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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. 

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

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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'.

     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.

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!