Aesthetics and the Arts (Music, Painting, etc)
Posted on 20 March 2011
In his masterpiece the Republic, Plato describes the ideal city and draws a parallel between this city and the just soul, with the three classes of the city mirroring the three parts of the soul. Peter discusses this parallel and the historical context that may have influenced Plato's political thought.
Posted on 10 June 2012
Peter looks at the interaction between rhetoric and philosophy in the Roman Empire, discussing authors like Quintilian, Lucian and Themistius.
Posted on 23 September 2012
Anne Sheppard discusses ancient aesthetics, touching on poetry, visual art and music in thinkers from Plato to Proclus.
Posted on 16 June 2013
Peter turns DJ, with some actual music interspersed with discussion about theories of music in works by al-Kindī, the Brethren of Purity, and al-Fārābī.
Posted on 5 June 2016
Does medieval art tell us anything about medieval theories of aesthetics? Peter finds out from Andreas Speer.
Posted on 1 January 2017
Italy’s greatest poet Dante Alighieri was also a philosopher, as we learn from his Convivio and of course the Divine Comedy.
This episode is dedicated to John Kleiner, the inspirational teacher with whom I had my first experience reading Dante.
Posted on 14 May 2017
Bharata’s Nāṭya-Śāstra and later works from Kashmir explore the idea of rasa, an emotional response to drama, music, and poetry.
Posted on 11 February 2018
Jean Gerson’s role in the political disputes of his day, the spread of lay devotion and affective mysticism, and the debate over the Romance of the Rose initiated by Christine de Pizan.
Posted on 17 June 2018
Is it idolatry to venerate an icon of a saint, or of Christ? The dispute leads the Byzantines to ponder the relation between an image and its object.
Posted on 1 July 2018
John of Damascus helps to shape the Byzantine understanding of humankind and the veneration of images, despite living in Islamic territory.
Posted on 11 August 2018
Peter's twin brother Glenn Adamson discusses the philosophical implications of craft.
Posted on 4 November 2018
Psellos and other experts in rhetoric explore how this art of persuasion relates to philosophy.
Posted on 3 March 2019
An interview with Nkiru Nzegwu on matriarchy, sexuality, and gender fluidity in Africa (with a quick chat at the end about her work on African art).
Posted on 2 June 2019
When the Byzantine empire ended in 1453, philosophy in Greek did not end with it. In this episode we bring the story up to the 20th century.
Posted on 21 July 2019
Phillis Wheatley astonishes colonial Americans with her exquisite and precocious poetry and reflects on the liberating power of the imagination.
Posted on 15 September 2019
Ignatius Sancho and Benjamin Banneker make their mark on the history of Africana thought through letters that reflect on the power of sentiment.
Posted on 26 January 2020
Ficino describes a “Platonic” love purified of sexuality, prompting a debate carried on by Pico della Mirandola, Pietro Bembo, and Tullia d’Aragona.
Posted on 6 December 2020
The humanist study of Pythagoras, Archimedes and other ancient mathematicians goes hand in hand with the use of mathematics in painting and architecture.
Posted on 11 April 2021
For our finale of the Italian Renaissance series we're joined by Ingrid Rowland, to speak about art, philosophy, and persecution in Renaissance Rome.
Posted on 30 May 2021
The artistic flowering of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance raises important questions about identity and the purpose of art.
Posted on 13 June 2021
The aesthetics of Alain Locke and its basis in his theory of value judgments.
Posted on 27 June 2021
Leonard Harris explains how Locke's value theory was the basis for his aesthetics and theories of democracy and race.
Posted on 11 July 2021
From the latter half of the nineteenth century to the 1970s, African Americans only rarely obtain jobs as philosophy professors but bring distinctive perspectives to the profession.
Posted on 5 September 2021
Zora Neale Hurston’s interest in Africana folklore feeds into her great novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Posted on 19 September 2021
The career of the multi-talented activist and performer Paul Robeson, and the place of the Negro spiritual in the Harlem Renaissance.
Posted on 31 October 2021
Our first look at the emergence of the Negritude movement in Paris in the 1930s, with a focus on the early leadership of the Nardal sisters and Leon Damas.
Posted on 14 November 2021
Leopold Senghor compares different ways of knowing while developing his theory of Negritude and combining the roles of poet and politician.
Posted on 28 November 2021
Negritude thinkers Aimé and Suzanne Césaire embrace surrealism and reflect on the relationships between poetry, knowledge, and identity.
Posted on 26 December 2021
The Trinidadian historian and cultural critic C.L.R. James applies Marxist analysis to the Haitian Revolution, American cinema, and Shakespeare.
Posted on 6 March 2022
Ralph Ellison provides a new metaphor for the experience of racism in his Invisible Man and tackles topics of art and identity in his essays.
Posted on 20 March 2022
In The Fire Next Time and other writings, the essayist and novelist James Baldwin seeks to dispel the illusions surrounding racial and sexual difference.
Posted on 22 May 2022
We begin to look at philosophy in Renaissance France, beginning with humanists like Budé and the use of classical philosophy by poets du Bellay and Ronsard.
Posted on 17 July 2022
Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Julius Caesar Scaliger fuse Aristotelianism with humanism to address problems in logic and literary aesthetics.
Posted on 27 November 2022
African American literature of the late 1960s reflects the Black Power movement, in the works of such authors as Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Larry Neal, and Sonia Sanchez.
Posted on 5 March 2023
Sun Ra and Parliament-Funkadelic return to claim the pyramids, and Octavia Butler uses science fiction to confront the brutal past of slavery.
Thanks to Stephan Terre for the creation of the futuristic intro music!
Posted on 19 March 2023
How the Rastafari movement grew from trends within Africana philosophy, and then passed into global popular culture in the music of Bob Marley and other reggae artists.
Posted on 2 April 2023
The political and musical revolution of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, the social critique of his cousin, the playwright Wole Soyinka, and the extraordinary career of Fela's mother Funmilayo.
Posted on 23 April 2023
Humanism comes to England and Scotland, leading scholars like Thomas Eylot and Andrew Melville to rethink philosophical education.
Image: Queen Elizabeth's translation of Boethius
Posted on 21 May 2023
Toni Cade Bambara, the Combahee River Collective, and Awa Thiam critique white feminist and black nationalist failures to recognize the unique struggle of the black woman.
