Birth of Tragedy #7: 18-21 (Alexandriani...

Today, I'm speaking with independent scholar, translator, and lecturer, Stuart Kendall. Stuart is responsible for helping to bring new translations of Georges Bataille's work into English, and he joined me for a conversation about Georges Bataille and his influence from Friedrich ... Show More

In this episode we're going to explore three very different thinkers who nonetheless converge on their theories of language. We're going to see if we can't extract an intelligible whole out of the ideas generated by this trio: the Nietzschean theory of language as command, the vi ... Show More

In this episode, we're venturing into the life and thought of Ernst Cassirer, the last humanist of the Enlightenment tradition. Cassirer is widely known today for his debate with Heidegger at Davos, in which Cassirer appeared as the old style philosopher against the new world sig ... Show More

In this episode, we discuss the life and death of Sokrates (ca. 470-399 BC), who is widely considered to be the father of Western philosophy, with in-depth overviews of Aristophanes' Clouds and Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, Apologia, Krito, and Phaido Show Notes: http://www.thehist ... Show More

The Greek thinker Socrates was put to death for encouraging his students to question everything - from their own beliefs to the laws and customs of Athenian society. But his ideas didn't die with him.  Here's a chance to hear two episodes from our archive examining the legacy of ... Show More

Today’s counter-culture and alternative movements question mainstream norms, such as putting too much value on material possessions. The Cynics, practical philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, also rejected conventional desires to seek wealth, power and fame. They were not you ... Show More

Socrates according to the comic poet Aristophanes and the historian Xenophon 

<p>Aristotle’s works are edited, printed, and translated, leading to new assessments of his thought among both humanists and scholastics.</p> 

<p>An expert on Renaissance alchemy tells us how this art related to philosophy at the time... and how she has tried to reproduce its results!</p> 

<p>We begin to look at philosophy in Renaissance France, beginning with humanists like Budé and the use of classical philosophy by poets du Bellay and Ronsard.</p> 

<p>Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian-born political philosopher and cultural critic. He was described by British literary theorist, Terry Eagleton, as the “most formidably brilliant” recent theorist to have emerged from Continental Europe. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) To supp ... Show More

This episode delves into the fine line between cheesiness, kitsch, and high art. From the pastoral scenes of Gainsborough to the consumer culture critiques of Warhol and the polling experiments of Komar and Melamid, we examine how artists challenge and redefine our notions of tas ... Show More

<p>The Present Age was published in 1846 by Søren Kierkegaard. He discusses the philosophical implications of a society dominated by mass media, foreseeing the rise of twenty-four hour news and social media, it examines the philosophical implications of a culture of endless, inco ... Show More