What Does Trump’s Candidacy Say About Our Capacity for Good and Evil? | Eric Kandel

  • 6 years ago
Nobel Laureate and Columbia professor Dr Eric Kandel discusses the nature of good and evil via the Trump candidacy, and his own devastating childhood experiences in Austria. Kandel's latest book is "Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures" (https://goo.gl/z9xUXK).

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Transcript - I find the Trump phenomenon so shocking, and if you look at my life, for example, coming here at nine and then here at age 87, I'm four weeks shy, having this interview with you having really a privileged life in the United States, I can only say good things about the United States. I think it's – sure it has weaknesses. You have weaknesses. I have weaknesses. That's intrinsic to life. But if you look at the overall balance of what this country has achieved, it's remarkable.

I was born in Vienna and Jews were being driven out and if they stated they were killed. So I had to get out in 1939 one year after Hitler came. And I wanted to understand how people could listen to Hyden and Mozart and Beethoven one day and beat up the Jews the next. So I thought I would do this through intellectual history. And there was a wonderful major called History and Literature, which was an honors major. Everybody taking that major, a small group of people, had to write a dissertation. And I wrote my dissertation on the attitude toward National Socialism of three different writers who were in different positions on their political spectrum. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/RZo54C.

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