Today we begin our analysis of Beyond Good & Evil. This episode concerns the preface, which is perhaps my favorite of Nietzsche’s, and the first five sections of chapter one: On the Prejudices of Philosophers. As always I move incredibly slowly during the opening sections because of their incredible importance for understanding the entirety of the work, but ... Show More
Oct 7
Untimely Reflections #47: Melanie Coughlin - Nishitani, Nietzsche & The Kyoto School
Melanie Coughlin, a scholar whose work focuses on Nishitani and the Kyoto school, joined me for a conversation that will hopefully provide a nice conclusion to the recent focus on Buddhism. We discussed karma, the misleading nature of intentions, Nishitani's theory of affect, emp ... Show More
1h 8m
Sep 29
151: Julian Jaynes, part 2 - The Witness of History
How did the bicameral mind emerge, and how did consciousness eventually take its place? Join me for an exploration of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, in which Julian Jaynes traces the evidence over the centuries that suggest a disappearance of the gods and the emergence of su ... Show More
1h 56m
Sep 22
150: Julian Jaynes, part 1 - Hearing Voices
What is consciousness? Julian Jaynes rejects all of the popular answers: that consciousness is thinking, reason, memory, or the capacity for learning. Nor does he think it can be accounted for as a merely accumulative development of "sentience" through evolution. In his controver ... Show More
1h 25m
Jun 2023
Episode 262: Supposing Truth is a Woman (Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil")
<p>David and Tamler dive into the first two parts of Nietzsche's <em>Beyond Good and Evil</em> which contain some of Nietzsche's best drive-bys on philosophers like Plato, Descartes, the Stoics, Kant, and Hegel along with beliefs in free will, hard determinism, Christianity, mora ... Show More
1h 28m
Oct 2020
Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus" (Part 1/4)
In this episode, I begin my presentation of Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus by covering chapter 1, "Introduction: Rhizome" (0:00), chapter 2, "1914: One or Severeal Wolves?" (15:25) and chapter 3, "10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think ... Show More
52m 2s
Aug 2025
Episode #234 ... The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Today we try to produce a philosophical guide for the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. We talk about Parmenides, Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, kitsch as something more than just an aesthetic category, existential codes and his animal test of morality. Ho ... Show More
32m 41s