Comments Page

I enjoy your podcast very much and also you are done with Arabic and Jewish philosophy. I thought I add this tidbit.
I just learned on a forgotten book you might be interested in. It is an encyclopedia written by Moshe ben Yehuda (1353-1356) on physics, Aristotelian metaphysics and Jewish thought. The name can be translated as "Love with Delights", perhaps this is why it was forgotten.
"Ahavah ba-Ta'anugim: A Fourteenth-Century Encyclopedia of Science and Theology," in Steven Harvey, ed., The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 429-440.
A commentary on the first 7 articles that deals with physics was published by Esthy Eisenman by Magnes Press The Hebrew University Jerusalem.

Hi Peter,

I just listened to your podcasts 135 and 136 (taking it in slowly and from the beginning to cherish it more) and I was wondering if you could recommend any further ressources about the reception of aristotelian and neo platonist thought in persian philosophy and culture? Maybe even something in German? I would very much appreciate that.

Please keep up the excellent work!

Constantin

I've discovered your podcast recently and I'm really enjoying it. My major was in Literature, so it's also helping me contextualize many things I've learned. Thank you, Gustavo Brunetti

Hi, I added the timeline for the Medieval period. (I used the birth/death dates from Wikipedia, which agree with the death dates listed here.) Available here: http://hyperjeff.net/temp/nogaps/

Thank you for making and publishing these podcasts. I am a PhD student in chemistry who loves philosophy, but I have no time to take a course in the field. These podcasts are like taking a class with an eloquent lecturer, but I can listen to them while doing lab work or traveling to conferences. Thank you, again, for producing these podcasts.
Jamie

Hello,

I am just wondering if you were willing to go back to your section on the late antiquity do an episode on Syriac literature. From 4th to 10th century AD, Syrian Aramaic was a major scholarly language and there was a flowering of Christian theology, philosophy and poetry that prefigured and laid the groundwork for the development of Classical Arabic as both a scholarly and poetic language. The Arabs got their Greek texts translated into Arabic from their Christian Syrian subjects who had a scholarly culture of continuing the Greek traditions of science, philosophy and theology. Although this is where I am getting my information from (http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/oriental/syriac.htm), I am sure you can find more updated sources and thoroughly authenticated information.

One of the reasons I ask is that in studying the history of philosophy, one gets the idea that philosophical and theological scholarship dies in Europe and the middle east circa 4th century AD (much in a similar way that you have debunked that Islamic scholaship dies with Al-Ghazali) and that Islamic scholars miraculously revive the greek tradition of scholarship and all of a sudden have this beautiful classical Arabic to write eloquent prose and poetry in.

I would really appreciate if you could close this gap in philosophy.

Hi Peter, thanks for your excellent podcast! I wanted to ask you if have any plans to dedicate an episode to music in the Medieval West, as you did for the Islamic world. I'm thinking mainly of Gregorian chant, but there's also Ambrosian or Mozarabic, and also other non-religious musical traditions to consider. There's also stuff relating to specific people who I know you will be treating, like St. Hildegard of Bingen, who was a noted composer. It would be really interesting to hear your take on the intellectual background and context for the devlopment of music in the Middle Ages (and also, if you plan to make podcasts on music or the arts a feature of the podcast for future ages, too). Thanks!

I've just finished your series on the pre-socratics, and I have to say: great work! Your accessible style and sense of humor make the topic very easy to digest. Thanks again.

Have you discussed counterfactual property, in any of the podcasts and; if so, which ones? Happy that Arsenal & City moved on to the knockout phase of the Champions League in the New Year; so that they cannot focus all of their attention on the Premier League, but it may not matter by then. (U.S Chelsea Fan)

Dear Professor Adamson,
I just wanted to thank you for the work you have done here putting these podcasts together. I discovered you 8 months ago and listen to your output again and again on evenings and during my commutes. I was working at the UN in Rome and had a long commute on the trains. I am back in the U.S. I hold no philosophy degree (BS in Accounting) but have found your podcasts in plain enough language for me to understand and enjoy...the jokes as well:).
At any rate, thanks for the content and knowledge.
Cheers.

I'm loving this podcast, and I greatly appreciate the clarity of presentation and the inclusion of a bibliography. I'm wondering if you will be including any eastern philosophy? Confucianism, Taoism, and the like?

I just wanted to comment that I love your podcast, The History of Philosophy without any gaffs. I enjoy the writing, the humour and the mix of guests. The only problem is that I have been listening at the rate of 2 per day, which makes me a little bit anxious about the future. Thanks again for The History of Philosophy without kneecaps.

I really enjoy your podcast, thank you so much for your effort!

I have a quick query, and I hope you can help me. I'm a biologist involved in science popularization and I'm preparing a post about sex determination. I need to know if Thomas Aquinas really said that female was a "mas occasionatus", and I cannot wait until Aquinas episode, so I would appreciate if you could just confirm that.

Thanks!

Thanks for the podcast. I enjoyed your article and agree with you. I think academics underestimate how interesting they can be. Radiolab surprised everyone by treating scientists as interesting. That same sort of magic could boost philosophy.

I give a handout to all my students that lists podcasts and on-line lectures they should consider. I love the medium.

Anyway here's a picture of a Giraffe as seen by a pigeon.

http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1461

Why is there no non-Western philosophy other than Islam on this blog? What about the philosophy that is derived from buddhist, hindu, jain, tao, etc. scholars?

Hi , Thanks for the great lecture series !
I was just wondering if you would do a new series on ancient eastern philosophy ( i.e., Zoroastrian , Taoist , Buddhist , Manichaeist , ... )

Hi Peter,

Recently I've begun reading with much relish Proclus' Commentary on the Parmenides. Not that I'm an expert, but it seems like in the past few decades there's been some significant effort to translate neoplatonic works into English--especially as of recent, what with Parmenides Publishing doing their series on Plotinus and the commentaries on Aristotle coming out. I'm curious, do you know if there's any interest in translating and publishing Proclus' essays on the Republic? Given the (relative) name recognition the Republic has, it seems like such a work would be an easier sell than, say, a commentary on the Elements.

I know that you've dealt with the general concern for the production of transcriptions to everyone, but I was wondering - would you mind if I personally transcribed these podcasts for myself and friends so that we can re-visit them via text as well as audio? I have a lot of trouble sometimes following along when it is audio, and it is quite unbearable for me to sit still and simply listen to a podcast. If I have the transcript in front of me, I become more involved and retain a lot more information that way. Thank you.

Congratulations on the podcast. I really enjoy it. At least once on the week i try to listen to one episode.
Thank you for putting something like this at diposal of everyone.
Fist time i tried to read a plato book, it was a little boring, but now with all the discussion, and ideas do search on the books, the reading are more pleasant.
Well thank you again for putting together such a nice podcast.

Hey man please! Do a Podcast on Omar Khayyám
After all its HOPWithoutGaps
Plus Many Thanks For The Other Stuff
I'll be looking forward

Is there a way to subscribe to the blog via RSS?

Hi Peter,

I was wondering which histories you've found particularly useful for this series? And which histories you might recommend? I'm sampling a few at the moment before committing. I've tried Russell's, but found it far too discursive; Kenny's, which is decent but perhaps a little too cursory; and Copleston's, which is good, but perhaps a little too technical, and it annoyingly doesn't translate Greek or Latin passages.

Apologies as I'm sure you've covered this question before -- which brings me to a secondary question. Might you consider a bit of a rejig of the website? It's a bit weirdly organised and hard to navigate at the moment. You've probably answered questions like this before in the big comments page, so a permanent FAQ page might serve better? Maybe there is an FAQ page or a resources page, but I can't find it. The drop-down menus for the episodes are also something of a pain (and something of an internet anachronism...); not that I want to tell you how to organise your own site of course, but it might be better to have a static version; basing the site around a central static hub which links to a separate page for each section, each section then linking to a page for each episode? I say this mainly because the site is currently impossible (literally) to navigate on mobile devices, which generally can't handle dynamic elements.

what philosophers do you feel the 20-60 minute episode structure most constrained? which author would be most helped by reading a book on him instead of the short articles.

Plato and aristotle don't count.

ps your episode on al Farabi helped me. Thanks for that.

will you continue on up into the prsent covering all the major philosophers after the middle ages? I would love to hear some stuff on guys like Decarte and Berkeley. 

i'm a huge fan and i really admire your podcasts 
it will be nice though if you could upload notes or diagrams with each podcast  , so that  it will be easier to keep the main points in memory for longer time

I'd like to point out to your listeners that a large number of Buster Keaton films/shorts/ads, including The General, are available for download at archive.org.

I'm still very much enjoying the podcast.  And still trying to model my behaviour after Diogenes the Cynic, only more wolfish.  Probably would make a great short.

Hi Peter,

Thank you so much for making all this great information freely available. It's great to be able to listen to such a systematic presentation of the history of philosophy :D.

I was wondering if you had given any thought to placing the content under a Creative Commons License; ideally, a CC-BY-SA?

Also, I'd like to second the request to see a more systematic treatment of the Syriac period (http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/comment/reply/50/4161).

The philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics is definitely explored in both Coptic and Syriac culture during a period when it's in decline in the Western Empire.

The so-called "Dark Ages" weren't so dark for the Eastern Empire, and unfortunately it's really hard to find any systematic treatment of philosophy in the Coptic or Syraic literature.

Thank you again for all your hard work!

Or, "on the depth and beauty of these podcasts": just an honest, sincere "congratulations". I am an Art student, but I studied philosophy in high school and I intend to keep on studying it on a very serious level despite my different university path. And I am amused by how accurate, concise and compelling these podcasts are. Collecting informations and materials to study philosophy on a self-taught basis is quite hard, but here I feel at home. I must say, as a foreigner, I sometimes feel like the english approach to philosophy is somewhat biased and approximated, simplistic even; but your work, although being easily understandable, is yet precise and articulated, and I really enjoy listening to it. You are truly capable of giving a new yet complete perspective on philosophers. When I first discovered this, I immediately "tested" your way of explaining them by listening to podcasts about philosophers which I was familiar with; and I was quite happily impressed. I even discovered things I didn't know about them. And so the decision was made, the judgment confirmed: this has the makings of greatness.
A small note could be made on the musical intro which does not quite match with the delightful nature of the podcasts; I would suggest a better, more proper tune, something that could be a trademark, even. A recognisable mark. But that is just an accessory. As for the philosophers and how they are exposed, I must express my most honest gratitude and appreciation. I look forward to the next podcasts, and I am truly glad when I imagine myself growing through the years with this trustable companion in my ears, telling me all about those good ol' fellas thinking and thinking about life and men and everything in the world.
Many, many thanks, out of the heart. 
Marco Maldonato

Thank you Peter for introducing me to Jamie Jeffers' British History Podcast. Listening to him, I am reminded of an iTunesU course, delivered in podcast format, that I have listened to called The Story of Psychology, by Todd Daniel. Since you mentioned how much you enjoyed Jamie's podcast I thought you might enjoy Professor Todd as well. Thanks again.

RW

Hello Peter, 

I've been a long time listener and finally decided to show some love for the podcast on this page. Your attention to detail, while making complex systems of thought easy to understand to average listener is unmatched. It is because of this podcast that I started to delve deeper into texts outside of the "philosophy 101" canon. Keep up the good work, sir! 

By the way, that last interview episode with Sharyn, Jamie, and Robin was excellent! I always enjoy listening to the episodes where my favorite history podcasters get together to discuss various topics. 

Speaking of ataraxia...

As I was writing a presecription for hydroxyzine for a patient I realised, thanks to your podcasts, that the medication's brand name, Atarax, was especially appropriate. We use Atarax to treat itching.

Do you think there was a philosopher in the Pfizer marketing department?

Fr Edmund OCist over at sancrucensis.wordpress.com dropped a line about this podcast somewhere recently. Now, a week later, I've completed the first 33 episodes, all while driving. Thank you so much for this podcast. It is wonderful to reconnect with all those great texts. Content, humor and narration make me look forward to the next long drive. How good I'll have some big miles tomorrow. So onward to Aristotle it is for me :-)

Again, thank you for this offering.

Hello , it's good to find your page. I have seen the issues addressed, but I can not find anything about Eastern philosophy, preferably from India. Do you think post something about this subject? Greetings.

since i'm here i obviously love your podcasts. just dropping a line to let you know that i love your inclusion of primary and secondary sources with each podcast. only dipped into a few but it's incredibly useful for that next step. 

keep on being the gold standard of history podcasters (also is there anywhere other than the facebook history podcasters page that i'm missing?

I see your a participant on a recent IOT on Al Ghazali yet i didn't see you advertise it here at all. can you post a thing on the blog at least to let us know when you're involved in these things. While it is self promotion it is useful.

First of all, Peter, I think your podcasts are terrific. Highly entertaining, yet thought provoking, educational and inspirational. As a matter of fact, I decided to go for Socratic questioning when a random person in a pub started to talk to me about conspiracy theories. After 30 minutes the person got really annoyed with me, especially when I mentioned to him that intelligent people are always full of doubt, yet stupid people are always full of confidence. I had a great evening.

Peter,

I have been an avid listener of your podcast since its inception and am currently reading your book, Classical Philosophy which I will most likely finish this week.  When will the next book in the series be released?  

Thank you,

Hello Peter,

Glad to discover your blog and will be doing much reading.

Meanwhile, I caught the comment on Daily Nous about your interest in the lack of progress of philsophy. If you ever do get around to delving into this topic I would very much enjoy the chance to contribute my opinions. It is a hobby-horse of mine, the failure of western academic philosophy and its causes, and I do hope you pursue the issue. It's time somebody did so and I hope some healthy grants are available. With luck such a study should lead to progress. Anyway, just registering my interest.  

Regards

Peter

Dear Peter,

My friend turned me onto HoP about a year ago and I'm almost caught up (currently at Episode 190). I love this podcast! I wanted to let you know that my daughter, who is currently a year old, and I have been listening to you on our commute. Any guesses at to what her favorite stuffed animal is? She loves here stuffed pink giraffe! I just wanted to let you know.

Also, in episode 188 or so, you mention a "spin off podcast" about the history of India and China. Is that still in the works?

Thanks,

Kirk

Mr. Adamson,

It's Carlos, from Spain, from Catalonia. I found recently your website and I'm happy for that, you explain easily this matter, it's good for any person, you are a great communicator. Congratulations and thanks.

Best wishes

I have been listening to the podcast recently, and I like both the podcast and music used. I would like to know the music used, so I can listen to it or at least similar music. I appreciate what you are doing and I thank you very much for offering such a great podcast.

Hey Peter - my brother just told me he went to grad school with you at Notre Dame (he says you were a few years ahead)! His name is Christopher Mirus.

I fell in love with philosophy and humanities at university many years ago but could not devote much time  to them because of busy science then medical school then practice schedule. Now I'm nearing retirement and can read things for enjoyment rather than compulsory pressures. Devoured your book Classical Philosophy and am looking forward for the next installment and the next, etc. You have to write faster! 

Peter -- just to continue on the giraffe theme, here is a video demonstrating the agility of giraffes:

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/04/5-metres-80-giraffes-nicolas-deve…

Hi, was there no place for a piece about gnosticism in the section on later antiquity? I havn't actually listened to those podcasts yet so you may well cover it in the context of other thinkers/schools? I was under the impression that gnosticism was rather influential in its day?

A quick ctrl-f search of all your episodes shows you don't have anything mentioning "dao," "confucianism," "east," or "asia."  That is really disappointing for a site that suggests you cover philosophy WITHOUT ANY GAPS.  I wouldn't normally comment on such a thing, but since it seems to be a point of pride to you, I thought you should know you have a HUGE GAP.  A whole hemisphere, to be exact.

Hi Peter,

Love the show, been listening since the begining. Wondering if you are planning on doing an episode on Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yaekob? I think it would be a great addition.

Keep up the good work!

Dear Peter Adamson,

as far as I can remember you talked about extending the podcast on Byzantine philosophy as well. When will this be the case? After the parts on European medieval philosophy and Indian philosophy? I'm following your podcast zealously and even had the opportunity to incorporate a podcast into my seminars. :)

Thank You very much for this laudable effort to bring history of western philosophy to such a large audience "without any gaps". It remedies the lacuna by including practice of philosophy in Islamic world. But the project also ingnite expectation of more accuracy in the very name of the project, it is history of WESTERN philosophy "without any gaps", but it does not take into account Indian, Chinese, Japanese, African philosophies from classical to modern(post-modern era!!) at all. citing name of Jonardon Ganeri to my mind positively suggest discussion on Indian philosophy. It did talk about India very briefly at the last episode on philosophy in Islamic world, but it is inadequate it didn't take into account innovation that took place in the interface with modern western, islamic and Hindu philosophies that Ganeri talked about in his book "The Lost Age of Reason"!!!

I hope in future we will see a thorough inclusion of these Other philosophies, otherwise it cannot shook off what Derrida called "white mythology". otherwise it will remain within Orientalist framework if not entirely.

Hello,

I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for your work. I'm blown away by the thoroughness of the podcasts themselves, and even the additional readings properly cited on each page! Kudos to you. Do you intend to work all the way up through postmodern philosophy? 

-Justin

Hello Peter, 

First of all I want to thank you for your invaluable work, I really enjoyed listening all your podcats and learned a lot. 

I am curious whether you know about Said Nursi who was born in modern Turkey during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and wrote extensively on philosophical issues (But I think in the Kalam tradition and I believe he could be considered as Asharite). His books deal with issues such as the existence of God, afterlife, freewill, and predestination. 

His books are widely read among Turkish speaking people for spritual guidance (available in English too), but as far as I know there is no work on his philisophy. As you know the madrasah tradition ended abruptly in Turkey with the founding of the modern state, so his works I believe are underappreciated. I think he is an outstanding scholar, and I am looking forward for sometime reading a philospher's take on his works. 

Anyways I just want to share this with you.

Thanks for everything

Mert

Hi Peter,

I know you're still quite a bit away from the 16th century Renaissance, and that you probably get a lot of questions on "ill you cover this or that?", but I thought I'd give you the idea ahead of time so, if you think it's worth it, you can include it in your plans. My question is if you were planning to cover the School of Salamanca when you get there. I'm speaking of people like Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Martín de Azpilcueta, Bartolomé de Las Casas, etc., and also including Francisco Suárez, Luis de Molina, St. Robert Bellarmine, and others. Together they make up a "second Scholastic" whcih formed tha backdrop to much of the 17th century's critics of Schlastic philosophy, like Descartes and Hobbes, but they also had a tremendous influence on them (for example, the clear import of Suárez's concept of right on Locke).

This also brings me to ask if you plan to cover some of the more important Thomist commentators, against whom several nominalists, Humanists, and rationalists wrote, people like Cardinal Cejatan and John of St. Thomas.

I hope you do!

Best!

Hey Peter,

First of all, thanks for the great podcast. It's been especially wonderful for someone like me who's been using it to fill in the "gaps" from my own undergrad in philosophy - particularly the whole era from late antiquity through to the modern!

I haven't caught all the way up yet, so maybe you've mentioned it somewhere, but I was wondering if you would be covering the various heretical movements, especially the so-called Heresy of the Free Spirit. I assume that Meister Eckhart's on your list, but I'm a bit more interested in some of the more marginal figures, like Marguerite Porete in particular. I never see her get any mention in the literature, and when she does crop up, it tends to only be on feminist reading courses, rather than as a topic of genuine theological or philosophical interest (not to diminish any interst she might hold for feminist readings). In fact, I only learned of Porete and the Sister Catherine Treatise from reading Raoul Vanageim.

Not only that, but after reading Eco's "The Name of the Rose" it really sparked my interest in the various other heretical movements that may have existed. Arguments over such things as whether Christ ever laughed in the Bible, and whether humor is therefore justified or not... I can't decide if it's silly or an actually incredibly interesting topic! The theological and religious disputes of the medieval ages clearly went far beyond anything I was exposed to in undergrad.

May I ask if you've sketched out plans to tackle such subjects?

Thanks again,
David

Since this is a History of Philosophy without any gaps I'm assuming you are going to cover Schelling when you reach early 19th German Philosophy but I would also appreciate if you also included the German Romantics (Goethe, Novalis, Schiller, Hölderin etc) in one episode as well for they had a noteworthy influence not only on Schelling but Hegel and Schopenhauer that cannot be ignored. Also a passing mention of Jakob Böhme's undercurrent influence on this period would be nice as well.

Also Western Philosophy>Eastern Philosophy.

Excellent podcast.

Hello Peter

I just wanted to thank you for this amazing work. I'm also very intrigued on how do you manage your time in your daily living. Maybe I'm kind of a lazy human being, but I find amazing that you can deliver with such order so many different episodes of a wide range of topics, with all the preparation it seems to require, and I imagine also work as a teacher... Maybe you have some advices for those like me who find difficult to manage our time properly.

Anyway, thank you very much.

Hello, Peter! Congratulations for the great work!

I would like to know what is the music played in the greek flute. What is the recording?

Thank you!

Will you be covering Ficino? I'd love to hear a podcast on Ficino's platonism and platonic commentaries.

Dear Mr. Adamson,

As an avid listener, I am grateful for the all-inclusive effort.  In the age of specialized specialism, appreciation of the totality of anything is a breath of fresh, radical air.

I understand it might be way off in the future, but have you heard of Modern Teleology, a (mostly) French theoretical and perfectly anonymous undertaking comprising a thorough critique of all dominant currents (trends) of thought up to the first half of the XXth Century and attempting an entirely original re-thinking of all major philosophical concepts  --indeed, of philosphy itself-- from concept to end (both end and finality), to reality and everything in between?

Just curious if this has ever come to your keen attention.

Cordially,

Raphael

what do you think about the concern of avicenna when he states metaphisical distinction between existene and essence?i mean  this distinction is logical when aristotel talk about it but avicenna speak of metaphisical distinction ant enter it to world and tell every thing has two aspects: one  its existence and another  its essence or quiddity

Hi,

Love the podcast.  I'm at #67 and am looking forward to hearing them all.

At the beginning of each episode you name the sponsor, but the name is unfamiliar so I don't know what I'm hearing.  Can you name them on your website somewhere?

Thanks!

Any guess on the timetable for 20th Century Continental Philosophy? Particularly the poststructuralists. It's the bit I'm most looking forward too :)

Thank you for starting the history of Indian philosophy podcast! I have subscribed and am starting to listen. I especially look forward to understanding how Indian philosophy has addressed issues of caste and gender.

I love the podcast! It must take a lot of work; thanks for doing it :)

A question for the 250th episode:

A couple people have mentioned to me in passing that there was ancient Egyptian and Jewish philosophy which predated Thales, but I've never seen a book that discusses this topic or heard of a class that covers it. Do we have enough information about these very ancient philosophers to say anything much about them at all? Being an expert on filling gaps, maybe you know of some nice books or papers on the topic that I could read?

Thanks!

Is there a means to download the podcasts, a friend wishes to listen to them while they drive in their car.

Hello Peter,
Nice work. Loved the podcast. Twice and soon a third time. Can't wait to sink my ears into the indian and the african history of philosophy.

I keep feeling there is a ressemblance the dichotomy of platonic Forms and the material world on one side and the avicennan dichotomy of Essence and Existence. And I keep wishing I could find someone who explicitly distinguishes the notion of Forms from Essence and the notion of the material world from Existence.

Do you think you could answer this question in your 250th episode or simply give some pointers and reminders towards an author or authors who do see the ressemblance and distinguish one from the other

Hello, reading through a book on animal ethics, during the historical section I came upon a remarkable passage. While stressing that for many ancient thinkers the differences between animals and man were a matter of degrees, the author mentioned that for Plato, the intelligence of a being was indicated by the distance between the ground and it's head. I was extremely excited, as that would de facto promote the giraffe to the title of the most intelligent being. So in your knowledge is there any truth in that? :)

Thank you!

Dear Peter,

I've been hearing the podcast for about a year now. I'm currently around episode 103 and just loving it. I'm an engineer from Brazil who's very interested on philosophy at an amateur / non-academic level, and I find your podcast THE best around. I also follow others like: Philosophy Bites and The Partially Examined Life (pretty good!), each one has it's own focus, purpose and format, but the HOPWAG is indeed the most instructive and didactic one.
I'd like to see this work going on up to the contemporary philosophers of mind like Daniel Dennett et all. It would be a hell of a journey! Is there any way people can support your project? Do you plan to go all the way to 21th Century?

Well, what you've already accomplished is amazing and I'm grateful for having the opportunity to follow.
Congratulations and don't lose the steam!

Henrique

Hi Peter, I'm a longtime listener and admirer of your podcast. What has most impressed me is when you have some back-and-forth with interviewees, and we get glimpses of your own views of what might be hidden weaknesses or problems in this or that view. What I would love to know is how, if at all, your own views have changed in the process of working through all of this material. (Maybe it's on the blog, which I haven't read.) It'd be really interesting to hear whether any of the arguments you've had to study to present them have changed your own positions--on metaphysics, ethics, phil. of relig. questions, or whatever. In a similar vein, it'd be fun to hear which philosophers have most impressed or surprised you. Who would make your top 10 for clever insights, or for durability of their contributions, etc. Or are there any who have most surprised you--who turned out on closer inspection to be different from the "textbook" version of them? A 20-minute segment where you summed up how this work has shaped you would be really fun. Keep up the good work!

How about some attention to Protagoras, Democritus, and Gorgias, and the tension between their epistemic stance, vs. Plato's idealism?

Hey Peter,

I am a long time listener now and was thinking it would be time to say thanks for the great podcast series. I sometimes imagine that we HoPWAG fans sit around you in a garden and you explain and we listen, all wearing chlamys, yours in black. Then I get lost into the details of the garden: it should be early summer time with the Sun high in the sky, the fresh breeze, fruits hanging from the trees, distant sound of a market musician playing a lyre, the paved paths in the garden, not stone or mosaic, but solid marble (no gaps), and the sign on the entrance that says:

“Μηδείς αντίκαμηλοπάρδαλη είσίτω μον τήν στέγην.”

then I realise that I need to rewind the several minutes of the pod cast that have passed without me paying attention. Maybe the quality of recordings is too good, you need to introduce some additive white noise for more attention! :-)

Thanks again and looking forward to more episodes…

Thank you for your way of sharing thoughts.

I'm looking forward to your spotlights on Levinas. Someday.

However, even 'gaps' (Tao Te Ching #11) have their value, so of course I wouldn't even hold your main goal against you. :)

Kind regards,
geert

i need this in my life. your work is a benefit to us all.  thank you for providing this extensive and satisfying podcast. 

Peter, thanks so much for this podcast! I'm on #208 (started with #1) and I'm now thoroughly enjoying the trip through medieval philosophy. I'm especially grateful for the balanced and fair way you present the faiths that are part of the history of philosophy. I have a background in Christian theology and have developed a passion for philosophy later in life, so I'm playing catch up. This podcast is perfect for that. Keep up the good work! Lonnie 

Hey Peter, thanks so much for all the work you put into the podcasts, I look forward to every episode. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but it makes my day brighter getting to learn from you.

I wanted to let you know, if you didn't already, that Google Play Music now has a podcast aggregation functionality. That means that every Android phone out there (which is something like 80% of the smartphone market worldwide) finally has a native podcast app! I have been able to find all my technology and history podcasts, but your work was noticeably absent from my searches. Might be worth looking into, that's a huge audience!

Best wishes,
~ Adam

Hello to the HoP crew. Thanks for all the hard work you put into the show. Me and my giraffe just can't get enough of it. There's nothing that we love more than kicking back with a few almond croissants, putting on our Buster Keaton costumes, and bumping this sh**.