals, but evolutions goals have no reason or purpose other than to perpetuate a particular species of organism
unalienable rights
in biology, there are no rights
birds fly because they have wings, not because they have the right to fly, so in biology instead there are "mutable traits"
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
can't be measured objectively in biology
you can, however, measure pleasure
becomes: life and the pursuit of pleasure
rebuttal
we know that people are not equal in essence, but if we believe this, we can create a stable and prosperous society, so we better believe it, even though it is not a biological fact
we believe in an imagined order not because it is objectively true, not because it is scientific fact, but by believing in this imagined reality, it enables us to cooperate effectively and to forge societies. Imagined orders are not mere stories or useless in any way, as they are the only way that large numbers of humans can cooperate effectively. They are necessary. However, this doesn't mean that they are objectively true.
Hammurabi may have believed this as well, that his laws were imagined but necessary to maintain social order