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This may be one of many gratitude comments, but it is mine nonetheless.

Discovering the podcast has been a real blessing! Even if at times some topics seemed a bit obscure or harder to follow, it gives me more reasons to listen to the relevant episodes again! The show has greatly helped me demystify medieval thought and understand Neoplatonism and granted me a greater appreciation of Abelard and Avicenna. Plus, the "without any gaps" approach, showcasing how different people across different cultures and epochs understand and approach certain issues really satisfies my "background in history" itch!

At the same time, it's been a great stepping stone in my journey to enhance my horizons and in understanding myself:

I'm finding (or rediscovering) that reflecting upon topics, be they wider societal issues, some episode topics or my own person, has a daunting (due to the sheer vastness that can lead one to feel like they don't know where to start, or that the abyss "gazes back") yet charming character; one that I, at times, consider turning into more substantive texts beyond mere diary entries. The Africana series also further punctuated that even seemingly simple insights can have surprising implications, and reinforced that barriers to reflection can be illusory. Now, if only I could properly get started!

Reflecting more in this manner has also helped me become more resilient, even if the work is not yet done, if such an endeavor can ever be "complete". 

It is also helping me fulfill the commandment of "know thyself" by inspiring me to commit to such reflections and continue asking myself questions; "Is this what I stand for? What do I stand for? What do I value?...", questions I realize I haven't asked myself enough in the past.

To conclude, thanks for the podcast, thanks for giving me more topics to sate my intellectual curiosity and keep company in the long nights of the cold season and the balmy evenings of the warm one!

It didn't let me post this on the episode for some reason but in episode 34 - Mr. Know It All: Aristotle's Life And Works, you off-handedly disparage modern political debating styles here implying that they are inferior to Aristotle's model of dialectic argument. I would just like to point out that, as it seems to me, these two things serve completely different contexts and functions, different objectives and thus different strategies for approaching them.

The purpose of a dialectic is to find common group between two opposing positions. The advantage of this approach is that it's less confrontational and at the end both participants hopefully have a better understanding of the topic. The downside is it's slow and doesn't scale very well. You have to walk people through your arguments one at a time, at their own pace, addressing their objections as you go. I might describe this as a trade-off of precision over efficiency.

A debate by contrast is a competition to persuade a third party, often a large audience to make a decision. As such compromise in this situation is not necessarily desirable. Only one of you can win the election or court case or whatever it is. Admitting your opponent might have a valid argument does you no good at all and might even do your audience a disservice if they make a bad decision because you sold yourself short. Furthmore, you need to convince lots of people quickly. There's no time to patiently walk every single audience member through your reasoning. Therefore this situation demands efficiency, which means being a persuasive speaker is more important than having a logically unassailable argument. Honestly, for a leadership position, being persuasive is more important anyway. To dump a bit on Plato's analogy of the ship, having perfect navigation skill does you no good if you can't convince anyone to follow you in the first place. And even if the captain only has a general idea of where he's going, as long as he can figure out how to get there eventually that's gonna be good enough most of the time.

Therefore I think both strategies have a time and a place and the important thing is to recognize which situation your dealing with and apply the correct strategy to the situation. As you observed, if you apply the logic of a debate to a one-on-one discussion you'll just end up talking past each other (which I've absolutely seen people do and it is always obnoxious). But a presidential debate is not a casual fireside chat. Think what would happen if two candidates just had a dialectic argument on stage, which is what your comment, and the comments of plently of other people I've heard, imply that you think they should do. The vast majority of the audience is going to get completely lost because you're barely engaging them and they can't all have signed on to the endoxa you set in the first place. And if at the end both participants decide they've now reached a consensus on which policy they support, the whole thing will have been completely useless for trying to figure out which one of them you should vote for.

Sorry to jump down your throat over a offhand remark like this but you're far from the first person I've seem make this mistake and it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine. This seemed like a good place to air my grievances. Just found your show the other week and am loving it so far. Looking forward to bingeing my way through it :)

I'm so glad I found this website at the perfect time. I can't thank you enough, as all I thought was to obtain all the philosophy material in one accessible and free place with all sources for my research. I'm beginning my career as a journalist after completed my masters in the UK.  Wish me luck and cheers!

I just want to thank you for this brilliant website!  It's really useful.  I graduated with a BA in philosophy way back in 1978 and have maintained an interest ever since, but sometimes it's difficult to find good sources.  On material I am already familiar with, I use Stanford's Encyclopedia a lot, but that stuff is pretty dense and challenging in areas I'm not that familiar with.  This is indeed a good gap-filler.  I especially value the entries on Islamic and African philosophy, which are very much overlooked in standard syllabi.  So - thank you very much!

Elizabeth Morton, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

This is a blessing. I graduated as a philosophy major about 15 years ago and found this almost a year ago in hopes that I could get a refresh. This is perfect and I hope you are very proud of this. You should be ; )

Dear Peter, 

As a long-time listener to your podcast, I have become accustomed to your many references to Buster Keaton, the 20th century comedian, or should I say 'Buster Keaton', the name of that same comedian, whom you frequently use to illustrate philosophical points. 

I was delighted to discover you are not alone in this pedagogical employment of the late great comic's name. 

Edward Kanterian, in "Frege: A Guide for the Perplexed" (Continuum, London and New Your, 2012) argues in a discussion of 'The function-theoretic account of Sense' (pp. 184-197) "against all evidence and reason, that there are certain concepts which yield thoughts for objects." He then plugs in "a name ('Buster Keaton'), thus obtaining the experession of a thought, a declarative sentence, ('Buster Keaton is a comedian')."

To go to the punchline, Kanterian concludes "It is difficult to say what thought exactly we obtain by this method for our examples 'Fifi is sitting' or 'Buster Keaton is a comedian.'"

All of which harkens back to an earlier discussion of "different modes of determining ('Bestimmungesweisen') on pp. 111 ff.  

We can only hope that by the end of the passage, Buster is not sitting on Fifi.

Yours truly,

Michael Stanley-Jones

Circular Research Foundation (Parabita, Italy)

I'm curious to know from the History Of Philosophy Without Any Gaps' research into the history of philosophy if any new insight has been gained as to which of the known ancient systems of philosophy may be the oldest.

It seems to me that at different ages of our lives we value different sorts of freedom. When we are 14 a libertarian sort of freedom seems appealing. A 14 year old usually has distinct and identifiable authority figures and freedom for the 14 year old frequently consists in rebelling against those authority figures (or at least in always keeping alive the possibility of rebelling against those authority figures). At 30 years old, by contrast, many people want the sort of freedom they can only achieve by being in harmony with authority  (they might want to start a small business or be a Prof for example). To be free to start a small business (at least one with a physical store) one needs and wants a stable society and one wants to be integrated into that society in the relevant ways. It seems to me that philosophers of the ancient world thought a lot (more than we do today) about the different stages of life. My question is: Are there ancient authors who thought specifically about what sorts of freedom we should value at the different stages of our lives?  Thanks!

My favorite podcast series but I just found out they're also available in book form! I'm a better reader than listener.  Just bought the whole set on Amazon, and looking forward to China.

I hadn’t thought about this until I started listening to the second episode—has anyone gone over some of the basic Chinese pronunciations with you? I know you’re obviously reading pinyin, but the pronunciations are nothing like what we use in English. The big example is that the word Zhou is pronounced more like “Joe”. It took me a minute to know what dynasty you were talking about. 

I may have to skip out on these episodes as I know the pronunciations are only going to get more difficult if you haven’t heard the names pronounced before. (And I am just talking about Mandarin.)

Wonderful podcasts, but why there is no Judaism-related podcasts? Everything else you seem to be covering...

Hello Peter

 I am a loyal listener to the podcast HoPWaG.  I am interested in how the Freedoms we value may change over the course of our lives.  For example a 14 year old may be content merely to rebel against authority, a 30 year old may value the ability to work in harmony with existing authorities (to start a small business for example) and a 50 year old might want to BE the authority. For me personally a 14 year old libertarian seems to be living in harmony with their stage of life whereas a 50 year old libertarian is not. (Obviously this is a contentious claim. This is merely an opinion on my part and I am sure things are more complicated than that!) Please recommend books that might give me insight into how the Ancient Philosophers thought about how our personal age might affect how we think about freedom and about which sorts of freedoms and conception of freedom we should value. I would be interested in both primary and secondary source books and especially interested in any philosophers who have written works in the last 8 years or so that relate our current changing conceptions of which freedoms we should value to writers from the ancient world. I am primarily interested in European, Japanese and Indian ancient thinkers, but would also be interested in other traditions. Thanks...and thanks for your sheer endurance as you create HoPwaG!
Philip

Hi Peter,

In his "De mirabilibus mundi", Albert the Great has cited a quote from Avicenna about some features of human soul, as Albert puts in his citation, apparently in Avicenna's "sixth book of Naturalia". More than this I don't know.

Maybe you have a hint where to look for, in order to find exactly the text in the original Arabic?

Thanks!
 

     Hi, Peter.

I would like to ask you what is the earliest philosophy, whether of an individual philosopher or a group of philosophers, that there are still records of, be it of primary source or of secondary source.

Hiya Professor, years ago you made a blog post on what topics/philosophers to cover for the Renaissaince and many listeners chimed in on this site and mention various topics/philosophers/themes to cover

https://www.historyofphilosophy.net/renaissance-suggestions

Are you going to do a new blogpost for the same for 1600-1800 European Philosophy, as it listeners might chime in figures that should be covered that may not have been in your radar in the first place, for example Richard Hooker for British reformation (who you eventually did devote an episode to).

Since we're starting this series next year, it should give you plenty time to prepare for such material, since we're starting on France-Low countries next. I say this because a particular French Catholic philosopher caught my eye, his name is Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and his work 'Discours sur l'histoire universelle' which is similar to Augustine 'city of god'.

There must be a very good reason that while Israel does not appear in the roster of countries to choose from for my profile Palestine does and I would like to hear it. Please fix this. You may be of the ilk that thinks that cancelling Israel and simultaneously creating an alternate state IS part of the fix, in which case I think deserves an episode of its own. Tell the world.

Among the chief achievements of Plato's epistemology we have the difference between episteme and doxa, the account of episteme as true and justified belief, the dependence of episteme on ontology and the importance of truth for political and ethical life. 

What does Aristotle add to these achievements? Can we regard the systematization of deductive reasoning as a continuation of Plato's program?  As to metaphysics: does this play the same role as the dimension of imperishable and unchanging forms in Plato? 

I am perplexed. It seems that in spite of his historiographic method that made him famous in the Physics and Metaphysics, Aristotle does not do the same in epistemology and, for example, simply neglects Theaetetus and Republic

Comments and criticism are welcomed 

Davide

Hi ...

So I started on Google Podcasts but it's closing. I don't have an Apple phone. Where can I get your podcasts?

Clay Kallam

Do you or Karyn Lai know of any work that deals with the relation between Chinese philosophy and disability/neurodiversity? I'm listening to the lecture series that Lai gave a few months ago on Chinese philosophy for Leverhulme and there has been a few times where Disability/Neurodiversity would pose some interesting questions to the ideas and/or puts them into a different and interesting light/angle. Two examples come to mind:

First, with Confucius. Specifically I have in mind between Ritual and Autistic people masking. Masking is when an Autistic person covers up their Autistic traits in order to fit in the neurotypical world. I can't say I really understand the role that ritual plays into Confucius' thought yet, but I know at least that it is related somehow to cultivation. It seems like though that a lot of daily rituals would not help cultivate an Autistic person, when they have to repress their Autistic traits for the sake of ritual. It is a common experience that later on in life for some Autistic people that have had to mask their whole lives to experience burnout and can no longer do a lot of stuff they could do before (very low on energy, no longer able to mask for a while etc). So much for cultivation, the rituals haven't helped them flourished at all but instead acted against their flourishing or their ability to participate in society. Would this be a correct understanding of what ritual is and the purpose it is supposed to serve, and if so how could a Confucian respond to this negative outcome?

The second example is the swimming parable in the Zhuangzi. The swimmer, by not having a dao of their own, is able to follow the dao of the water, which confuses Confucius since he has his own dao and therefore is unable to understand what the swimmer is doing or how. I think bringing in disability can help put two Daoist themes, spontaneity and relativity, in an interesting angle. On the one hand, if the swimmer had broken legs, how the swimmer would follow the water's dao would be different (I can imagine there would be more focus on how they use their arms and/or how they would control/throw their body weight around in order to navigate and move around the water), precisely showing the relativity of the water's dao. On the other hand, if your body is prone to stiffing up in cold water, then it seems that there is no way to go with the flow of the water. The dao of the water would be hostile to you, in which case you can't naturally and spontaneously follow the water's dao. In which case, if we still want to swim, they would have to develop their own dao somehow that goes against the water's dao, since they certainly can't follow it.

Both of those examples may or may not be born from misunderstandings, I don't know enough yet. But at the very least, if Karyn Lai is right in the lecture series that early Chinese Philosophy has an attentiveness to orientation and self-cultivation, then disability and neurodiversity surely seem very relevant to those concerns. So I have to imagine there has been some work on this, especially since it isn't necessarily a modern concern (what I mean is, while in my first example Autism might be a modern concern, I know that there is a recurring theme in the Zhuangzi of the use of uselessness) so I can't imagine there not being lots of literature on this.

What happened with Sankara? I was wondering about him recently, and just learned that my question asking about him is nearly a year old by now. Was it too late, didn't fit with the current plan, nothing philosophically interesting about him?

Hi Peter,

First, thanks for this great project and the effort you are putting in! I keep revisiting and listening to the old episodes while trying to keep up also on the new ones, getting bettter insight every time.

I was wondering if something recently changed in the recordings, as the recent episodes (starting from the Renaissance and Reformation in Britain) are harder to follow for me. It feels like the playback speed is faster or pauses are cut out. I am not a native speaker of English, so maybe it is me, but just wanted to ask.

Regards, Cor

Hi Peter -

I’ve been working my way through the series from the start since last year, and it really is astounding the care you have put into this podcast and website. Thank you so much for providing the world with this resource. 

I had an amateur interest in modern philosophy before your series and I read some Hume and analytic philosophy I liked.  With a scientific background I assumed I didn’t have much to learn from, especially, ancient and medieval metaphysics. Happy to say how wrong that impression was… even issues that in the moment I think feel too removed from my natural empiricist mindset, including very theological issues, I find myself considering in my free time now.  When I catch up in the podcast I’m sure I’ll loop back to reading my favorite thinkers.  Although I just finished Abelard and I do admit the “medieval modernism” I found refreshing nonetheless!

Anyway - the original inspiration for my message, I was about to start the Indian Philosophy series and noticed they seem to be disappearing from Apple Podcasts. The first 3 episodes are currently missing. I have no problem listening on your website but wanted to be sure you didn’t lose any potential new listeners due to this, if it isn’t just some weird error on my end. 

Are you still doing the transcriptions? I've noticed a few interviews for quite a while now haven't gotten one. So I decided to gather the ones currently still missing one. If there are interviews without the interview tag I will have missed it, and maybe I missed one or two tagged as well, but this should be 99% of the remaining ones.

Mainline:
95, 215, 299, 300b, 318, 321, 360, 387, 400, 431, 437.

India:
41, 50

Africana:
39, 140

Hello!

Are there any plans to cover Russian philosophy? Frederick Copleston devoted to it a special volume of his History of Philosophy.

Thank you

Dear Prof. Peter Adamson, i'm Nicola Ferrari, from Rovigo, Italy. I apologize for my bad English. Congratulations on your initiative of a history of philosophy without any gaps. Can I ask you for some information on the book version of your podcasts? What will be the next scheduled release? 

Why Shaykh Saadi in not included in the list of Muslim philosophers.

For many years I have enjoyed reading the comments on this podcast website. The comments reflect a wide variety of thoughts and perspectives from people with varying degrees of familiarity with the topic. I have also enjoyed reading Peter's follow-up responses and, at times, have marveled at his patience. The guy does, after all, have a day job!

Recently, I have found the comments to be rather stale. The majority of the recent comments are from a small number of  people who endlessly wonder what is next and/or type out detailed plans that they would like Peter to follow. I've not seen anything along these lines with other history podcasts. If these individuals want to learn about X or Y, certainly they can pursue those topics. Although an occasional recommendation is certainly fine (and even interesting from my perspective), I do not understand this non-stop kibitzing.

Peter actually provides more long-term ("What to expect when expecting..." posts) and short-term (the topic of the next episode at the conclusion of many episodes) information than most podcasts...and that is certainly good enough for me. If one cannot wait for Peter to get to some topic...there are many other sources (books) and other podcasts.  

Random thought that crossed me today, but what did the stoics think of theatre/acting? The more I think about it, the more acting seems antithetical to stoic philosophy, especially if you method act, where you deliberately try to get in to the head of the person you are acting. Or if you are a theatre watcher, get immersed into a fake world. In either case, you are taking on emotions from something that is all pretend, so under the stoic emotion theory you are making what you know to be false judgements, and intentionally and especially so if you are an actor trying to get into the role. And if this play was a tragedy? I can't imagine how they wouldn't hate it. You are experiencing intentionally the suffering of something not real (or intentionally pretending you are someone you are not if you are an actor) that feels very real and intense!

This would all seem so irrational from the stoic view of emotion, intentionally taking on emotions (and so under the stoic view making judgements that are false) and even feeling the suffering from a tragedy! But also it seems like the stoic view is a terrible theory to understand what is going on in theatre, whether you are a watcher or an actor, since everyone would deny that what is going on is real, and it seems like an absurd implication from stoic psychology that, say, when Oedipus realises he killed his father and you know with his mother, that when the audience feels sorrow at the events unfolding, that they actually subconsciously making the judgement that Oedipus is real, has a mother and father, and did those stuff to them etc.

Hi, Peter. I enjoy your series and I realize I may be seeking answers in the wrong discipline, but is there some philosophical text or theory that can help me understand human cruelty? The situation in the Middle East is so horrific - and I get the historical context and the battle for territory - but can you offer me any kind of philosophically-based explanation as to why human beings are so cruel? I'm struggling to make meaning of it all. Thank you.

There is this podcast called the "History of Africa" podcast. While listening, I was reminded that you had an interview with Kit Patrick from the History of India podcast as a capstone to the series on classical Indian philosophy. He only covers pre colonial african history, but if it is not too late (or if he is not too obscure or any other things that would make his case dissimilar enough in relevant ways to Kit Patrick for whatever reason to not have him on), I think it would be cool to do something similar at the end of the series of Africana to reflect on the pre-colonial history of Africa at the end.

As a side thing, found another gap potentially for you to cover for episode 500, although I am very uncertain about the level of scholarship done on it or if there would be any worth/uniqueness to covering it - the same podcast mentioned in one of his episodes on his current series about the Kingdom of Merina in Madagascar, that before the educational reforms of Radama, Imerina did not have a formalised school system (see Season 4 Episode 16, at roughly 22:50 onwards). The interesting thing he mentioned was that the richest of the rich hired private tutors to teach their children, among other things he lists, philosophy. I can't really guess what the content of this must have been, just based on his podcast alone. Is he using it in a colloquial sense? Could be. Or could this have been european philosophy around that time? Could be also, since the island was in contact with the British and French. Or could it have been some islamic philosophy? Unlikely, since as far as I could tell, the island wasn't islamic at all, but they were in trade with Arab traders, and one of the other items he listed was Arabic Abjad, and at the very least it was a minority religion there I believe. Or it could be something else. I can't really tell. Google returns nothing either. This is roughly the 19th century, so my guess is he is referring to European philosophy. If so, that may not fit as a gap to cover in Africana philosophy, but still something to potentially look into.

Binged all the episodes in the past 4 months. Love the podcast. Decided to go back and get my philosophy undergrad in my 40's, and your podcast helped give me a great historical background on the development of philosophy. Thanks for doing what you do.

Hmmm.... So Buster Keaton was actually a giraf.. 

Hi Peter,

I thank you for this tremendous work you have done. It is a real pleasure to have ready to hand such valuable source of philosophical knowledge. You have provided very enjoyable hours in my life.

I have a question that perhaps you have answered someplace which I have not yet reached, and it is this: is part of your plan to have a section that covers the modern and contemporary western philosophy thinkers (the classical cannon without any gaps)? if it is the case by when we may have the good fortune of it?

Thank you.

Cristián

I've recently been reading about and looking into the Bible. As you might already know Peter, in Genesis it talks about Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and there was (still is I guess) lots of debate on what exactly is going on in these verses. But it seems clear at least that, well, they gain knowledge of good and evil from eating from the tree (and immediately realise their nakedness after and feel shame etc).

I made a really interesting connection after reading that to Socrates. In a way, the biblical view seems to directly contrast the view argued for by Socrates in the platonic dialogues, that people only do evil out of ignorance, from not realising that this thing they think is good is bad and vice versa. That virtue is knowledge. But yet, people still after eating the fruit still sin in the Hebrew bible. In fact, one interpretation says that god intended Adam and Eve to disobey him so that their choice to love and obey him becomes actually meaningful. But that still suggests that, it is only with the knowledge that the choice becomes meaningful. Even if we were to disagree with such an interpretation, it is still true that after gaining the knowledge that people continued to sin. This not only contrasts with the Socratic idea, but also with a lot of what Medievals thought about the relationship between knowledge and freedom (well the intellectualism side of the debate anyway, voluntarism seems more compatible).

What philosophers do you know grappled with this contrast? Between the Socratic view on virtue and the seemingly contradictory account that Genesis depicts? I'm especially wondering what Jewish philosophers thought of it, since it seems for Christians the easy response would come from the original sin doctrine, basically denying the Socratic idea. I'm specifically thinking of here philosophers directly grappling between the two, since this general issue about free will and knowledge has been debated a lot, but I don't think you have talked about any who directly contrast Genesis itself and Socrates

I have thought of another idea for topics you could cover in your episode 500 gap filling. It has been more than a decade since you have started this podcast, and obviously the academic study of the history of philosophy isn't just standing still while you are going through the long history of philosophy. So how about covering some gaps that weren't possible to cover but now we would be past the point of returning to. The main thing that comes to mind is the commentaries in the later eastern islamic tradition (actually this general idea came to me while re listening through some of the islamic world series). No other example comes to mind as of right now, other than just that there is probably some more material that has been discovered for ancient india (specifically for the origins series) and pre colonial africa. What do you think Peter?

I apologise for this idiotic question: who is the other sponsor, beyond King's  College London? I was not able to understand it. Thank you and congratulations for the podcast! 

Yours,

Bogdan Radu

Thank you very much for this very interesting series! I started the series "Classical Indian Philosophy" and I am very much inspired.
The episode "Brian Black on the Upanisads" (https://historyofphilosophy.net/upanisads-black) and the Preface to the book "Classical Indian Philosophy, A history of philosophy without any gaps, volume 5" led me to some reflections.
I interpret Brian Black as saying that we might miss important insights of a text because of our own hermeneutical classifications of the text:
1. Missing philosophical insight by classifying texts as religious: For example, when we classify the Upanishads as religious and as belonging to Hinduism, we might miss the material that is philosophically relevant in the text.
2. Missing religious aspects by classifying texts as philosophical: When we classify Plato as a philosopher, we might miss his religious views.

And as is written in the Preface to "Classical Indian Philosophy, A history of philosophy without any gaps, volume 5", page xi:

"To include, say, African oral traditions or Native American belief systems in a history of philosophy means being open to the idea that unusual bodies of evidence may be of interest to the historian of philosophy, for instance reports of traditional sayings or tales rather than discursive, argumentative treatises."

These thoughts have led me to the following reflections - the first two are the most relevant ones, I guess:

1. It would indeed be fascinating if one would take a philosophical perspective on such traditions like the Native American tradition(s). I checked if it already exists in the "A history of philosophy without any gaps"-series but it seems as if this is not the case.
2. It would also be very interesting if one could take such a perspective on ancient traditions in the West and in the Middle East themselves that, I reckon, have often been excluded and belittled either by the predominant religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam or by philosophy itself.
    1. So why not make a spin-off about Celtic, Persian, Germanic etc. belief systems in a history of philosophy?
    2. Why not unearth suppressed religious movements and analyze their philosophical relevance?
3. One could even take a philosophical perspective on these predominant religions themselves: reading the Quran, the Torah, the Bible and the linked literature and tradition (including the Kabbala) from a philosophical perspective. But I guess that this has in some ways already been covered by the series about the history of Western philosophy without any gaps.
4. Now, one could even apply this to fiction like Lord of the Rings, if one wants, I reckon: the possible world of Eä (the universe of the Lord of the Rings) as philosophically relevant?While it is common in Western philosophical texts to take inspirations from literature (Sci-Fi, ethical conundrums etc.), I don't immediately know how one could relate this to a spin-off for "The history of philosophy without any gaps"-Podcast . I may be just looking for a justification for reading "The Silmarillion" :)

In any case this series and this interview have inspired me to be even more open-minded when it comes to such texts and not to classify them as "ancient, pagan etc." or "religious" etc. at the exclusion of being philosophically relevant but as being expressions of human experience and thought, aiming to solve our deeply rooted metaphysical questions.

Hey Peter,

I recently started Classical Indian Philosophy and I am loving it! Can't wait for more India! As per usual, I have some questions regarding future episodes and installments of the series. (For the good of the other listeners, I probably should have asked my previous questions here rather than on the episode pages. Sorry guys!)

Regarding India... 

1. How many series do you plan on completing for India and what would be the general timeframes for each installment? 

2. Will Sikhism and other religions (besides those already covered and Islam) have any episodes devoted to them?

Regarding Africana...

Will other African political leaders be discussed? I really enjoyed the episodes on Nkrumah and Nyerere.

Regarding China...

Was Legalism influential after the fall of the Qin Dynasty? How much coverage will it need?

And in general...

How do you go about selecting cover art for the books? Which one is your favorite?

Just some idle wondering - how are you going to handle when science and philosophy become more autonomous from each other? So far, due to your expansive net of what falls under philosophy, everything science related has been followed so far I believe. And while that will remain true for a while still, at some point, unless we have a trivial understanding of what philosophy is, the nitty gritty of the ideas won't be too relevant to a philosophy podcast anymore, right? To give an example, I can imagine Alan Turing and his famous paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence being talked about because of its relation to the philosophy of mind, and maybe a sketch of what a Turing Machine due to its relation to computability (which I think is probably philosophically important, see pancomputationalism, but also because I can't imagine the negative result given to the Entscheidungsproblem being philosophically unimportant) but I don't imagine, other than the Turing Machine, the different models of computation being important, like Lambda Calculus. Or to give another example, despite being considered the most important problem in pure mathematics today, I can't imagine that the Riemann hypothesis has a place on a philosophy podcast.

As a side thing, this question came to mind when I was looking a bit into Graph Theory. The wikipedia page for the Seven Bridges of Königsberg Problem has this interesting section about the significance it had for philosophy, being that it was an example of a mathematical problem that wasn't about "measurements and calculations", which calls into question the Aristotelian view that maths is the "science of quantity" since the problem was more about structure, or something along those lines. Not exactly the most clear or defined question, but what is your view on that?

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Hi, is there a section with FAQ, if not, is there a timeline and order of the historical periods and regions the podcast plans to cover? 

Great series! 

I was having a look at your timeline and noticed that your previous series such as Italian Renaissance, India and Byzantine has a lot of thinkers without hyperlinks and I can't remember which episode you mentioned them or scrapped?  

I use the timeline to hop back to certain episodes and some of those thinkers don't have a hyperlink episode attached to them

For example for the Italian Renaissance section; 

https://historyofphilosophy.net/timeline-renaissance

1. Vittorino da Feltre

2. Gentile de' Becchi

3. Marcello Adriani

4. Agostino Steuco

5. Giulio Vanini 

6. Cesare Cremonini

7. Archangela Tarabotti

I'm guessing you will mention Tarabotti for 1600-1800 series instead? 

Byzantine series;

https://historyofphilosophy.net/timeline-byzantium

1. Symeon the New Theologian

2. Eustathios

3. Joseph Rhakendytes

4. Theodore Prodromos

Indian Series;

https://historyofphilosophy.net/timeline-india

1. Moggalaputra Tissa (was he scrapped?)

2. Āryadeva

3. Cīttalai Cāttaṉār

4. Tiruvaḷḷuvar (is he in for the Later Indian series?)

Peter,

What, no anouncement ?

https://nationaltoday.com/world-giraffe-day/

When/if you ever do get to Marx, I wonder/worry how you will handle him. Worry, because of the SEP page on Marxism. The SEP page on Marxism, for quite some significant parts says that it relies on G.A. Cohen's understanding of Marxism, which means that it relies on "analytical Marxism" for understanding Marx. While it does give reasons for why they did use Cohen, and I am not going to argue whether they are good reasons or not or if his interpretation of Marx/Marxism is correct or not, it is a way of understanding Marx that is A) very recent historically, B) explicitly goes against how a lot of philosophers (and on the ground Marxists) have understood Marx/Marxism. Why is what the SEP did in the Marx article relevant to why I am concerned for how the podcast will cover Marx? Well, if the SEP went with such an angle for understanding Marx, part of me wonders if this podcast will do the same when the time comes. A and B might not be too important for an SEP article, but for a podcast doing the history of philosophy they are. If analytical Marxism has enough sway to have the SEP prioritise their understanding, it might effect how the podcast will cover it, 

When will you be listing the the tentative list of episodes for Chinese Philosophy? you've announced this series nearly 5 years ago. How many scripted episodes are left for Africana and how many recorded interviews are left for Africana?

I love your podcast and have learned so much from it. I had already thought myself better-educated than the average bourgeois bohemian, who thinks religion is bunk and history began with the French Revolution and culminated in Marx. But I had no idea of the role of Byzantium in transmitting philosophy to the Arabs or the Italians, and shamefully had no idea of the Roman Empire as continuous through it. I also did not appreciate the extent to which philosophy today follows along lines laid down by Aristotle. I got a decent education in the moderns, but not much of the ancients. 

I think, however, you make an error in globalizing what you are calling philosophy, a misnomer for what are wisdom traditions that command respect as foundational of entire ways of life, but which are not at the origin of the sciences that have decisively transformed the world, and which began in ancient Greek thought. Czeslaw Milosz characterizes "that little peninsula" of Western Europe as having conquered the world through technology that has natural philosophy to thank for its emergence, and he does not shrink from the fact that he praises the West at Poland's expense, Copernicus notwithstanding. One commentator on your website argued that the Torah should be seen as "philosophy," as though it is not enough that we have originated monotheism and the ethics of billions of which it is the source, but must must claim everything as our own and allow nothing its distinctive privilege of being different. There is a kind of talking down to others and not believing what we are saying when we label wisdom traditions "philosophy." Besides, between you and me, the argument that the Torah is philosophy is a politically loaded argument aimed at that Western philosophy that is simply a reiteration of Christianity at a secular level, claiming a universalism that denigrates particularity of all kinds. This is an internal Jewish debate pitting liberal democracy against Jewish nationalism, but a leveling of all wisdom traditions into philosophy is an insult to particularity of another kind. (There is no "solution" to the question around which this internal Jewish debate turns.) Give credit where credit is due, I say. If every culture has labored to produce something of its own, the Greeks and the Western Europeans should not be robbed of this in the name of a misguided notion of equality. 

When hovering over the timelines button at the top of the website, it lists Renaissance twice

Hey Peter,

I just discovered a podcast called Robinson’s podcast and noticed that you were on in April re. a discussion of Plotinus and Porphyry (a current topic of interest for me, e.g. went back through the appropriate chapters in Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds before trying to plow through The Enneads). I was just curious as to why you didn’t do a blog post mentioning that (or I missed it), i.e. should I save that hour and half for plowing ? :-)

The link for the music you used for the Byzantine series is broken

Hi Peter, love the podcast but love the books even more! I haven't seen anything recently about the first Africana book; I'm assuming that's the only one even close to being published, but any news would be great!

Hey Peter,

I know this is still quite far away, but considering how never ending potentially this project this podcast is, what will happen when you feel or just can't continue it anymore? Maybe someone else will take over? Or will the podcast just stop?