What's coming in 2023
Happy New Year! I thought I might take this chance to share what you can expect here on the podcast in the coming year.
As before we'll continue doing the "European" and "non-European" series in alternating weeks. The Africana series is projected to finish around the end of 2023. Lots of exciting stuff to come there still, including in the first few months of the year episodes on topics including South Africa (Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko), Amilcar Cabral, Walter Rodney, Afrofuturism, and Black Feminist authors. Chike and I should be sending the manuscript for volume one of the Africana Philosophy off to the publisher soon: that will cover the story up to 1900, so the first two sub-series up to episode 65.
Once the Africana series concludes we'll move on to the eagerly anticipated series on classical Chinese philosophy, which I will co-author with Karyn Lai.
On the "European" side we'll continue looking at the European Reformation. Much of 2023 will be taken up with looking at philosophy in 16th century England and Scotland. That series will kick off with episode 416 on March 12. Here's a preliminary episode list; as usual, let me know if you see any omissions!
The English Reformation (focus on Cranmer)
The Scottish Reformation (focus on Knox and Buchanan)
British Humanism
English Political Thought (e.g. Fortescue, Hooker)
Thomas More
English literature (e.g. Spenser, Sidney)
Shakespeare and Philosophy
Shakespeare’s Tempest
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Renaissance Individualism
Witchcraft
Devotional Literature by Women (e.g. Kempe, Anne Locke)
Individualism
British Scholasticism
Northumberland Circle (Warner, Hill, Harriot)
Theories of vision
William Gilbert
John Dee
Robert Fludd
Elizabethan Exploration
After this series, I'll move on to the Counter-Reformation, with lots of coverage of scholastic thought in Spain and Portugal. This means we will probably (finally!) get to the 17th century in late 2024.
Exciting!
Really exciting for the rest of the Africana series! Especially for the episodes on south africa for personal reasons and the black feminist authors as just a big interest of mine. Hopefully the Brixton Black Womens Group gets a mention, if not given much attention to (partly because I don't really know how important they are to give proportionate attention to, and because I can imagine you are already far along in the script writing when you learned about them).
Everything else is also really exciting. It is going to be a very interesting year in my opinion from your podcast. Cheers Peter and Chike (and eventually Karyn as well!) for all the hard work and fascinating content!
Looking forward to it!
Small side thing quickly, the link given in the notification email gives me a bad certificate warning when I click on it for some reason. But the regular page doesn't for me. The difference in the url seems to be the www included in the email, which isn't included when I normally look up the podcast. Just a heads up.
Sol Plaatje
Hi Peter,
Will you be talking about the South African thinker Sol Plaatje in the Africana section?
Plaatje
Hm, I guess not since we are past him chronologically. I have to admit his name was new to me; glancing at Wikipedia the information there doesn't scream "philosopher" but as you can imagine I'd be curious to hear an argument for why he should be or should have been covered. I guess we have included other figures who are often considered more as "literary" (like, most recently, Lorraine Hansberry) so I can imagine he might have just as good a claim for inclusion.
"African philosophy"
The fact that you've devoted only 62 episodes to the rich Indian philosophy and you've already gone past 116 episodes to "African philosophy", which is not even a philosophy, but an uninterrupted complaint of those who try to use race to gain benefits, shows that one of the goals of the podcast is to please influential political groups.
Africa vs India
I think mostly I'll just leave this comment here for others to judge for themselves, but I would like to clarify that in theory at least the plan is to have another series of the same length on later Indian philosophy. If all goes according to plan (or at least hope), both series would be two volumes' worth of material. The same for China, which will be one series/book on classical China but hopefully eventually a further series and book on later developments.
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lots to look forward to
Hey Peter,
Thanks for the update; lots to look forward to, e.g. the Chinese Philosophy series (even though the ending of the Africana series will be a little sad).
But I’ve been meaning to express my appreciation for Sun Ra’s ever so brief cameo in the Black Arts Movement segment. And given the upcoming episode on Afrofuturism it looks like he might have a shot at slightly more time (nudge, nudge :-)). I’ve been a little disappointed that when people mention important Afrofuturists like Octavia Butler, who deserve the attention, they also often seem to be unaware of Sun Ra’s foundational role. And as much fun as his stage shtick was, and as shrouded in imagination as his philosophy was, after reading a lot by and about him, I found his vision extremely coherent and well expressed. It seems to me that Afrofuturism wouldn’t have grown and flourished like it has without his founding vision.