Seminars

Posted on 5 July 2012 ..

Today is the last ancient philosophy seminar this year at King's, meaning the last one for me at King's full stop except for visits back now and again. It has been a highlight of my time in London - you can write essays, do podcasts, whatever, but basically the best and almost only way to do history of philosophy properly is to sit and read a text slowly, in the original language, with a group of people trying to understand it together. On the bright side a seminar on Metaphysics Beta beckons in Munich...

Yannick Kilberger on 5 July 2012

What is this talk of "full

What is this talk of "full stop"? Did I miss something (of course I did this is the first time I look at the blog...)?

Peter Adamson on 5 July 2012

Oh, this is because I'm

Oh, this is because I'm moving to the LMU at Munich this summer (actually still attached to KCL but I will be living in Munich and only visiting London now and then). Won't affect the podcast, though, at least that's the plan.

LMCM on 11 July 2012

Best wishes for your new

Best wishes for your new post. Germany are actually investing in higher education, rather than a short-sighted tightening of the financial screws! Yet again the UK falls further behind - you will clearly be a big loss to King's.

Peter Adamson on 12 July 2012

Thanks very much! King's has

Thanks very much! King's has hired a couple of people in ancient and I'm actually maintaining a connection there so they will be a force to be reckoned with in this area still, for sure. But I agree about Germany vs the UK -- what's really fascinating is that Germany is not only plowing money into (selected) universities but also doing so without bringing in tuition fees. Indeed in many Länder the fees have been eliminated recently. Das soll uns zu denken geben.

Charles Herdy on 15 July 2012

Peter, I'm breathing I sigh

Peter, I'm breathing I sigh of relief to hear that your podcast won't be affected.

I've enjoyed your work immensely. For what it's worth, you're on track to far surpass Russell's History of Philosophy. I only hope that you have the endurance to make it as far as Wittgenstein, Rorty and Singer!

Have you given any consideration to a multi-volume publication of the podcasts? I can see them on the shelf, numbered I to V in hardback, with footnotes to referred works. And without any gaps.

Irrespective of where it ends up, it's a great journey.

Best of luck in Munich.

Peter Adamson on 16 July 2012

Funny you should mention the

Funny you should mention the book idea: I'll announce this more officially soon I guess, but for those who are actually keen enough to read the blog I'll say here that it looks like Oxford University Press is going to publish the podcasts scripts as a book, or rather series of books. The first one will cover the Pre-Socratics, Plato and Aristotle; volume 2 will be Hellenistic and Late Antiquity, and so on. Advice on what to put on the cover welcome!

Yannick Kilberger on 16 July 2012

The real question is how are

The real question is how are you going to get a giraffe in the background without it showing too much?

Yannick Kilberger on 16 July 2012

By the way and getting

By the way and getting further and further from that seminar topic, I got my hands on the aforementioned Russell book by accident not two hours after reading the previous comment and since I am on vacation soon (and a sucker for coincidences)... Is it a good read?

Peter Adamson on 16 July 2012

Re. the cover, it's true --

Re. the cover, it's true -- once I get a giraffe, Buster Keaton, and James Brown on there, there will be little room for anything else.

Russell: definitely a good read, he's a wonderful writer of course. The history of philosophy is somewhat dated, as you'd expect. His airy dismissal of the whole Islamic tradition as derivative gets quoted routinely as an example of the bad old days. I think he was a better philosopher than a historian of philosophy, but then the same was true of Aristotle...

Charles Herdy on 17 July 2012

Peter, just now I've been

Peter, just now I've been staring off into space, as one does, pondering how such a text would read.

It struck me that in publishing the series in hard, immutable print you perhaps face Socrates' objection to written philosophy. While your monologues are no carefully prepared for aural publication, it seems that many of the dialogues are more extemporaneous. I wonder if there aren't some off-the-cuff comments that the likes of MM McCabe would prefer to modify or expand if given the chance. I could imagine some interviewees wanting to add qualifying footnotes, or generally amend their conversation to a more literary form.

How interesting that the age of the podcast - and radio, I suppose - has brought back the problem of translating from stoa to papyrus. Perhaps it has ever been thus whenever an ethereal, living dialogue is transformed into prepared text, even where that text pretends to the life of a dialogue. Or is it more fair to say that the text is seeking a living dialogue with the reader, who was ever-present at the original seminar as silent observer?

I went down to the Piraeus the other day with MM McCabe...

Peter Adamson on 17 July 2012

Actually the interview

Actually the interview episodes won't be included in the book(s), I don't think that would be fair on the interviewees who didn't have that in mind when we did the interviews. So it will only be the scripted episodes, which I hope will stand up ok as written texts. Of course I do need to revise them quite a bit to get them into proper shape for this different format.

clem on 23 July 2012

Great news about the

Great news about the book!

What to put on the cover? Can there be anything but Rodin's 'The Thinker'? ;-)

Clem

Peter Adamson on 23 July 2012

Yes, that's not bad. I wonder

Yes, that's not bad. I wonder if I could persuade a giraffe to adopt the Rodin pose for a photo shoot?

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