Comments Page

Dear Kim,

Thanks very much for the encouragement! I will henceforth try to work the phrase "fair suck of the sauce bottle" into my daily conversation... maybe even into a podcast script. I really ought to chastize you for being rude about Plato but you are so enthusiastic about Epicurus that I can't bring myself to do so.

By the way there's a joke about Australia (not at the Australians' expense) coming up in Sunday's episode on the Latin Fathers, so there's something for you to look forward to perhaps.

Cheerio,

Peter

It will begin about 10 episodes from now, round about 119 or 120 I think. So, early March! A lot of Augustine to get through first, plus Boethius.

Hi Omar -- Nice to see you here! This is really cool, I didn't know about this. I found a subtitled one here.

Thanks,

Peter

You bet! There's a whole episode coming up (2 weeks from now) on the Latin Church Fathers. So that covers Jerome, Lactantius, Tertullian and Ambrose. I guess that will actually be the last episode of 2012.

Well it's true that they have a lot in common - the Neoplatonists borrow ideas from the Stoics about ethics, providence and freedom, for instance. However they are fundamentally different because the Stoics are materialists, i.e. they think only physical things exist. The Neoplatonists have the reverse view: for them physical objects are barely real and true being and causes are immaterial (soul, the Forms/Intellect, and ultimately the One). So that would be the main difference.

Hi there - In my projected list I do have an episode planned on Ibn Arabi and the impact of philosophy on sufism, and vice-versa. Ibn Taymiyya really should get an episode too I think, if only for his critique of philosophy. Thanks for this suggestion, I was surprised to see I hadn't put him in the list yet!

PPeter

Thanks, I'm glad you are enjoying the podcast! I would actually welcome it if more people wrote in with criticisms, not only because Socrates would say that this is good for me, but also to help in revising the scripts for the book versions. (I am just working through the old Aristotle scripts now in fact.

Thanks again!

Peter

Cool, thanks! Couple of mistakes actually, "In the Age of Averroes" is already out and I am also (in fact primarily) at the LMU in Munich now, not only at King's.

Yes, I was a bit surprised by that one. I guess I would think of him as an historian who says philosophically interesting things, the way that (say) Jane Austen or James Joyce are novelists who say philosophically interesting things. Admittedly the notion of "history" was not yet established as we understand it in Thucydides' day and I can imagine someone arguing that he is comparable to Plato who wrote dialogues (consider Thucydides' "Melian Dialogue" which I discussed in the podcast). Still I think the main fish he wants to fry is a lesson about Athenian aggression rather than a philosophical message. But I'm no expert on him.

Nicely taken point. Of course medieval philosophers are a lot closer to Xenophanes' idea of god than the pictorial representations from their own period. They often try to strike a balance between endorsing more "physical" descriptions of God (as something like a man, or even as a lion, stone, etc) with insisting that God is immaterial, infinite, and so on. That is already becoming clear in the current run of episodes on Christian antiquity, especially in Ps-Dionysius. I guess the question for them is whether the more "vulgar" approach (as they would see it) in paintings in churches and so on would have a legitimate function, e.g. for educating non-philosophers. And they often say that it does; whether you can have both without some kind of elitism is an interesting question. But medieval philosophers often seem to be pretty relaxed about being (intellectually) elitist!

Peter

Well, not 50, but maybe 5!

Dear Hristo,

Thanks very much! That's encouraging. And nice to know that the podcast has at least one fan in Bulgaria.

Cheerio,

Peter

Right, I was thinking someone might ask! So now in order we've got:

1. David's "Death of Socrates"

2.The Strozzi Altarpiece, with among others Thomas Aquinas

3. Boethius being instructed by Lady Philosophy

4. Socrates and his Students from 13th c manuscript (this and the next one have been kept from the old slide show)

5. Averroes (in the entire image he's pictured at the feet of Thomas Aquinas), fresco in Santa Maria Novella, Florence

6. Image of Dante's circle of the philosophers in Paradiso (Aquinas gets in again!)

7. Giorgione's "Three Philosophers"

8. Fresco with philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, including Ficino and Pico

9. Hans Holbein the Younger's marginal drawing in Erasmus "Praise of Folly" (I love this one)

10. Montage of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau

11. Emil Doerstling, "Kant and Friends at Table"

12. Montage of Kierkegaard, Hegel and Nietzsche

13. Photo of Sartre and de Beauvior with special cigar smoking friend

Thanks for this very entertaining message! (I particularly liked "I prefer not to go into the week as a Cynic"). I should perhaps warn you that in the upcoming episodes the Church Fathers will be encouraging you to give all your possessions away and live in a desert. Please keep your .mp3 player though, or whatever you use to listen to the podcast -- Jerome brought his books to the desert so I think you can justify this.

Thanks for listening!

Peter

Thanks very much! Good luck with the classical studies degree, I hope the podcast supplements what you are doing to some extent.

If all goes according to plan, episode 116. He's the last figure I will cover in the season on ancient Christian thought and there will also be an interview about him with John Marenbon.

Dear Nick,

Sorry to be slow responding to this -- I wanted to check which episode it is where I mention the possibility of reading Jesus as a Cynic. I think it comes up briefly in my interview (a few episodes down the line still) with George Boys-Stones. In any case, it's certainly an intriguing but probably unanswerable question. More tractable might be the question of whether the Gospels themselves and especially St Paul may have been influenced by Hellenic philosophical traditions. Here it's worth reflecting that Philo, who is a near contemporary of Christ himself, is already bringing Hellenistic philosophy into the Jewish tradition. That doesn't prove anything of course but it is suggestive. I have read a bit on this and what I've seen tends to confirm the suspicion that Paul was influenced by philosophical literature but I'm no Biblical scholar, and mostly I wanted to steer clear of this kind of question as being above my pay grade.

Thanks for listening!

Peter

Hi again Joshua,

Well, to be honest it will be a while before it is out; and I hope it won't be very expensive. I will probably get a few copies to give away but if I do, I'm afraid there are already a lot of people I'd owe them to, like my editing assistants and so on. But I'm glad you're interested in reading it! Of course I'll announce it here, on Twitter and Facebook when it does come out.

Peter

Hi there -- Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast! But you might want to take the pronunciation with a grain of salt, I alternate a bit between "Americanizing" the ancient names and trying to do them properly, depending on what I think people will find easier to understand. (So for a name like Anaxagoras the Greek prounciation would be rather different.) Besides pronunciation of ancient Greek is (a) a bit shrouded in mystery anyway and (b) not something I'm a big expert on. Still, better than nothing I hope!

Peter

Well, if I had to name my favorite dialogue it would probably be the Theaetetus but probably the Republic would usually be named as his greatest work, and I suspect he may also have seen it that way. After all it is much longer than almost all the other dialogues and is the one that covers pretty much all areas of philosophy in great depth. 

You're right that there is dispute over a number of dialogues ascribed to Plato, in fact a number are pretty much universally held to be inauthentic. There are a few that are uncertain, though, like First Alcibiades, and also some of the letters ascribed to him (including the notorious 7th letter as I discuss in the episode on Plato's life and works). If you look at the table of contents of, say, the Hackett Complete Plato you'll see they have marked some dialogues as inauthentic and others as doubtful, and that listing pretty much captures the present scholarly consensus I'd say.

However all the famous dialogues, e.g. the ones listed by this helpful comment from Glenn, are authentic.

That's an interesting question. I think beauty would be an interesting and difficult case for him, because if he accepts that beauty has intrinsic value he will have to explain how that value can be understood in terms of pleasure -- which might be difficult, perhaps especially if you're a materialist. He has a tendency to reduce all pleasures to physical pleasures, so he really owes us an account of the pleasure and/or value offered by beauty. Off the top of my head though, I agree that he doesn't address this in the extant material. If he did he might develop an aesthetic theory along the custom-not-nature lines we find in his political thought? More fruitful might be Lucretius, but even there what I can think of is more the aesthetic qualities of his poem, rather than a discussion of aesthetics within the poem (I may be forgetting something though). From the "honey on the rim of the cup" passage you get the impression that the beauty of his own poem is just supposed to help get the core philosophical message across.

Thanks,

Peter

Well, he is definitely an important source -- among other things he preserves otherwise lost texts like letters of Epicurus. But he is not really a philosopher in his own right and much of what he tells us is obviously legendary or historically unfounded anecdote. Nonetheless, quite entertaining!

Hi Joshua,

Wow, that's not a small question! I guess that for 'what is Neoplatonism?' I have to refer you to the opening episode on late antiquity, this one. I doubt it could say it more briefly than this! The questions "what is Platonism" and "what is Aristotelianism" are perhaps easier: simply the traditions that come from these two thinkers, albeit that these two traditions intertwine. I don't really believe that there is just one set of positions that is "Platonism" or "Aristotelianism," it's more a matter of evolving reactions to those two thinkers. Sorry, that's not very helpful I know!

Thanks for listening,

Peter

It brings a whole new context to the phrase "cleanliness is next to godliness."

By the way Heraclitus would approve, since he once supposedly remarked, in a similar context, "there are gods even here."

That's a very well timed comment since we're thinking about overhauling the slide show with new images starting with episode 101. See my latest blog post! For now though here is the info on the slide show pictures that have been there so far, courtesy of the website designer Julian:

(Averroes at the feet of Thomas Aquinas) detail from The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas, fresco by Andrea da Firenze, depicting the saint enthroned between the Doctors of the Old and New Testaments, with personifications of the Virtues, Sciences, and Liberal Arts, c. 1365; in the Spanish Chapel of the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

 detail from (plato seneca and aristotle) c 1325 by the Master of Taymouth Hours.

detail from The Maestà (Madonna enthroned) with Saints Cosmas and Damian, Saint Mark and Saint John, Saint Lawrence and three Dominicans, Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Peter Martyr; San Marco, Florence

Yes, there is already an episode planned which will discuss Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Tusi and their responses to Avicenna. I'm actually reading Fakhr al-Din in a reading group here in Munich at the moment. That man liked a good collection of arguments.

Oh, and of course Avicenna himself will get several episodes, like 4 or 5. He's a giant.

Thanks!

Peter

I agree, that's a difficult issue. It is often unclear what sort of soul Plotinus refers to in any given passage, since he sometimes just talks about "soul" without specifying, and he may mean "all souls" or "hypostasis soul". Basically though, my answer would be that the world soul is specifically the soul that relates to the body of the cosmos, the way that your soul relates to your body. Hypostasis soul, by contrast, is soul considered as such, not as related to any given body -- all individual souls somehow form a unity with the hypostasis soul in much the way that the Forms form a unity in nous, albeit that the soul unity is less intense (because the Forms are always all totally present to one another, whereas a soul fallen into one body is not present to a soul fallen into another body). The obscure part is whether we think of hypostasis soul as being, as it were, "nothing more than" the otality of individual souls, or rather as some higher principle to which these individual souls relate; and I think perhaps he'd say that both of these are true from a certain point of view. Since in Neoplatonism generally the relation between individual souls and hypostasis soul is often considered to be a whole part relation, it might help to think about it in those terms: in a sense the whole is nothing but its parts, in another sense the whole is more than just the sum of its parts.

Does that help?

Dear Saad,

How about Munich? But assuming you want to stay in North America the best option is probably Toronto, with Deborah Black and an array of talent in ancient and medieval. Notre Dame is very strong in medieval generally but doesn't have anyone who focuses on Islamic thought since my doctoral advisor David Burrell retired. Really you need to think in terms of individual scholars rather than programs when it comes to this specialization -- you aren't usually going to find more than one person, especially in a Philosophy Dept. So there would also be Richard Taylor at Marquette, Therese-Anne Druart at Catholic U, Jon McGinnis at U Missouri St Louis, etc. At Yale though they have Dimitri Gutas, probably the leading scholar in the field, albeit in Near Eastern Studies and not Philosophy; plus they have Frank Griffel who I believe is in the Religion Dept. And they are strong in Ancient in the Philosophy Dept. At McGill in Montreal there are Rob Wisnovsky and Stephen Menn though he's sometimes in Berlin.

In my opinion the field as a whole is stronger in Europe than in the USA.

I have more to say about this so if you want you can send me an email about it (peter.adamson@kcl.ac.uk).

Good luck!

Peter

Hi again Joshua,

Well, as should become clear as the series goes along, I am very interested in the history of philosophy in Christianity, and for that matter Islam and Judaism, so I'll be saying a lot about it and trying to approach it sympathetically as I do with other parts of the history of philosophy. As for whether the Bible is the "book of books" I think that is more a matter of personal religious conviction than an issue I can discuss with my historian of philosophy hat on.

Cheerio,

Peter

Thanks for writing -- you must be one of the youngest listeners! I'm really glad that you get something out of the podcast.

I have pondered this question about how to handle scriptural texts -- not only the Hebrew Bible but also the New Testament and later the Koran. My feeling is that it is stretching the concept of "philosophy" too far to include such texts as direct contributions to the history of philosophy (this could also be disrespectful: if you think that God revealed such texts then treating them as if they were on a par with human works of philosophy would be problematic to say the least). Actually the same issue arose right at the start when I looked at Homer and Hesiod and discussed what is different between them and the Pre-Socratics.

To me philosophy is about drawing conceptual distinctions, giving arguments, and so on, which is not really what we find in the Bible, mostly at least. You are right to draw attention to some partial exceptions, such as Job which is clearly reflecting on the problem of evil, albeit not quite as philosophical text would; and some of Jesus' statements in the NT are arguably philosophical. In any event I decided not to include these texts (or Jesus, whom some see as a philosopher) directly; the Biblical inheritance is instead going to be covered in exhaustive (maybe exhausting) detail, starting in episode 101 when I begin to do late ancient Christian philosophy. Also relevant is the already appeared episode on Philo of Alexandria, though.

Thanks again for writing!

Peter

Will I! You bet, I am planning quite a few episodes on Islamic philosophy including one on Ash'arism and then two on Ghazali himself. Might roll around in spring 2013, I would say.

Peter

Hi Jim,

Well, the site should be here pretty much forever, I hope (or until they invent something better to replace the internet). However it should be pretty easy to download the episodes; have you tried going straight to the RSS feed which is here?

Thanks,

Peter

Dear Dave,

Wow, those are some good and difficult questions. I'll do my best:

1. I certainly agree that there is a turn towards ethics and actually even a turn towards increasingly "interior" approaches to ethics and psychology (in Epictetus and Neoplatonism, especially). The shift in the direction of ethics though seems to me to start more with Socrates. I think the linear story you tell is perhaps too simple because Socrates actually seems to have been more interested in "how to live" and at most secondarily worried about knowledge and metaphysics, which however are just as important as ethics for Plato and Aristotle. The historical context question is more difficult but it's frequently said that the "freedom from disturbance" goal pursued in Hellenistic philosophy, in place of the political engagement suggested by Plato and Aristotle, is a reaction to the political emasculation of the aristocracy in the wake of Alexander’s conquests. I think I mentioned this in one episode – it might be true to some extent. But it’s notable that Hellenistic philosophy is successful in Roman culture already during the republic, when the aristocracy is certainly not emasculated. And Socrates, who begins this “inward turn,” lived in still-democratic Athens. So that historical story is at least too simple.

2. I think I disagree on your second point because I don’t see the Stoic epistemological position as in any way cautious. To the contrary I think it is an extreme view: the cognitive impression is one that gives us guaranteed certainty because it cannot be wrong. The Skeptics, at least the Academics, are also extreme but in the other direction: they deny the possibility of knowledge. Only the Pyrrhonian skeptics and maybe the Epicureans display the kind of caution you are talking about here (albeit in different ways). I think it’s also notable that the Middle and Neo- Platonists retain the extreme views of both Skeptics and Stoics, in that they outline areas where knowledge fails (the First Principle, matter), and where knowledge is free from all possible doubt (intellection). And that happens too in the ancient Christians. So broadly I would if anything see the post-Aristotelian period as a free-for-all followed by the triumph of extreme views at the expense of the pragmatism we find in the Epicureans and Pyrrhonians.

3. This point about the items of knowledge is a really difficult but important question. I think it is probably different depending on the authors we are talking about. The clearest case is probably the Stoics: they think that knowledge relates closely to “sayables (lekta)” and thus there should be a pretty easy translation of the contents of knowledge into something like linguistically structured propositions, if not actual items of language (sentences). Aristotle, as a pioneer of logic, also seems to think that knowledge can at least be captured in language or in propositional form. But he hints in On Interpretation that what is in the soul is not actually language, but is something that is rendered differently in various natural languages. Still, it is probably propositional in form, hence the ability of logic to analyze it. The Platonists are tricky, there is a big debate about whether Plotinus thinks that intellection is propositional or something more unified like a “pure seeing”; but I lean towards the former view. As I say, though, this is a deep issue and would call for detailed discussion about each author or school. If you want to get into the details of any particular thinker I'd be happy to do that, of course.

Thanks for writing in!

Peter

Thanks, that's very encouraging! Music, psychology, and now philosophy -- you would have made a good Neoplatonist! Actually a lot of the action these days in contemporary philosophy is in the relation between psychology/psychotherapy and philosophy of mind. King's is actually very strong in this area, you could have a look at the KCL Philosophy website and check out the publications of colleagues of mine like David Papineau and Matteo Mameli -- you might find them interesting.

Thanks again,

Peter

Yes, definitely -- apparently's it was said by no less a person than Kant, "Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden." But maybe made famous in this English version by Isaiah Berlin.

Thanks very much! Yes, in fact I think it would be simply impossible to pack the whole history of philosophy into any undergraduate degree course. In fact after spending my whole adult life learning about history of philosophy I am having to fill quite few gaps in my own knowledge as I go along -- reading up on the antique Christian thinkers now, for instance. I'm glad that the podcasts are supplementing your previous studies!

Hi there -- thanks for getting in touch! I'm glad that you are enjoying the podcast. I agree with you that the history of philosophy is extremely relevant to theory of law, and in fact this is something that will be tackled in a future episode because in the special 100th episode one of my guests will be an expert on ancient law. This should air in late October or so, I guess.

Peter

Thanks! It's an "aulos" which is a double flute. If you page down these comments you'll see the link to the website where I found it. The second clip, used as of the episodes on Late Antiquity, is a zither.

Peter

Thanks David for that very encouraging feedback! I guess if you are moved to turn to the texts I'm discussing, you can't do better than Plato; he's not only the source of what comes later but also about as good as it gets in terms of depth, philosophical insight, and also being a fairly enjoyable read for the most part. But I should also say that if you go to the top page in each category you will find suggestions for further reading (with more specific stuff on each podcast episode site).

Happy listening!

Peter

Thanks very much, I'm glad you are enjoying the podcast! The future planned episodes are not a secret, but on the other hand the plan gets increasingly sketchy into the future. Basically I think that late antiquity, including Christian thinkers (the Church Fathers, Cappadocians, a glance at early Byzantine philosophy, and finally Augustine and Boethius) will take me until episode 113 or so. Then it's Islamic and Jewish medieval philosophy, which I hope to finish as of episode 150 exactly. After that, Latin medieval and the Renaissance, I'd imagine that's got to be at least another 30. So, we are not getting to Descartes any time soon I'm afraid! Early Modern might be happening as we get up towards episode 200. Ridiculous, I know.

Thanks again,

Peter

Hi -- you're right, this is used in MacKenna's translation of chapter 1. Checking this against the Greek, I don't think it actually corresponds to any technical term Plotinus is using. In the second sentence of the translation ("The Term at which we must arrive we may take as agreed: we have established elsewhere, by many considerations, that our journey is to the Good, to the Primal-Principle; and, indeed, the very reasoning which discovered the Term was itself something like an initiation") the Greek just speaks of "where" (hopou) we are trying to go, following on from the first sentence. (Armstrong translates accurately: "What art is there, what method or practice, which will take us up there where we must go? Where that is... we can take as agreed...") So basically MacKenna is misleading here, which to be frank is not that uncommon. If you want to get a closer sense of what the Greek is and when there are technical terms in play Armstrong is a far better guide, albeit not one available for free on the internet!

Hi there,

We actually turned up the volume on the podcasts in recent months, with commuters in mind (though we turned it back down a bit more recently, since it was causing the sound to go a bit fuzzy). I sometimes listen to podcasts on the way to work too. Glad you are enjoying it. But if you really listen every day you'll catch up with me before long and have to wait a week for the new ones!

Peter

Hi there -- I hadn't realized that the podcast might be useful in the dating arena, but am very pleased to hear about it! Hope that it worked out (if there is still time, let me especially suggest Empedocles since he claims that Love is a principle that rules the universe... you can leave out the part about Strife).

Downloading each section all at once is an interesting idea. I'll look into whether it's feasible. In the meantime you could subscribe to the RSS feed at this link here. And that would allow you simply to download all the episodes in one go, albeit not one "section" at a time.

Peter

I didn't even know the term "ossicone," but thanks to you it is my new favorite word. (For the benefit of those not in the know it means those little horns on the giraffes' heads.) I will try to work this into an episode script.

I was at the London Zoo recently and a giraffe came right up to a platform I was standing on so that its head was about 2 meters away, perhaps. Very exciting. They are unsettlingly big animals; I imagine feeding one would be quite an adventure!

Thanks very much! I went to Copenhagen to give a talk last year, it's a really beautiful city. Nice to think of the podcast being listened to there.