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Hi. Great series! I downloaded it last fall and i've been listening to it while doing chores. It really helps pass the time. I just finished episode 278, so i've got a ways to go.

Anyway, i was wondering if Peter has ever tried tracing his own mentor/student lineage? It would be cool if he could go back to Plato, but i don't expect it.

Jews as both a religious group and a culture/ethnicity have made many contributions to philosophy, logic, and related disciplines. Jews are known by some other cultures as People of the Book. But it was not limited to just one "book"; Jews have valued literacy, scholastics, and analysis, throughout modern history (CE) at least.  One might call them People of the Mind or People of Ideas. Anyway, please have a look at these and see if there are some you might want to include.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_philosophers

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Jewish+philosophy&…

Note: In the seven college courses I had in philosophy & political philosophy, I don't remember learning about any of these except Spinoza and Marx.  Aquinas, yes, Maimonides, no. I suspect Christian-centric Western education simply doesn't know about many of these.

Hello! I'm interested in how philosophical concepts made their way to the people through the sermons of medieval masters like Aquinas. Can anyone recommend any medieval masters who may have had contact with the Basque community in places like Navarre?  

1. Will you be doing a series on China? I'm intrigued especially about the mohists, who apparently did propositional logic using full sentences. You could call the episode "Not Minding Your Ps and Qs".

2. What about Persia? You've barely mentioned the zoroastrians at all, let alone the mazdaists before Zoroaster.

3. Will you be doing anything on the effect of printing before Gutenberg? I've often wondered why wood block printers never bothered to do whole pages of classic works that were in high demand, or failing that, simple texts for beginning readers.

4. You spoke of the process of copying and the problem of errors. Will you be refering to the technique devised by jewish scribes for copying Torahs? I mean the one where each page is regarded as a fixed matrix of letters and the copyist can get a quick accuracy check by counting the letters in each row and column. I've seen articles that extol the method but i've never heard of it being used for any other work.

5. Also, you've mentioned philology a few times, but rarely numerology. Were there any philosophers who used numerical equivalence of words as a basis for theories?

Hi, thanks for the information in this podcast, especially the Africana philosophy section.

You may have heard the news already, but YouTube is now getting rid of their community captions feature, which was a feature where volunteers could add captions to videos for non-native speakers, Deaf people, and hard of hearing people. The reason they are doing this is because they'd like to transition to relying on third parties which do captioning for a fee, which will mean profit for Google. They are essentially creating a disability fee, which while shocking in how brazen it is, is sadly a very common experience for disabled people.

There has been a lot of discussion about this everywhere, and my social circles are no exception. These conversations have naturally led to discussion of your podcast and its policy on transcripts. Your policy, as I understand it from your FAQ, is against circulating transcripts as that would decrease demand for your books.

I'm writing to you now because twice now, I've spoken about your podcast, citing it for certain things I came to learn, and someone Deaf asked where they could find the transcripts so they can access it too. They discovered that the only place where it's written down is in the books, and furthermore that there is a policy against any transcripts, which usually ruins their week. This is to some extent their interest in the podcast, I'm sure. But as exciting as the premise of your podcast may be, it's usually more a reaction to yet another instance of something like this in their lives.

Having lost job and academic opportunities because I'm a woman (and a woman in philosophy at that), I sympathize deeply with their experience and psychological toll of having to pay for being who they are. This sort of disadvantage existing no matter where you look can really wear you down. This is (at least partially) why I am making this appeal.

My hope is that you'll find that there's plenty of reason to want the books even with the transcripts provided, and that you'll sympathize with the experience I've described enough to reconsider your policy on transcripts as well. If you no longer have the scripts yourself, I'm sure that plenty of your fans would be willing to create the transcripts provided your encouragement.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Hi, I'm going to publish content online and will use you as a resource. I plan to drive traffic your way as much as possible. Are there any permissions necessary when linking to your content? Please let me know and thank you for what you do for philosophy. 

Hi, I am surprised that the name of Sree Narayana Guru of Kerala(1856-1928) is not finding a place among the philosophers of India in your list.  

Regards,

      Ajith Kumar

hi,

thank so much for your podcast which has been a savior through quarantine! I realize it's not the standard in HoP to classify philosophy in Arabic as Western philosophy, but wondering why you also made that choice in this podcast. if anything, the narrative in the podcast seems to emphasize the continuity of philosophy in Arabic with Greek and Roman philosophy before and philosophy in Latin after. Arabic philosophy seems to fill the 'gaps' in Western philosophy in the 10th through the 12th centuries. do you think the Arabic philosophy covered could've competed for e.g. the 'Early Medieval' header in the podcast? or is Western philosophy tied to Christianity in a way that doesn't allow for neatly fitting philosophy incubated in an Islamic context directly in the timeline? (or something else?) would love to hear your thoughts!

I am having trouble subscribing to get alerts for new episodes

HoP 355 sound quality was poor.  I was able to hear it but I had to turn up the volume too high to everything else I do on my computer.  Something you and your team need to pay attention to.  Other than that... great podcast and episode.

Do you plan on covering philosophy, theology, and intellectualism among Indigenous societies in the Americas? You've done a commendable job trying to stretch out into non-western philosophy, but unless I'm missing it (and I might be!) you haven't seem to have covered it in the Precolumbian Americas yet (or Indigenous American societies post-Columbus)

I realize that the relative lack of written records makes this difficult, but there's a lot more sources available then I think people realize: A good starting place might be with Aztec/Nahua philosophy, which is probably some of the most documented and written about. For some basic context, for the below text; Nahua is the broader Aztec culture, "Aztec" as a term variously refers to either it or the specific Mexica subgroup, who were the denizens of Tenochtitlan, the most powerful of an alliance of 3 city-states (it, Texcoco, and Tlacopan), with that alliance and their subjects states (of various Nahua and non-Nahua groups) making up the "Aztec Empire".

In terms of primary sources, The Florentine Codex is a series of 13 volumes written by the Spanish Friar Bernardino de Sahagún collaborating with Mexica scribes, elders, and nobles, documenting various facets of their history and society in great detail, with one of the volumes (Book 6) being focused on their ethical and moral concepts, adages and epithets, etc. Meanwhile, the "Cantares Mexicans" and "Romances de los señores de Neva España" are collections of Nahuatl songs and poetry also from the 16th century. There's dozens of other surviving sources of various subjects from direct, known Nahua individuals from the early colonial period, such as Domingo Chimalpahin, Fernando Ixtlilxóchitl (who is notably from Texcoco and the Acolhua Nahua-subgrou rather then Mexica, giving a different perspective from most), and Fernando Tezozómoc, etc.

In terms of modern texts on the subject, "The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics" is a text on the king of Texcoco of the same name, who is acclaimed in much of the above sources as a poet, patron of the arts, and legal reformer, and seeks to act both as a biography of him as well as cut through some of the revisionism and romanticism about him present in such sources, such as from the aforementioned Fernando Ixtlilxóchitl, who was a descendant of his. Miguel Leon-Portilla has made a dozens of academic texts on Nahua thougt, two notable examples (the former probably being the single most notable) "Aztec Thought and Culture" and "Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World". James Maffie is another modern researcher focusing on the subject, having published "Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion".

It is however worth noting that some of both "Aztec Thought and Culture" and "Understanding a World in Motion" has been criticized, the former for proposing the existence of a singular primordial diety (Ometeotl) in Nahua thought which some dispute, and the latter for taking an overly metaphysical interpretation of Aztec theology where gods don't really exist, just natural processes that then got misinterpreted as deities in Spanish sources, which some (Such as David Bowles, who has made many translations of Nahuatl sources, including Poetry itself, whose works are also worth checking out) have disputed as being inconsistent with actual Nahuatl writing. So both of those texts are perhaps, at least based on my understanding, best approached as more interpretative lenses to view the primary sources they cover through then anything else; but are still definitely worth covering as they are widely referenced as some of the most major texts on the subject of Nahua intellectualism and thought.

I know Maffie has done some interviews with people online before, and David Bowles is quite active on twitter and I've interacted with him a number of times (I'm not a researcher, just a hobbyist: I also only read English, so that limits my sources, there's MUCH more then what I mentioned that are obscure and are only really well-known in the Spanish academic community or are still only in Nahuatl that I'm unaware of), both or either may be willing to assist (some sort of assistance with primary sources would probably be helpful: I know that the english translation of Book 6 of the Florentine Codex I own just translates the moral adages literally with no context for the symbolism and metaphors they are trying to convey in the original nahuatl, for example) or be guests if you ask (and if your podcast features guests).

I apologize if this comment is overly detailed or comes off as condescending with all the suggestions: It's a fairly obscure subject so I'm used to having to provide a lot of contextual information! As a bonus/extra thing that might entice you, here's a short excerpt from Matthew Restall's "1491" where it covers some of the symbolic metaphors in two Nahua poems: https://i.imgur.com/Lb2ELJE.png

Hi! I'm writing a masters thesis on a subject relating to history of philosophy and I would love to quote the podcast in the introduction but I'm unable to find the epsiode I'm looking for. In one episode that I thought related to medieval mysticism, prof. Adamson states something in vain of that while history of philosophy is often justified through what it can contribute to current philosophy, it is often most fruitful when it challenges us by being nothing like current philosophy. This thought was very close to the reasons I have for writing about my subject, so I wanted to quote it, but despite my best efforts I have been unable to find the episode it was said in.

I'm sorry if this is not the proper channel, or if the question is unreasonable. Thank you!

Dear Dr. Adamson,

Will you be discussing the reception of Islam in China? I think that would be fascinating.

Hello, Mr. Adamson,

I'm interested in East Asian philosophy. So, could you let me know when Chinese philosophy series start? and also I'm curious about how deep you would touch Korea and Japan and how much volume they would take.

Congratulations on 10 years!

And thanks for teaching us dang kids a thing or two along the way!

Dear Peter,

Thank you for the first 10 years. You make my world more beautiful (I mean it). I have learned, I was inspired, I read some sources. Thank you so much. We should have a possibility to give you a gift. If you ever need a time in the woods of Norway (where I live) you are invited to stay in our sidehouse. It is calm and beautiful. You would make me even more happy if you initiate a bilingual introduction to Arabic philosophy with original texts and Arabic main terms...

Best

Gernot

I noticed recently the timelines have gone. Would it be possible to bring them back? I found them very useful and better than other timelines available on other websites. Thanks.

Greetings. First off, great podcast. I am a bit late to the game, and have gone back to the beginning episodes (hence the question about a topic from several years ago). I just listened to Episode 21 on Plato’s Meno, and I am wondering if Meno’s paradox actually is an extension of the “being vs non-being” debate from the previous century. Is Meno actually talking about the problem of partial knowledge (as I understood you to explain in the podcast), or rather of the problem of how one would acquire knowledge (= being) of something that they don’t know (= non-being). In other words, if something doesn’t “exist” in someone’s mind, then how would they acquire it? This would make sense historically, and is a much more interesting interpretation of the dilemma, but I don’t know if it is correct or not. I look forward to your reply. Kind regards.

Greetings. I am not sure if my previous comment went through or not, so I will just give a real quick summary here. I just listened to Episode 21 on Plato’s Meno. If I understood you correctly, then you claim that the paradox had to do with partial knowledge, which doesn’t seem to be much of a paradox at all, as your explanation made clear. I am wondering, however, if the paradox is somewhat different: could it be that Meno is applying the whole “being vs non-being” debate to the issue of knowledge? In other words, if someone doesn’t know something (= non-being), then how could he or she know it (= being)? Not sure if my question is clear or not, but I hope you get the gist. I look forward to your answer. Kind regards.

Hey Peter,

Maybe this is mostly just a chance to express my deep gratitude for your perseverance re. sticking with the podcast and continuing to make it fresh and captivating for all these years - and my perseverance - I don’t know if I’ve ever stuck with anything for 10 years but have been on the edge of my seat for every episode - though  as a geezer my retention isn’t what it used to be so we need get on OUP re. the paperback release schedule! :-) For some of us geezers reaching for a book is easier than searching a list of podcasts.

But I digress; the original purpose of writing was to say that I just listened to and greatly enjoyed your interview of a couple of years ago on the Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast. As a retired physicist I’ve strayed pretty far from my naturalist grant writing persona and am taking a lot more things “seriously if not literally” and as such have enjoyed that podcast as a kind of complement to yours. And as a quintessential peripatetic type (as well as Buddhist type) negotiating the Scylla and Charybdis of your and Earl Fontanelle’s approaches allows me to get ever closer to that middle way Dedekind cut.

Hi Peter,

I was checking your theme list about "Soul and the Self" there are many episodes. I was wondering if you have a recommendation of whom to check regarding the topic of self-awareness specifically (all traditions are welcome!).

thanks!

Thanks for getting back with me on my question regarding Meno’s paradox. I have another question from antiquity. I am not sure if I have understood Aristotle correctly, but he seems to affirm 1) that the heavenly spheres revolve around “God”, and 2) that the universe is geocentric. Is this correct? If so, does this suggest that Aristotle somehow thought that “God” was present on earth? Or that humanity’s participation on the divine nous was enough to make the heavenly spheres revolve around the earth?

Is there any chance you’ve a date for paperback editions of Medieval Philosophy and Indian Philosophy? I’ve asked OUP without reply. Cheers, MB

Hi! I wish you teached us about old Egypts mythology and philisophy.

thank you!

Hi I’m a curious teenager looking to vent my frustration. I started listening to this podcast from the start and so far, I’ve found it hugely helpful for the type of information I was looking for so I’m a happy customer. However, as a sceptic of the field of philosophy, listening to the first 25 episodes, I found why philosophy is practiced the way it is confusing. I believe I found a way to solve the nature of philosophy to never present a conclusion. I was wondering if I could somewhere, sometime discuss my ideas and alleviate my concerns with a benign conversation. I understand I’m asking for special treatment and risk wasting your time. 

Respectfully, Can

The goal is to identify all answerable questions and all unanswerable questions. So you start with every combination of every letter to some sufficient length, then you put a question mark at the end of all of them. The greatest percentage of these are unpronounceable so you ignore them. Then the of the remaining, the majority of them are so difficult to pronounce that they will never make up words. Then only some are formed of only words in the dictionary or words that can in the future hold meaning. Now these questions contain all the right questions we need to ask ourselves to get to the answers of the universe. But we aren’t done, we need to exclude all questions that aren’t in grammatical order as well because although every word in these sentences make sense they hold no more meaning than the unpronounceable questions even though some examples can be changed in interpretation to give an answer like “What your name”. Continuing on, we have questions that ask for opinions like the best colour. This question is unanswerable because the definition of best requires expectations and the question never sets them out. This questions is formed to allow for people to easily interpret a meaning but really it’s simply unanswerable. There are also questions that seem to make sense grammatically like “what does a banana often eat”  these questions are also unanswerable because a banana doesn’t have the property of eating, even though we can interpret the nutrition it absorb as that which it eats, the question must be changed in an interpretation so this unchanged question is unanswerable. What about what happens when an unstoppable force comes across an unstoppable object. For an object to be immovable, regardless of the definition of moving, forces etc. the object has to have the property that all forces in the universe that act upon it don’t move it. This is the only way it can be objectively immovable. Otherwise for a force that is unstoppable all objects in the universe that meet this force must move. Meaning, from the perspective of the unstoppable force, for the unstoppable force to be qualified as unstoppable and also move the immovable object, the immovable object has to both be in the set of all objects that are movable and immovable which is a contradiction. To conclude, the unstoppable force not only does not have the property of acting on the immovable object, but the unstoppable object does not have the property of existing in the same universe as an immovable object. The question is as meaningless as “what a banana eats?” and “vdieowkhwusowj?”. These mispropertising questions are all unanswerable. The remaining questions can further be vague/relative, insufficiently defining, incorrectly assuming and finally questions that are unanswerable because the knowledge they seek is unattainable like the exact height of something or what you ate . These final ones are excusable. Otherwise,this is the one thing I don’t understand: Why ask unanswerable questions when you can ask answerable questions. Surely unanswerable questions are improper and only inhibit academia except in the search of answerable questions. So why spend ages searching for meaning in meaningless scrambles like “is knowledge virtue” and why not trade it for an answerable question like “Did Socrates believe his definition of virtue was attainable through what he felt enough to describe as the path of knowledge” which is still unanswerable due to a lack of historical evidence? I think either the reason needs to be taught or the answer made available easily for children to get interested in philosophy. Otherwise surely there needs to be a platform other than debating where the sophists don’t win and the truth never looses. If my comments were misplaced I apologise.

Unfortunately, a new chapter in the history of philosphy is missing: The "Hamburg Interpretation" by Dr. Michael Oliva Córodba and Prof. Dr. Rolf W. Puster (Universität Hamburg) based on Mises "Praxeoligie". It would be nice if this gap could be closed.

Hello professor, i hope you had a wonderful holiday and a happy new year.

There is a question that has stirred up in my rational soul and has caused some debate among me and my friend. It concerns the nature of teleology and its relation to logic.

What is teleology? Ie purpose, final cause, whatever one might call it. Is it an aspect or logic or is it more like aesthetics or even ethics? Or all of those things?

The most interesting implication here for me is whether teleological arguments can be properly called logical arguments. If so, the implication would bridge the gap between prescriptive and descriptive and overcome the fact/value distinction?

Surely i cannot be the first to ponder this issue. Can you recommend works and thinkers who have dealt with this issue? It feels like something that ought to be relevant to religious thinkes, a field of philosophy i have so far not explored. I know the logical positivists dealt with this issue from their view but to me it seems more like they were starting from the presumption of a distinction rather than going back to the beginning.

The closest i have come is perhaps Aristotle who in many places seems to imply that Final Cause and Formal Cause is identical, i.e a things purpose its defined by its essence. A man ought to philosophize because man is a rational animal. What we call analytical knowledge is thus inherently prescriptive. But does he ever prove or justify this assumption?

Plato also certainly must have thought the two were connected, because The Good is both the supremely Good and the Real, the Truth which is desired for its own sake, source of both Truth and Desire.

Best regards. 

Hi Peter,

I was reading E. Pagels' 'The Gnostic Gospels'. There she writes that Clement of Alexandria has mentioned the names of some women philosophers in his works. Like Theano of Crotone, Arignote the Pythagorean, Themisto the Epicurean and apparently two women who studied with Plato and one trained by Socrates.

I was wondering whether any evidences can be found of their philosophical activities?

Hello again, Dr. Adamson.

You may remember that a little under a year ago, I made a comment asking about the possibility of revising your policy on transcripts. For reference, it was on July 31st of 2020. I'd link it, but whenever I go to the link that says it is to that comment, it simply takes me to the final page of the comments--very peculiar behavior!

Anyway, I wanted to update you on that with the intention of hopefully persuading you to change your policies in a way that my peers and I would be very grateful for--you did change it somewhat, saying that I could let my disabled peers know that you would be willing to give them transcripts if they contacted you directly via email. Unfortunately, invariably, this has caused a reaction of frustration, anger, and disappointment. I'd like to try and explain this as diplomatically as I can, at which point you're free to make whatever decision you feel is best.

The problem that has been made clear is that the solution that has been described, insofar as I and they have understood it, is overburdening for someone who fairly constantly has to deal with several extra barriers for access across many different domains. In other words, the solution that's been described is to email you for any scripts of interest. So for me, a hearing person, if I want to go through your podcast episode by episode, I need only click on the episodes I want, and then click on the next episode I want, etc. For them, they must type up a message for the transcript of each episode. As well, I don't think this was clear, but I believe you were implying that they could only do this until the book was released, in which case they'd have to pay for the books where a hearing person would not need to to listen to these episodes. Having these extra barriers to accessibility also has other invisible effects too--sometimes, because certain things are required to include you in some group event, the group must either exclude you or simply not do the event. Someone might silently think "Oh, we should do a group listen to Peter's series! Oh, but so-and-so is hard of hearing, and so I'd have to email for transcripts for each episode--eh, forget it."

When you multiply this across a wide variety of domains in their lives, this burden becomes quite unreasonable and unmanageable, and then of course there are domains of interest that are simply wholly inaccessible.

I confess that I have my own disabilities--I have a nose that doesn't work, which causes my central sleep apnea, which throughout most of my life (unbeknownst to me until recently) caused severe depression among other problems. And this has led to a similar sort of pervasive burdening that I have to deal with, but I won't claim to understand the experiences of people with completely different disabilities than I do. But I can at least back up what they say about disabilities causing this exhausting ubiquitous overburdening effect.

I hope this won't offend you or decrease the likelihood of persuading you, but I do feel some obligation to include this to make sure the voices of my disabled peers are heard even if the consequences aren't optimific. So I'd like to include that at least part of the frustration that invariably came from my peers was your explanation that the reason you didn't want to put the transcripts up was because you felt they were a bit too messy and embarrassing to put in public.

Anyway, I hope none of this came off in any way as coercive or anything like that, and more importantly that I've done my best to represent my peers and make sure their feelings on the matter were heard. Thank you for your previous offer. All the same I hope you'd consider publishing the transcripts somewhere without the need to contact you for particular transcripts of interest, and I know a lot of people would be very, very grateful if you did.

Hope to hear from you soon.

About 3 months ago, I searched "philosophy" on Spotify in hopes of finding some drab lecture to listen to while painting. 237ish episodes later, I find myself mixing paint just to let it dry out while listening to episode after episode. If you did the math, the answer is, no, I don't have a life. Anyway, I just wanted to reach out to say Danke! Ich habe keine beine! My German is a little dishonest.. I love your podcast, especially the puns, my world is so much bigger thanks to you! Sorry, this would be easier to read if you had made a grammar podcast instead..

Thank you, thank you, thank you Peter Adamson, I will always cherish our time together (even though you are more like your sister in this scenario)

Victoria

One last thing.. your voice has joined my inner dialogue and holy guacamole do I sound smart in here now!

Greetings again. Still enjoying your podcast. Quick question. As you know, Greek and Indian religion/philosophy shifted from sacrifice, ritual, external, etc., to philosophy, internal, etc., and both did so about the same time (c. 8th–6th cent. BC, correct?). What are the best works that address the reasons for this shift, perhaps comparing and contrasting them? Thanks in advance.

Will your 2019 OUP book on Medieval Philosophy become available in paperback and if so, when?

Keep up the great work! Doug Shenson 

Your website does not scroll correctly.

DKG

This may be petty but it's annoying me. In the top left corner, the mic is off centre from its "swing" or whatever you would call it.

I have listened to many episodes and love your podcast, I really can't wait to hear the episodes on Kant and Hume. I felt like I knew a great deal about Plato and Aristotle and your podcast simply added so much context and did a great job weaving together their ideas throughout from piece to piece. My undergrad experience with philosophy was wonderfully focused on two or three pieces but the way you have these philosophical ideas evolve or expand from piece to piece does such a better job exploiting all there is understand about simply "one idea". I think I will experience something similar when you get to Kant and Hume. I am very much looking forward to it and appreciate the books you've released as well, they have made my academic endeavors so much more fulfilling. Thank you.

Hello. First of all, I love your site and your podcasts so much. Thank you so much for your efforts. My question is why there is no Omar Khayyam in the Islamic World's phiolosophers He is one of the most important one. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Omar_Khayyam . I know the site owner already have education about Islamic World philosophers so this why I a little puzzled.

Best regards

Hi Peter,

I would like to ask you how you go about researching, scripting, and recording the episodes on a given week. In the Q&A episode, you said that you don't like thinking about how much time you spend writing the podcast. I'm hoping that it was mostly a funny way of saying that it really does take quite some time, and you won't find my question too annoying. 

My question is not how long you take to write an episode but rather, how you go about it on a given week, and how do you make time for this project while also having to make time for research, teaching, being a parent, husband, and football fan? I truly appreciate that you also seem to manage to make time to read and thoughtfully react to the comments posted here on this website.

I'm especially curious when it comes to making episodes about philosophers like Saint Augustin whose work seems so extensive and the subjects touched in these texts are (at least for me) not the easiest to grasp, much less summarize into something approaching a coherent and entertaining narrative. This conceptual difficulty seems only to be compounded with the need to familiarize one's self with the cultural, religious, historical, and (obviously) philosophical environment in which a particular work, idea, or author developed as well as being familiar with the language and the specific meanings of terms in relation to a specific author, time and place.*

Your output sometimes makes me think that "speed reading" is actually a thing and not the hoax I always thought it was. Is there's something magical about Ph.D.'s that makes your reading comprehension beyond that of us mere mortals? Then again, you did say that it took you one summer to try and figure out what Kant was saying in the critique of pure reason, so how do you manage? Is it rather that you just constantly read (I remember that in a previous episode you said that you got yourself into trouble by trying to read while doing something else like walking)? Or is there something else that can explain it, barring fictitious basement-dwelling sisters?  

I'm asking this a person who struggles with time management and procrastination (I'm procrastinating right now by writing this question), and who is very slow at reading and writing. I would like to know just what is it that makes it possible for you to release something which I consider of such high quality in terms of content and entertainment so consistently. How does your week look like regarding the process of making an episode and how does it fit in relation to the rest of your responsibilities?

How do you go about collecting and structuring the information that goes into creating something coherent and engaging and not getting lost in the weeds while keeping this deadline? Do you start from an outline, a central idea, clever title, or do you write the silent movie star jokes first and make the philosophical ideas fit around them? Does it change and depend on the particular philosopher or episode? Is it even a weekly process or do you write the scripts at one stretch of time and record them later?

More particularly, what are the specific ways in which you go about making an episode? Do you write it down by hand or type them out on a computer? How many revisions do you make? Do you read it out loud to see how it sounds before recording? When do you consider an episode finished? Is there a particular day of the week when you read the sources, another when you write, and another when you record? And how do you choose what to read? Is there a time of day allotted to this task?

If you already answered this in some blog post or comment, please feel free to redirect me to it.

As always, thank you for your podcast,

Jorge.

* The initial reason I fell through the rabbit hole that is listening to your podcast was to get a bit of historical background about the idea of substance after multiple failed attempts to read Spinoza's Ethics. As you might expect, this greatly backfired since I found myself sidetracked by getting interested in philosophers I didn't even know existed before!

Hello Peter,

I am a recent fan of the monumental work you have undertaken. I'm listening to every episode sequentially--without any gaps--and I'm up to #81 now. In an episode before #81 (which I can't locate now) you mentioned a greek term that translates as "repairing/healing myths" and I was wondering if you could remind me what the term is and whether there is any academic work on it. My spouse is a scholar of postcolonial literature, and many of the authors she is studying are doing something similar in their work: repurposing indigenous mythology in a postcolonial context.

With thanks,

Graham

P.S. I, myself, am a specialist in classical Chinese literature, and I was also wondering if you have any plans to venture into East Asian philosophy with the podcast--not that you need more on your plate!

The European development of modern computing is well-established, but would you cover the African genealogy of modern computing, as presented by Ron Eglash in the latter part of his "The fractals at the heart of African designs" TED talk (although the entire presentation may be of pertinence)? Surely its implications would significantly locate the role of Africa and expand deliberations in issues of epistemology, science and technology, philosophy of science, and African philosophy itself. In other words, filling in a gap.

Eglash traces the roots of modern computing from binary geomantic algorithms from sub-Saharan African into Andalusia, eventually passing through Leibniz, Boole and von Neumann. The particular binary nature facilitating emergence of computational calculus is stressed because eight-factored geomancy predominated in other areas of the world.

Regarding Classical Chinese Philosophy/Indian series, I have some question.

1. Where do you and Karyn Lai both intend to stop with the series? is it with the introduction of Buddhism in China? is it before the arrival of the Tang Dyansty?

2. is Karyn Lai willing to work on after Classical Chinese given her expertise seems to be classical Chinese? where as Jonardon Ganeri is well versed in later Indian works well after Dignaga given his research and has released more Scholarly works for example.

3. If Karyn Lai won't be doing after Classical Chinese, has there been any other collaborator that at this moment of time you're aware of that might be willing to do work after Classical Chinese that will tackle the  Neo-Confucianism period/Modern Era, Islam in China and the influence of Chinese philosophy and Buddhism in Korea and Japan 

4. Given the extensive Materials of Japan and Korea, one would assume they would be separate series as opposed to being lumped with Medieval/Modern Chinese Philosophy ?

5. Have you thought about tackling Tibetan tradition? they have a rich history of Buddhism and have enough material. Also continues the tradition of Buddhism that would eventually die out from India. 

6. Regarding Post Dignaga India, I believe it would best for you and Ganeri (if he is willing to) tackle this tradition once you have concluded Classical Chinese Philosophy. Having listened to episode 61 on Later Indian Philosophy, there is that sense of cliffhanger looming about lol. Given that you and Chike are wrapping up the entirety of Africana philosophy in the next 2 or so years it would be a shame if Indian philosophy did not get that sense of closure. Post Dignaga India is extremely under-appreciated and unknown to many people. 

So I noticed there are now roughly as much podcast material as there is classroom hours spent by people who have a minor in philosophy.  So I was just curious, given that you also teach, how do you think the two compare?  (obviously, being history of pre-modern philosophy, the scope will be different at the very least, but it still might be interesting to hear if the range of issues discussed is comparable as well)

I am a big fan of your podcast! Just a quick question...I am a public school teacher of World History at an IB (International Baccalaureate) school. Part of the school's diploma program is a course called Theory of Knowledge in which students must examine how they know what they know (examining both different types of knowers and different ways of knowing, and solving knowledge problems).

Ok...the question...are there any thoughts about developing lesson plans for teachers around the podcasts, especially for a course like my World History and/or the Theory of Knowledge course?

Just a thought! 

I’ve finished the series up to present but I went back to episode 42 because there’s a point Sorabji makes that really bugs me and I wondering if I’ve missed something about the argument. 

Sorabji says that a golden mountain won’t exist at any point in infinite time even though it’s conceptually and physically possible, and adds it’s like how that monkey’s typing randomly over infinite time won’t produce the works of Shakespear. 

But he seems wrong on both points. On the monkeys, the probablity of typing shakespear is simply (1/(27*numbers of letters in shakespear)) ie greater than zero, for 26 letters and a space bar (assuming the probability of striking each key is the same but unless they always skip a key the probability still won’t be zero). Given an infinite number of key strokes then the probability of occurence is 1. I’m extremely confused why he says otherwise, but he says it with such confidence.

That’s fine but the mountain example might say something more interesting about Aristotle. The conceptually and physically possible mountain implies that there is a finite probability of stocastic geological processes accumlating gold in one spot and eroding it, etc, and so again the probability is definently 1 if you integrate over infinite time - if geological processes are stocastic. But I might be missing an aristotlean point here instead of a statistical one. A counter example, Aristotle doesn’t seem to think that all forms of animal that are conceptually and physically possible will come into being based on what is said in the episode, but based on other episodes I assume that’s because animal forms are teleologically, not stocastically, determined. But still Aristotle talks about mountains deforming around eruptions, etc, so the particular form of the Earth doesn’t seem to a strict teleologically determined thing. I don’t see any reason the gold mountain won’t appear in infinite time - but I’de love to know if I’m missing something. I presume has Sorabji thought abot this more than me.

Greetings once again. I believe it was in episode 373 where you briefly alluded to Aristotle’s definition of a “demonstration” in his Posterior Analytics. If I understood you correctly, you said that Aristotle says that it is different that a dialectical argument, but actually just a really good one, so good that it couldn’t be questioned. Is that correct? If so, then my question is: what is the relationship between a demonstration and poetry, that is, poetry as understood by Plato in his “ancient quarrel” between poetry and philosophy. In other words, if philosophers used dialectical arguments, then does this imply a relationship between poets and demonstration? Thanks in advance.

Hi Peter,

among the 20th century topics, are you planing to consider NOI / MalcolmX and figures like Fanon in the Africana series?

I have been listening to your podcast on Indian philosophy lately. While overall it’s a nice effort, one can’t help but sense a constant undertone of a subtle bias and mockery against the Indian thinkers in your voice. Your efforts to play them down are a put off from time to time.

Peter:

I've been listening to this podcast on Spotify for some months - I'm up to HoP 067. It is one of the best podcasts I've followed in the last 10 years. Brilliant!

I'm guessing that Jan Hus and the Hussite's aren't getting an episode? I can't recall if you mentioned them when you did an episode on Wycliff or not.

This podcast seems like exactly what I needed to build an understanding of philosophy, starting from the very base.

However, I was wondering, do you maintain the Spotify version or is it unofficial? It would be much more convenient for me (and probably for other people who don't use Apple software as well) to listen to that. But there is no mention of it on this website, which is a reason why I hesitate to use it.

Hi Peter,

a couple of times we got very close to the topic of perennial philosophy (Pico, Ficino, Nasr, ...) but I am not sure (although I am a long time listener and have listened to all episodes so far), did you cover it separately somewhere in any of the episodes?

thanks!

I randomly came across your podcasts on the history of philosophy a few hours ago, and am now deep into episode 7. Thank you for sharing such a wonderful wealth of knowledge!

I was having a discussion with one of my friends on if the 4 classical virtues (temperance, courage, piety, and justice) are held as such now-a-days.  During said discussion, I tried to play around with the definitions a little bit as we may hold the same virtues in other terms, or hold similar virtues still.  While I was doing this i noticed that they could be set up in an interesting pair of parallels.

Temperance is resisting pleasures that are bad for us

Courage is enduring pains that are good for us

Piety (or Reverence is the term i had switched it to at the time) is respect for that which is greater than us

Justice is respect for that which is lesser than us (the idea being that it is of greatest concern when one side has the power to enforce an unfair situation).

While these parallels line up nicely, I doubt they came up at the time, but I was wondering if there is prior president for some of these, or the relations between temperance/courage or piety/justice

Hi Peter. I just listened to your Erasmus–Luther episode. You did a good job treating it from a philosophical background, but I thought you might be interested to have a theological perspective. Luther’s point in talking about the bondage of the will is that we can choose whatever we want, but that every choice will be “turned inward”, that is, selfish and proud. Thus, there is no chance that we would ever, as you put it, choose the things that really matter, but the perspective is different: everything, big and small, has been infected by sin, and thus all decisions are sinful, or, to use the language of the Erasmus–Luther debate, “bound”. What God’s grace does is allow us to recover what we lost in the Garden of Eden: to love God and neighbor. Kind regards.

Peter, I salute your undertaking of this ambitious project. I am approaching the end of what you now have on offer.

The content has been interesting on the whole.  I would like to take exception with two points where I find the

presentations fall short. 

 

The interviews with colleagues are most often too long and more lecture than discussion.

Your intro and closing “ music “  is cringe worthy for most of the segments. An exception, the Islamic World.

More melodious music would improve the enjoyment. 

 

Again, thank you for this educational, ambitious and entertaining work.

Carl

Sir,

     Been listening to your podcast during my daily lunch walks for several weeks now & am truly enjoying it.  The length of the episodes is perfect for an hour long walk away from my desk.  The questions raised & the answers provided are enlightening for someone whose education & profession is as a software engineer.

     I never realized that philosophers & engineers are similar in that they both use systematic processes to work towards an answer, i.e. asking/answering a series of simpler questions until a more complex idea is developed.  A difference being that as an engineer I do in the end need to provide a distinct final answer as opposed to providing material for yet another question.

     I do somewhat feel like I’m missing a lot of the concepts simply because there is just so much information, though I know some of it is sticking because I find myself going over some of the ideas in my head on my drive home in the evenings.

     Keep up the good work.  I’m currently at episode 140 & am looking forward to the rest of the series. 

Jeff J. Edelbrock

p.s. in the past 57 years, I have not heard the word giraffe or the name Buster Keaton as many times as I have in the past several weeks.

Hi there,

Just started listening to your show and I've been enjoying it a great deal. Your comment on Anaximander's notion reminded me of Adriana Cavarero's work in For More than One Voice, where she links these notions to a translation of ancient Hebrew theology that describes the breath of God as what creates the world instead of the word of God.

Thanks for your work,

Zen

I have been listening to your wonderful podcast on my daily walks. Walking and philosophy are natural companions. I was a philosophy major in my undergraduate days (the late 70s), and back then, I got the history of philosophy with the near two millennium gap. So nice to fill it in! Besides your lucid expositions, Peter, I appreciate the disinguished guests you bring on board to go deeper with selected philosophers. Also love the humor, and references to giraffes and Buster Keaton. Keep up the great work!!

please add a 2x audio option as I can't even listen to your podcast on your website on account of how slow you talk

Please make a podcast of the history of western modern philosophy, from Descartes, Hume, Kant to modern philosophers such as Ayer, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche ... even up to more recent philosophers in the 80s and 90s.

I guess that might also be called contemporary philosophy.

Hi,

I discovered this podcast series recently (July of this year) and I enjoy it very much. Very clear presentation and easy for me to understand. 

I'm an engineer (at least in my heart), I'm 53 years old, lost my religion (Catholic) about 10 years ago (thanks to Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris) and started to wonder more deeply about what we are doing on this planet. If someone told me that I would be interested in philosophy 30yrs ago, I would laugh. I feel that I missed so much in the meantime but at the same time I'm very excited to discover that this huge void in me that I wasn't ever aware existed, can be filled to a great satisfaction with philosophy, amongst other branches of knowledge. 

I listened to every of your episodes since July, but my goal is to also start from the beginning and eventually catch up completely  in a year of so.  

I also started to read the Bertrand Russell's book 'History of Western Philosophy' a few years ago but that stalled due to my time constraints. I will return to it, after I finish your podcast :). 

David graebers book dawn of everything makes interesting argument that the criticism of european philosophy on the part of north american indigenous thinkers was an impetus for enlightenment philosophy in europe

where and when are the Hugonaughts from what happened to them. why don't they  exist anymore at  some point you should probably do a wrap-up episode the quickly talks about  the dead forms of Protestantism 

I want to congratulate you on an absolutely great series, Peter. It made me look forward to my long commute twice a week.

I just got through the Islamic part, so I'm *way* behind, but I guess that's ok; I'll catch up eventually. :-)

There is some truth to your claim that to a large extent the History of Philosophy *is* Philosophy.

However, there is a slight but important difference: i.e. the main purpose of the entire enterprise.

Maybe it's because I'm a practical engineer; maybe it's because my parents suffered through WWII as teenagers and spent the rest of their lives wondering, "Why did this happen?"

I don't know for sure about WWII (there are lots of good answers to my parent's question), but I am pretty certain that ideas have consequences.

So it was with great interest that I listened to your broadcast on Ibn Khaldun and his theories about the rise and fall of civilizations. He had some great ideas, especially in terms of using empirical evidence to prove his theories, though I think that Islamic fatalism may have tripped him up a bit. As a Catholic Transhumanist, I ask: Why can't the cycle be broken?

The thing is, people are pretty much the same everywhere. Granted, a harsh environment will generate a harsh religion (e.g. Norse and Islam), but incorrect ideas can also lead to fatal behaviors (for the latter, I'm thinking of the Azteks in particular).

My point is this: What is the essence and purpose of philosophy?

It is not to record who came up with which interesting idea, and who was able to criticize that idea in new and different ways.  Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Nothing more, nothing less.

Knowing who came up with some idea, and interplay of different aspects of that idea, and what the context all this played out in--i.e. what you talk about a lot in your podcasts is useful because it helps us keep track of the ideas themselves. And now that we know whose idea it was, we know how to look it up. So it's ok.

I just wish (now that it's too late) that you would have put a wee bit more emphasis on the ideas themselves, and a little less on the people.

Oh well, maybe next time around.

OTOH, you have *great* puns! I hope you keep them!

Sincerely.

Tihamer T. Toth-Fejel

Dear Peter,

I remember listening to an episode where one of the Neoplatonists was mentioning how we are always connected to “the source” even though it appears we are not (I am muddling the terms for sure). Then another neoplatonist disagreed, saying that if this were true there would be no point in doing philosophy.

I’ve listened back through many episodes but haven’t yet tracked down that moment. Do you by any chance happen to remember which thinker thought we were perhaps always in a state of henosis or something similar?

thanks,

adam

Hi Peter,

I’m exploring the wonderful world of Ancient Greece and your podcast is one branch that is helping put the puzzle together.  I’m neither a scholar or philosopher but listening to the first few episodes I have a question eating away at me and hopefully it isn’t to stupid. You speak of Thales as the first philosopher.  If philosophy is understanding the world around us or at least it seemed that way back then before becoming so complex. Wouldn’t the people or person who created the original Greek Gods be considered the first philosopher(s)?  Each deity had purpose and explained happenings in the world around them.  Also, the ancient Greeks worshipped the Iliad almost as a holy text, who’s to say their wasn’t an old Bard or wise man wandering around making sense of the world and sharing tales of how they believed things worked to the point where it went from story to religion.

To notice Valentin Weigel and not Jacob Boehme (d. 1624) is fairly disorderly. In fact, to notice any part of idealism without a competent conspectus of JB is like discussing the world without the Triune God who, as Hegel said, is the only thing worth thinking about.

I've been reading the first book and I'm so happy to finally have a comprehensive guide of philosohpy through history.



Already bought the whole series but kind of bummed out that all of them except the second are available for Kindle. What's up with that?

Professor Adamson -- Great job on the podcasts.  I'm working my way through them (mostly by subject matter, not in chronological order) with enthusiasm.

At the appropriate place in your historical timeline, I hope you do one or more podcasts on Friederich Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and the other early German originators of hermeneutics.  In particular, it would be of great interest to hear the historical reasons why rhetoric (but not the theory of interpretation, hermeneutics) assumed a dominant place in the trivium and why the theory of interpretation did not gain footing as a separate discipline until Schleiermacher (or maybe Herder).  My guess is that this is in some large measure a function of Aristotle's treatment of interpretation (in On Interpretation) as a matter of the logical form and the logical relations of individual propositions, as contrasted to his far broader characterization of rhetoric as applying to complete texts (speeches, written works, etc.).  It's only a guess, and I would welcome your informed views on this.  (Apologies if you have covered this turf already, as I've said, I've not heard all of the podcasts.)

Best regards,

Jim Scheuermann