Indian Philosophy! And the book and collage.

I just posted an announcement on the podcast feed. Here is the text in case you missed it:

I have some exciting announcements concerning the podcast. Actually, these are probably the two most exciting things that have happened in the history of the History of Philosophy podcast. One is that you can now buy the first of a series of books entitled A History of Philosophy Without any Gaps, which will I hope be appearing at regular intervals – once per year, with any luck. The first one is called Classical Philosophy, and is based on episodes 1 through 51 – so it covers Presocratic philosophy, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It is mostly a revised version of the scripted episodes on those topics, but I did write two new chapters for it, one on Plato’s Sophist and one on women in ancient philosophy. Also the chapters have added references to primary texts, to help you follow up on what I’m saying in the original sources, and extensive suggestions for secondary reading. It’s available from Oxford University Press – one easy way to get it is to go to the podcast website, www.historyofphilosophy.net, and click on the link at the top of the page. It is great for any gift-giving occasion and will look rather handsome next to your bed, on a coffee table, or propping up that window that would otherwise keep falling shut.

So that’s my suggestion in case you need to get anyone a present. My second announcement, by contrast, concerns the future. Listeners have often asked me whether I will ever do Indian and Chinese philosophy – after all, I do claim to be doing the history of philosophy “without any gaps.” I’d now like to reveal that the answer is yes. I will be doing a spin-off podcast on the history of classical Indian philosophy, with the help of one of the world’s leading scholars of the topic, Jonardon Ganeri. He and I are now working on the scripts for a series of episodes that will launch in late 2014 or early 2015, if all goes to plan. I’ll put up another announcement when that series begins. Since many listeners have said I shouldn’t take a long break from covering the European tradition, my plan is to keep going with developments in medieval and Renaissance philosophy in parallel to the episodes on the Indian tradition – and there will be two separate podcast feeds to keep the stories from getting jumbled together. I will hopefully tackle the Chinese tradition too at some point, though at the moment I only have concrete plans for India.

Finally, let me remind you about the History Podcasters collage project, which has now produced collaborative podcasts on three topics. For the most recent collage, on the topic of “Terrible Rulers,” I contributed a clip on Machiavelli and the question of whether he really advised rulers to be terrible, as his reputation would suggest. The next collage, which may already be up depending on when you listen to this, will be devoted to the theme of “Great Women in History,” and in that installment I’ll be discussing the pioneering feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft. I’m enjoying contributing to these collage episodes since they give me a chance to look at topics that are still far in the future for my main podcast. I’ve also enjoyed listening to the other contributors, and I hope you will too – it’s a good chance to discover other podcasts you might be interested in following. You can find it at www.historypodcasters.com, under “our podcast.”