Soul and the Self
Posted on
In the Phaedo, Plato depicts the death of Socrates, and argues for two of his most distinctive doctrines: the immortality of the soul and the theory of Forms.
Posted on
Peter tackles the De Anima (“On the Soul”), focusing on the definition of soul as the form of the body and Aristotle’s theory of sensation.
Posted on
Leading Hellenistic philosophy scholar Tony Long talks to Peter about the self, ethics and politics in the Stoics, Epicureans and Skeptics.
Posted on
We put the Philo in philosophy this week, as Philo of Alexandria reads the Bible through the lens of Middle Platonism.
Posted on
Plutarch, a major figure of early Imperial literature, was also a Platonist philosopher. He gives us insight into Platonism before Plotinus, and also the letter E.
Posted on
For Plotinus, Soul is on the border between the physical and intelligible realms. Can he convince us to identify ourselves with its highest part?
Posted on
Origen, greatest of the Greek Church Fathers, sets out a stunning theory of human redemption as he marries philosophical rigor to theological speculation.
Posted on
The Latin church fathers Tertullian, Lactantius, Jerome, and Ambrose discuss soul, ethics, and the dangers of Hellenic philosophy.
Posted on
Augustine’s life story is related in the Confessions, a work that combines autobiography, theology, and metaphysical discussions of the nature of time.
Posted on
Augustine explores the nature of the human mind in order to establish its similarity to, and dissimilarity from, the divine Trinity.
Posted on
Al-Kindī uses Hellenic materials to discuss the eternity of the world, divine attributes, and the nature of the soul.
Posted on
With his Flying Man argument, Avicenna explores self-awareness and the relation between soul and body.
Posted on
Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī makes up his own mind about physics and the soul, and along the way inaugurates a new style of doing philosophy.
Posted on
Suhrawardī, founder of the Illuminationist (ishrāqī) tradition, proposes a metaphysics of light on the basis of his theory of knowledge by presence.
Posted on
The Illuminationists carry on Suhrawardī’s critique of “Peripatetic” philosophy and wonder if they will be reborn as giraffes.
Posted on
Sajjad Rizvi talks to Peter about Mullā Ṣadrā's views on eternity, God's knowledge and the afterlife.
Posted on
John Blund and William of Auvergne draw on Aristotle and Avicenna to argue that the soul is immaterial and immortal.
Posted on
Peter Olivi proposes that awareness occurs not through passively being affected by things, but by actively paying attention to them.
Posted on
Robert Kilwardby is infamous for his ban on teaching certain philosophical ideas at Oxford, yet made contributions in logic and on the soul.
Posted on
The ancient texts known as the Upaniṣads claim to expose the hidden connections between things, including the self and the world.
Posted on
The god Indra seeks to learn the nature of his own self from another god, Prajāpati, and receives an answer worth waiting for.
Posted on
Therese Cory tells Peter what 13th century philosophers thought about self-awareness.
Posted on
Thomas Aquinas makes controversial claims concerning the unity of the soul and the empirical basis of human knowledge.
Posted on
Peter speaks to Rupert Gethin about the no-self theory, and its implications for Buddhist ethics and meditation practices.
Posted on
The founding text of the Vedānta school, the Vedānta- or Brahma-Sūtra, interprets the Upaniṣads as teaching that all things derive from brahman.
Posted on
Śaṅkara and his “non-dual” (Advaita) Vedānta, which teaches that only brahman is real, and the world of experience and individual self are mere illusion.
Posted on
The oldest treatise of Sāṃkhya enumerates the principles of the cosmos and of the human mind.
Posted on
Yoga as presented by Patañjali offers a practical complement to the Sāṃkhya theory of the cosmos and the self.
Posted on
A leading expert on the founding text of Yoga tells us why, when, and by whom it was written, and what it has to do with modern day yoga practice.
Posted on
Nyāya proposes that each of us has both a self and a mind, in addition to the body.
Posted on
Monima Chadha takes Peter through Buddhist-Hindu debates over mind and self.
Posted on
The Jain theory of standpoints or non-onesidedness (anekāntavāda) makes truth a matter of perspective.
Posted on
Vasubandhu’s path to Yogācāra Buddhism, a form of idealism which holds that nothing can be mind-independent.
Posted on
Martin Pickavé returns to the podcast to talk about theories of the emotions in Aquinas, Scotus and Wodeham.
Posted on
Dignāga argues that all perception is accompanied by self-awareness.
Posted on
Buddhaghosa, a major figure in the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, argues against the need for a self to control and coordinate mental activities.
Posted on
Three guests to celebrate 300 episodes! Rachel Barney, Christof Rapp, and Mark Kalderon join Peter to discuss the importance of ancient philosophy for today's philosophers.
Posted on
Peter King, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, and Russ Friedman discuss their approaches to medieval philosophy and its contemporary relevance.
Posted on
Demands for ma’at (justice or truth) and a confrontation with the soul, in the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant and Dispute Between a Man and his Ba.
Posted on
Teodros Kiros discusses his work in political philosophy and the history of Ethiopian philosophical thought.
Posted on
Traditional African ideas about personhood, which challenge assumptions about the relation between mind and body, self and other.
Posted on
Emphasis on the value of community as a major theme in African philosophy.
Posted on
Anton Wilhelm Amo, brought to Germany from his native Ghana, defends a rigorous dualism of mind and body. Was this philosophy connected to his African origins?
Posted on
Lorenzo Valla launches a furious attack on scholastic philosophy, favoring the resources of classical Latin.
Posted on
An interview with Sabrina Ebbersmeyer about the relation of emotion to reason and the body, and panpsychism, in the Renaissance.
Posted on
Marsilio Ficino’s revival of Platonism, with a focus on his proofs for the soul’s immortality in his magnum opus, the Platonic Theology.
Posted on
Pico della Mirandola and Giannozzo Manetti praise humans as the centerpiece of the created world. But what about the other animals?
Posted on
An interview with Cecilia Muratori, an expert on the surprisingly modern ideas about non-human animals that emerged in the Renaissance.
Posted on
Pietro Pomponazzi and Agostino Nifo debate the immortality of the soul and the cogency of Averroes’ theory of intellect.
Posted on
The polymath Girolamo Cardano explores medicine, mathematics, philosophy of mind, and the interpretation of dreams.
Posted on
Was the anti-Aristotelian natural philosophy of Bernardino Telesio and Tommaso Campanella the first modern physical theory?
Posted on
Trends in Aristotelian philosophy in northern and eastern Europe in the fifteenth century, featuring discussion of the “Wegestreit” and the nominalist theology of Gabriel Biel.
Posted on
In his Essays Montaigne uses wit, insight, and humanist training to tackle his favorite subject: Montaigne.
Posted on
Marie le Jars de Gourney, the “adoptive daughter” of Montaigne, lays claim to his legacy and argues for the equality of the sexes.
Posted on
How the Renaissance turn towards individual identity is reflected in Shakespeare's most famous play.
Posted on
Cajetan, Bañez and other thinkers make Aquinas a central figure of Counter-Reformation thought; we focus on their theories about analogy and the soul.
Posted on
We learn from Anna Tropia how Jesuit philosophy of mind broke new ground in the scholastic tradition.
Posted on
What does the Analects say about living as a human being? How are individuals embedded in society, and how do they develop their unique identities?
Posted on
To celebrate reaching 450 episodes, Peter looks at the philosophical resonance of two famous artworks from the turn of the 16th century: Dürer’s Self-Portrait and Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel.
Posted on
In the text that bears his name, Mengzi ("Mencius") holds that the human heart-mind is the wellspring of goodness.
Posted on
This is one in a series of podcasts on "German Philosophy and the World," recorded for the September 2024 Congress of the German Society of Philosophy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie).
This episode features Laura Langone, who is a Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher at the University of Verona, and looks at Schopenhauer's understanding of Indian philosophy, especially Buddhism.
Posted on
This is one in a series of podcasts on "German Philosophy and the World," recorded for the September 2024 Congress of the German Society of Philosophy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie).
This episode features Owen Ware, who is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, and looks at Indian philosophy and Yoga in German Romanticism.
