Peter Adamson's Blog

I've become addicted to listening to (other people's) podcasts, especially on history. It turns out there are now good series on many topics with more emerging all the time. I like most the ones that follow the template laid down by the History of Rome, which is probably the most influential of all history podcast series. This is the template I follow myself: take a historical subject, start at the beginning and tell it in installments in great detail.

Just wanted to thank everyone for their input on the question of whether to take a year soon to do Indian and Chinese thought. It doesn't look like there is a consensus view among listeners but the comments gave me lots to think about, by all means chip in if you haven't yet. One drawback I hadn't considered, which seems important, is that putting it between medieval and Renaissance could perpetuate the idea (which I basically would reject) that there is a big break there, rather than continuity.

The semester is two weeks old here (while all my American colleagues are reporting that their school year is drawing to a close... enjoy, you non-expats). Thus I am two weeks into teaching courses in German for the first time -- I gave one lecture in German in the winter semester but my other courses wound up being in English then. It's been interesting. The teaching is 4 consecutive hours (with breaks), which is perhaps not ideal. I find that I am better in the 2nd and 3rd hour than the 1st and 4th.

Am wrapping up a trip to London where I got to see my colleagues at King's, and ran a workshop on the history of the concept of health in the history of philosophy (not without any gaps but we did our best), plus a two day conference at the Warburg Instiute on medicine and philosophy in the Islamic world. Both should produce volumes in due course. I got some great feedback, both there and at the King's Philosophy Department seminar, on a paper which is about texts that treat ethics as a kind of medicine (for the soul).