Here is a new article I wrote for the New Statesman, about the role of authority and "thinking for yourself" in classical Islamic culture. It summarizes some of the themes of a book of mine that is coming out next year.
Posted on 5 June 2023
Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Alice Walker explore the themes of black feminism (or “womanism”) in their fiction.
Warning: this episode contains discussion of sexual violence and suicide.
Posted on 28 May 2023
Richard Hooker defends the religious and political settlement of Elizabethan England using rational arguments and appeals to the natural law.
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.
Posted on 14 May 2023
The evolution of ideas about kingship and the role of the “three estates” in 15th and 16th century England, with a focus on John Fortescue and Thomas Starkey.
Posted on 7 May 2023
What is the message of the famous, but elusive, work Utopia, and how can it be squared with the life of its author?
Posted on 30 April 2023
Pan-Africanist and Marxist historian Walter Rodney rethinks Black Power, engages with Rastafari, and opposes racial division in his home country of Guyana.
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 16 April 2023
Famous for his killing at the hands of the Apartheid government in South Africa, Steve Biko was also a deep thinker, who introduced the notion of Black Consciousness.
Posted on 9 April 2023
A leading expert on the history of the Reformation joins us to explain the very different stories of England and Scotland in the 16th century.
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.
Here is a new article I wrote for the New Statesman, about the role of authority and "thinking for yourself" in classical Islamic culture. It summarizes some of the themes of a book of mine that is coming out next year.
Some of you may remember that Prospect Magazine nominated me for the "world's top 50 thinkers 2021" list, because of the podcast; voting is now in and I finished fourth, unbelievably! Thanks to everyone who voted.
Here is a lovely review of my brother Glenn's "profound and engaging" new book on craft and American history, in the NY Review of Books!
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/08/19/knowing-how/?lp_txn_id=1267…
Just a quick note that as usual the podcast will be on break over August (though we have released a new episode today about Martin Luther, even though it is August 1, so the break will actually be shorter than usual). Service resumes on Sept 5 with an episode about Zora Neale Hurston.
Get in the spirit of our Reformation series by learning to insult people Luther's way! This website gives you randomly selected insults from his works - lots to choose from. Happily it looks like they skipped the anti-semitic material.
I'm pleased and, to be honest, a little flabbergasted to have made Prospect Magazine's list of "The world’s top 50 thinkers 2021":
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-worlds-top-50-thinkers-…
You can vote for me, or more reasonably, one of the other 49 nominees, at the same link.
Just to say I have appeared on the Slowdown podcast talking about how to form beliefs in response to authority; among other things we touch on the pandemic and what the history of philosophy can teach us about responding to it. These are themes I talk about more in a book that will appear with University of Notre Dame Press in 2022!
I can now announce that the new volume on Byzantium and Renaissance Philosophy will be out in February 2022! As if that weren't exciting enough, paperback versions of the volumes on Medieval Philosophy and Classical Indian Philosophy will both be out in January 2022. We can correct typos and errors that were in the hardback versions so if you spotted anything please let me know, you can do this by email: peter.adamson@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Many congratulations to HoPWaG co-author Chike Jeffers who has been awarded a Canada Research chair at his institution, Dalhousie University! The university says: "Dr.
Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at the LMU in Munich and at King's College London, takes listeners through the history of philosophy, "without any gaps." The series looks at the ideas, lives and historical context of the major philosophers as well as the lesser-known figures of the tradition.
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