HoP 398 - Pearls of Wisdom - Marguerite ...

A royal scholar and philosopher sets aside the tribulations of her family to debate Descartes over the relation between mind and body and the nature of happiness. 

Descartes’ “provisional” morality and his views on free will and virtue. 

Descartes’ Meditations caused controversy as soon as it appeared. In this episode we look at criticisms including the “Cartesian Circle,” and how Descartes answered them. 

Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits was published by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1878 and represents a “monument of a crisis” for Nietzsche, a critical turning point in his life and thought. The book marks the beginning of a second period in Nietzsche’s philosophy, his perio ... Show More

Buddhists are famous for their thesis that selves do not exist. But if they are right, what would that thesis mean for our apparent sense of self and for ordinary practices involving selves—or at least persons? In Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu’s Metaphy ... Show More

Marshmallows and Kant, ideas about girl power from Mary Wollstonecraft (born April 27th 1759) to the Spice girls; and galloping horses, sea-gull sounds and life as a goat. On today's Free Thinking Shahidha Bari is joined by literary historian Alexandra Reza, philosophers Angela B ... Show More

Joe Schmid is a PhD student in philosophy at Princeton University. He graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Purdue University in 2022. He has published articles in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of time, and the author of books including "Existential Inert ... Show More

Atif Khalil is on the faculty of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Khalil's primary area of research lies in Sufism, with secondary interests in Islamic philosophy and theology, comparative mysticism, interfaith relations, Jewish-Muslim relations, medieval philos ... Show More

Today I talked to James Montgomery, one of the translators of The Philosopher Responds: An Intellectual Correspondence from the Tenth Century, two volumes (NYU Press, 2019 and 2022). About the book: Why is laughter contagious? Why do mountains exist? Why do we long for the past, ... Show More

The second part of a two-parter we began near the beginning of this season. The completion of our analysis of Ecce Homo. In this episode, we consider Nietzsche's reviews of his own books, and argue that it presents a creative narrative of Nietzsche's life: Nietzsche as a tragic f ... Show More

This marks part 3 of a 5-part series where I will read aloud chapters from Manly P. Hall's “The Wisdom of the Knowing Ones: Gnosticism, the Key to Esoteric Christianity.” In this episode, we'll be reading chapter two, “Parallels Between Eastern and Western Philosophy.” What you'l ... Show More

In his latest book In Writing (Hamish Hamilton) psychoanalyst and regular LRB contributor Adam Phillips celebrates the art of close reading and asks what it is to defend literature in a world that is increasingly devaluing language. Through a vivid series of readings of writers h ... Show More

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks is one of the more obscure texts in Friedrich Nietzsche’s corpus. There are many good reasons for this: it is unfinished, and ends abruptly; it was never published; and it concerns subject matter that is not as immediately accessible as ... Show More