Comments Page

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your commitment in building this website and your efforts to keep the content streaming. I think this is THE most erudite site on the internet, to cultivate our humanism, in the Renaissance use of the word. Your attention to detail, your fascinating story lines, your never-ending threads are incredible! You are, without question, the most influential philosopher of ancient and medieval discipline in our time. As a lover of classical Persian and ancient thought myself, I am just thrilled by this undertaking and the wealth of information I have learned from you. Your website is the ONLY one I have bookmarked on my computer and smart phone. Every other website is just drab advertising bedizened with pictures of a random Kardashian...

Thank you again for this. I would give anything just to know the titles on your bookshelf. What do you read? What has formed you as a scholar? What is your bookmarked website? How does one cultivate the intellect of a Peter Adamson? Where should our society turn to as we run away from social media, from selfies of dinner plates and YouTube cat videos that infest our collective thought? Here you have a website where Epicurus and Rumi can sit side by side. Why has this not been done before? How can we contribute so this can continue unfettered? Thanks the Leverhume Trust in seeing this value!

I have recommended your site to so many as an example that hope is not lost. That the library at Alexandria did not perish. I look periodically at your links and pray you can guide us to even more resources that can cultivate the garden of our mind, and realize the selfsame uniqueness of human thought. The other resources and links are no where near as valuable as the HOPWAG. But surely, you must know of other sites that feed your mind. I got a subscription to the Cambridge Companions Series (at your recommendation) for all their content, and still felt I learned more from your 22 minute podcasts.

I hope this posting does not smack of wanton hyperbole. Your website is inspiring and a tremendous service for philologists and philosophers alike. I believe very strongly in your endeavors and congratulate you for expanding our collective thought.

Best wishes
Bahman

Hi. I just wanted to let you know how much I've been enjoying the podcast. I only discovered it recently, and am currently in the Late Antiquity section (Plotinus). I sometimes listen to episodes more than once, to really absorb them. I particularly enjoy the interview shows. Hope it continues for quite a while. Thanks very much.

Is it me or the site gets targeted by spammers? I keep receiving mails about new comments by the fruitiest pseudos ever, and when I get there there is not any message... Am I the only one?

Dear Peter Adamson,

thanks for your insightful and amusing podcast! I enjoy the episodes very much.
Now for a question: I looked at your timeline for Islamic philosophy and wondered why you won't include Shah Wali Allah Dehlavi?

Regards!

Great work, much appreciated! I'd like to download all podcasts as MP3 to listen on my ipod. Is it possible to group them all as one or just a few downloads, so we don't need to save them individually?

Dear Peter,

My name is Father David Rivera and I thoroughly enjoy your podcast puns and all! It is part of my containing education. In seminary we covered a lot of the history of philosophy using Fr Frederick Cpoleston's books but I needed a refresher course. I managed to start and catch up to the latest podcasts in about three months. Thank you for your awesome work.

I am writing to you today because i receive the journal of The American Catholic Philosophical society. This years conference is on Aquinas and Arabian philosophy. I just thought that that might be of interest to you especially since your specialty is Philosophy in the Islamic world. Actually one of the last issues of the journal was on the intersection of philosophy and the Abrahamic religions.
Here is a link to the info on the workshop:

http://academic.mu.edu/taylorr/Aquinas_and_the_Arabs/Research_Seminar_C…

I am looking forward to your podcasts and the Medieval Latin world.

Sincerely,
Fr David

Ps

You said you are part of the Philosohers Collage project I can't find that podcast.

Peter-I've just posted a review of your book on Amazon (as Nigel PJ). As I make clear it's a great read! Thank you.

Early on you decided to ignore eastern philosophy in an effort to build a slightly more unified narrative of philosophical history, with a digression into Islamic philosophy because it is of particular interest to you. Fair enough and all, considering it's your podcast, but a suggestion for the years-distant future I'll leave you to consider: After catching us up to modern day, if you aren't well and truly sick of the podcast, go back and do the eastern philosophies. I'm vaguely aware of the tension between Taoism, Legalism, and Confucianism that existed in China around the Zhou Dynasty, but I'd love to hear an account without any gaps.

Dear Peter,

in your wonderfull podcasts you've dedicated some episodes to christian philosophers like Boethius and Augustine.

What i would like to know is whether you think it is reasonable to say that Jesus of Nazareth himself was a philosopher and Christianity a kind of philosophy. After all G.W.Bush, when he was asked in 2000 who his favourite philosopher was, answered: Jesus Christ. Was this just another Bush-lapsus or is it maybe not as stupid as it sounds?

So: is there maybe a gap in your history of philosophy when it comes to Jesus?

With kind regards,
a german atheist.

A day to celebrate Hiawatha,her existing sisters and and all other giraffes.

http://worldgiraffeday.org/

Peter,

Is it possible for you to add captions for the pictures featured on the website with some information about them. I think many are of particular historical interest but I'm not sure what some of them are.

-RW

Maybe this question is more appropriate for the History of Sociology, but are there any specific reasons why Stoicism and Epicureanism gave way to Neoplatonism in late antiquity? It seems a little odd to me. Was it wrapped up in the competition between paganism and Christianity? By the way, I'm looking forward to reading the book (which I pre-ordered).

For Dr Adamson and listeners:

New Books Network has an interview[1] which may be of interest: Marwa Elshakry[2] on "Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950"[3]. It's longer (58 min) than any HoPWaG episode; if that's a problem, IMHO the first 15 min are skippable (being mostly lit-crit-ical musings on the "nature" of reading and translation) but YMMV. After that are interesting (though philosophically mostly tantalizing) discussions on the assimilation of (in order of increasing generalization) Spencer, evolution, and Western science into Islamic[4] philosophy, science, and politics of that period.

There are all-too-brief mentions of how some philosophers of the period sought to assimilate evolution into (e.g.) emanationism and rationalist kalām. Perhaps when/if Dr Adamson arrives at the latter 19th century (only 700 years to go !-) he might interview Elshakry in more detail on these subjects.

[1]: http://files.newbooksnetwork.com/scitechsoc/074scitechsocelshakry.mp3
[2]: http://history.columbia.edu/faculty/Elshakry.html
[3]: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo15357214.html
[4]: Note that, from the interview, it appears Elshakry's focus is mostly limited to Egypt and the Levant.

I'm so glad you released these in book form! I have serious trouble listening to the podcast, because it is so well-done and so interesting that whenever you say anything, I start to think about it. And then, I find I've been daydreaming and have missed the last ten minutes of podcast. I must've listened to some of the Plotinus ones about five times. So with the book, I can finally absorb these at my own pace. So thanks for that! It is of course excellent.

Incidentally, when do you think the second book might be published? At the rate I'm tearing through the first one, I'll be finished pretty fast.

This question may be too far outside your domain, but it's certainly related, so perhaps you can address something that's been bugging me for awhile:

For years I've heard and read that faction formation in Islam derives from leadership disputes. The Shia/Sunni split is the paradigm case, but, as you described in show# 176, there are several others. Yet you also seem to suggest, and my other readings seem to agree, that these factions (e.g., the Ismāʿīlīs) are at least associated with significant philosophical/theological differences. So the "Islamic flow" seems to be leadership dispute -> faction formation -> doctrinal dispute.

By contrast, from what I know of the history of Christian doctrines (which is a helluva lot more than I know about Islam), it seems like Christian faction formation is driven by differences in doctrine, ranging from major (paradigm=the Reformation) or (more often) minor (e.g., any of many Trinitiarian disputes). These ideological differences nucleate factions, producing new leadership (of the resulting new factions). In addition to this being apparently empirically factual, this "kinda makes sense" to me: people with differing views tend to split. Again by contrast, Christian history (esp medieval/early-modern) has many leadership disputes to which the adjective "merely" is well-applied (e.g., Avignon papacies, Italian inter-family contests), notably because they *don't* involve or produce doctrinal dispute. This also accords with common-sense social psychology: splitting is often, probably usually, non-ideological. (The paradigm case here being the People's Front of Judea vs the Judean People's Front :-) Thus the "Christian flow" seems to be doctrinal dispute -> faction formation -> separate leadership.

Sooo ... why the difference? Or am I perceiving a non-existent difference? (And if so, how am I perceiving the non-existent ?-) If not non-existent (and presuming the non-non-existent exists :-) this seems especially odd since, as you have also noted, medieval Islamists can also do major-league hairsplitting. Why doesn't doctrinal dispute drive factionalization in Islam rather than leadership dispute?

One of the funniest comedians from the silent film era, Frank Joseph "Buster" Keaton, was a 40th Division veteran of World War I.
Along with such other greats as Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, Keaton was among the greats of his time at making people laugh. He started at the age of four in his families’ touring vaudeville act, and learning the rough and tumble trade that silent films required of their male comedians.

Buster had just started in the film business at the age of 18, when he was called into service with the infantry, but somewhere along the way, was switched over to the Signal Corps for training at Camp Kearney, near San Diego. Army life was tough on Buster.

In his autobiography My Wonderful World of Slapstick, Keaton said, "I resented my uniform, which made me look and feel ridiculous. Apparently, the quartermaster general had never anticipated that anyone under five foot five inches tall would be allowed to join the United States Army.

My pants were too long, my coast looked like a sack, and wrapping Army puttees around my legs was a trick I never mastered. The size eight shoes handed me were far too big for my size 6 1/2 feet. Old-timers in our outfit had long given up hope of ever getting uniforms that fit them. They had theirs altered at civilian tailor shops.

Hello Peter,
First of all let me be fair. I have gained much from the pod casts. My life is the richer for it but, unfortunately, several bookcases later my bookcases are groaning. However, after the atrocious behaviour of the Sudanese Government and Boko Haram I listened again to some of the earlier pod casts and heard Aristotle criticised for support of slavery and Christian fathers for unfortunate positions on the equality of women in the church. I have not heard similar criticisms in the Islamic episodes. There was a warning that Ash'arism maybe distasteful. However, is it not a failure of all Islamic philosophy that it has not managed to overcome slavery, the subjection of women, religious violence and murder in the name of Islam? I cannot listen to the more recent episodes without thinking why such a rich intellectual project should have been so ineffectual. I think this has to be recognised.

Dear Peter
I listen to all your podcasts and I learn a lot - specially about the Arabic philosophers. I did not know about them and about their topics - a new world for me.
thanks a lot for your podcast!

This is such a great project and an overwhelming undertaking. Thank you for taking the time to do this! Cheers!

There are no seeders for 15-33, and your tech support email form link is a 404.
Otherwise, Thanks for the series! I do wish that each episode were a bit longer, but this is so monumental a task I am impressed that you are going into even this much detail... I could go on and on about what I like, but your time is better spent preparing for the next episode. This is going to keep you busy for a long time.

Dr. Adamson,

I really wanted to thank you for these podcasts. Getting my BA in philosophy, my Ancient Philosophy professor made listening to your podcasts a requirement for our homework assignments. I am ever grateful she did. Not only did it give us other interpretations of ancient texts to hear, but it also gave me a great resource to use in later classes as refreshers, or in help writing papers. I hope to continue my quest through academia and eventually receive my Ph.D in philosophy. I hope to teach as well, and if in that many years, your website is still up and running, I will follow in my professor's footsteps and encourage my students to listen to you.

Hey Dr. Adamson, long time listener first time caller etc. just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of people thanking you for this podcast as it's helped me reinvigorate my love for philosophy and its history. It's hard to find stuff out there that's not only passionate and entertaining but which also comes from a deep wellspring of personal knowledge and research. Most importantly, the willingness exhibited here to dig in many different corners of the history of thought with excitement and sympathy, to engage earnestly and without condescension in proto-scientific theories, obscure cosmologies, and early Islamic philosophy of law makes me really excited, as is your continued push back against people who broadly dismiss entire eras of thought (such as Neo-Platonism and Islamic philosophy after al-Ghazali)and I can only hope this helps inspire others out there in the podcasting world to take a similar approach.

To keep this from just being a love-fest there are a couple of questions that have come up from following your podcast:
1. How many languages can you speak/read? As someone struggling through German right now it's fairly impressive that you seem to at least have working knowledge of 2 or 3 languages other than English!

2. If I read your sketch for upcoming episodes in this series correctly there's going to be a single episode on 20th century philosophy from the middle east. Is there really such a paucity of recent work there that it only deserves a single episode?

Thanks again

Are you guys gonna do Ibn Ezra at any point? I haven't been able to find an episode on him yet. His method of interpreting scripture, in contrast with Maimonides', may prove rewarding when the time comes to cover Spinoza (especially if you guys want to talk about the theological thesis of the Tractatus).

Love your stuff!

Dr. Adamson I am enjoying the podcast (naturally) and am also enjoying the blog posts of philosophy in children's literature. I was wondering if you could tell me what kind of philosophy is being used in the Charlie Brown comic strip I am linking to? http://fantagraphics.tumblr.com/post/70215022778/find-this-strip-in-the…

Hi, I've recently come across your podcast in looking for something to help me get a grasp on philosophy in general. Through some of my other interests, I've started hearing a lot of new terms and wanted to learn more about their significance. I started at Episode 1 a couple of weeks ago and I'm into the 'Aristotle' episodes now, and I've really enjoyed getting to know more about this topic and these great philosophers I've only ever just heard about. I'm also looking forward to your book coming out and hope to purchase it as way to support you and 'pay' for the free History of Philosophy lessons I've been getting through the show.

Thanks.

Hi,

I've recently discovered the podcasts and just caught up, it's been very enjoyable (and educational, I'm an engineer, unfortunately they don't teach this stuff in technical schools).

About Strauss's point on reading between the lines (which I didn't know about until you mentioned it a few episodes ago), I'm glad you said something, because I found it to be missing in some of the past episodes (especially the persian side of the islamic world, which is where I was raised). Although nowadays in the free world it's hard to imagine that someone would say something s/he doesn't mean, when there is a real threat it becomes a fact of life. For example, right now there are iranian religious thinkers that insist they believe in the political rule by a religious leader (velayate faghih), but people don't believe them, even if they write books about it (the rule is, if you are not a mullah you have to pretend to be even more religious to survive). 500 years later if the podcast is still going you will ignore that very important aspect of their ideology (I'm hoping we'll fix the mortality issue sometime soon). Or a more obnoxious example, you would call a philosopher from North Korea a believer in Kim Jong-Il's divineness :)

My point is, it's not a small thing. It's a huge thing, and the more violent a regime, the more important and widespread it is, and the contemporaries also know about it. Plato had it easy imo, it seems like politicians didn't know the importance of censorship before he made the case for it (yes, I'm bitter about that).

And finally, does it matter to the history of philosophy what these people actually thought (or admitting that we may not know what they really thought), or are we only talking about how philosophy evolved? Either way, I feel bad for them for being misunderstood, and not on random topics, but perhaps the very ideas that were forced upon them.

Thanks,
Dorna

I'm not at all a Christian or a believer, but why haven't you covered the philosophy of the New Testament itself? It seems weird that you spend half a dozen episodes on Augustine and not a single episode on Paul or Jesus? There is definitely philosophy happening in the New Testament -- don't you think it would be valuable to put them in the context of the times? (comparing Jesus and the Cynics, for example)

Hi Peter,

My main question is about the future. Do you have a tentative list of philosophers you intend to cover as we go forward, particularly the more obscure ones, so that an inquisitive sort like myself might be able to investigate them a little beforehand?

Secondly, I happen to notice that we have already advanced in time well beyond the life of Aquinas and with Abravanel we are very close to the fall of Granada. Does this mean we are close to a transition to the European philosophers and will we be going back in time to capture those we've passed?

Hello Peter,

Could you please add a separate link or links to the music in all the podcasts so far? Perhaps they can go in the links page. And thanks for beings so awesome and moderately humorous!

While this week's episode (168) was interesting, I gotta wonder ...

If you're gonna do the history of world philosophy (including China and India, not just Europe and the Islamic world) "without any gaps," by yourself, shouldn't you be thinking about the opportunity cost of spending time on topics that, IMHO, seem quite marginal philosophically, like the Kabbalah, Iamblichus, every world culture's version of alchemy, usw?

Peter,

Just finished listening to the episode on Crescas (which was great). But there is a terrible moment starting to loom. The time when the seemingly infinite supply of philosophy that has been a very special part of my life over the past few months will not be there anymore. I decided to try to slow down in the last few days to ease myself into the new regime - a type of asymptote, I guess - but I have not been too successful. I can't resist the next episode.

Neverthess I Iook forward the sweep of wonderful philosophy to come and to the thought that there is probably something special too in experiencing it in real time - well, podcast real time.

Thanks enormously for your podcast. I marvel at what you have taken on and achieved so far. I knew a little ancient philosophy (as well as some more modern stuff) through my own reading, but the Islamic world was real eye opener for me. That has been very special.

I work as a climate change scientist, and you have also helped me to realise the one of the problems I have been tackling lately has a strong philosophical angle (scientific knowledge of the future is a curious beast). I hope to find time to pursue some thoughts of mine that I wouldn't have had without your podcast.

Congratulations again for an amazing achievement.

Cheers

Penny

This podcast is a great introduction to philosophy as I wanted to learn about ancient philosophers is a timeline and you do an excellent job of summarizing their ideas. I am glad that this podcast exists. Thank you!

Hi. Sorry for using comments for this, but I've not heard a single of my favorite podcast since the new year. I appear to be subscribed is iTunes and I use the apple podcast app. It's there, but nothing ever downloads. Ever. This only happens on this podcast. I do have the newer one linked (with the new logo) but... nothing. Did something change around the new year? Anybody else have this issue? I can't beat it and am about to throw up my hands and give up. Any help would be hugely appreciated. Thanks.

I notice that you are a graduate of Williams College. I want to suggest an update of James A Garfield's definition of an ideal college: Let's make it, "Peter Adamson at one end of a blog and the student at the other."

Thank you so much for your terrific lectures. I've learned a ton, both in terms of content, and in those rare instances where you've treated figures I know fairly well myself, I've still found myself thinking, "Oh, what a clever way to present that aspect of so-and-so's thought."

I'm now at a university that wants faculty to put more and more lectures on-line, so I wondered if I could ask a mundane question: what application do you use to record and edit your podcasts? Do you use the same app for the "studio" podcasts and for the interviews?

Thanks!
Jeremy

Good on the History of Philosophy podcast! This is what should be done with the computer. This is what should be done with podcasting.

You probably get this a lot, but I just wanted to add to the likely large collection of notes of appreciation to you for sharing this podcast, and for what I just discovered is your active participation in the comments section with people. I can't imagine how you manage all of this while being a Professor at the same time - seems amazing. Anyway, great job, it makes my commute to work so much better, and seems to help with life in general.

Dear Prof.Admanson,

I am a high school freshman in america who has been eagerly listening to your podcasts for several months now. I am very interested in philosophy however I am not able to take it in school nor have anyone willing to help me learn about it. I really want to participate in a philosophical discussion or just attend a lecture. Are there any people or institutions you can think of that I could participate in?

Thanks!

Hello Professor Adamson. I am very new to this page and just an amature who is interested in politics and philosophy. By profession I am an engineer. I must say that I was blown away by the huge number of lectures provided on philosophy by this website. It's really a remarkable job. I can spend some years by listening to all of the lectures. Keep up the good work. :)

The total number of lectures are devided in three parts; Classical Later Antiquity and Islamic World. My question is that how many parts are still to come after the Islamic World part and what will be their names?

And before the classical era was there not any other era when philosophers were present and philosophy was studied and taught by learned men of their age? Or was this field not that much developed before the classical era? Sorry for asking such a basic question.

Prof. Adamson, I'm an engineer student, but have a dirty pleasure; I read philosophy whenever I'm not doing homework (or sometimes when I need to be doing homework) for my college courses. My comment today is about your experiences with reading philosophy texts in their original language: I have this deep desire to be able to read text in their original language one day.
I'm currently learning French in my spare time and hope to add German, Latin, and Ancient Greek to my arsenal as time allows. Do you have any tips or possibly some advice in taking the proper steps to actually accomplish this goal?
I actually just bought P.J. Proudhon's "What is Porperty?" in its original French print and was going to attempt a loose translation to get my feet wet. Do you see this as a good step in the right direction or should I back up and approach it from another angle?

In episode 160 you say that Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher with the possible exception of Spinoza. This puzzles, since (IIUC) Spinoza was expelled from the Amsterdam shul for having repudiated Judaism, then from Amsterdam for being an atheist. (Some quibble with the latter charge, but, let's face it, if God is everything then God is nothing. And if God is a ham sandwich, kashrut is toast :-)

Perhaps you were using "Jewish" to denote ethnicity rather than religion? But then does not Portuguese (his mother tongue) have more claim on him? As an atheist of Azorean descent, I say, unhand Spinoza !-)

Hi, I know there's a ton of good secondary literature on Plato's Republic, but can anyone recommend a book length study on Republic book VII?

Hi, I am so confused whenever you talk about matter and form, or genus and species. Where are the first episodes where you explain what these terms mean in philosophy and explain the arguments for the distinction between matter and form?

Those of us more steeped in the European tradition believe (hopefully with justification :-) there was an early modern turn in philosophy of science. IIUC the standard story (which I may not--I study environmental modeling, not philosophy), the "first stage" is a long, slow (largely pre-modern) increase in emphasis on empirical/inductive knowledge, extending from Aristotle (and Philoponus' criticism thereof) and Galen, continuing with people like al-Haytham, ibn-Sina/Avicenna, Roger Bacon. Then--in Europe--there's a faster "second stage" (roughly 1450-1650) featuring an increasing recognition of the pragmatic power of mathematicization (e.g., Galileo), and of the newly-available instruments (Galileo again), and of the relative sterility of existence/essence discourse, deduction, etc. Eventually you get folks like Francis Bacon synthesizing and selling the lot, uptake by learned societies, and the (western) Europeans are "off to the races." (Stage 3 being scientific revolution, Industrial Revolution, world domination, etc.)

You've definitely covered some Islamic-world contributions to the first stage. I'm wondering, is there anything like an endogenous second stage in the Islamic world? or do they only "get there" in reaction to the third stage? (As seen in, e.g., Meiji Japan: "we're getting our butts kicked! time to suss out this science stuff.") If the former, is this something you'll get to? Or is this line of questioning fundamentally wrong-headed, and I'm missing something prior/major?