Being and Existence
Posted on 18 June 2011
Aristotle rejects Plato's Forms, holding that ordinary things are primary substances. But what happens when we divide such substances into matter and form?
11 comments
Posted on 28 July 2013
Avicenna revolutionizes metaphysics with groundbreaking ideas about necessity and contingency, and his new distinction between essence and existence.
22 comments
Posted on 25 May 2014
Avicenna’s distinction between essence and existence triggers a running debate among philosophers and theologians.
11 comments
Posted on 27 July 2014
Mullā Ṣadrā, the greatest thinker of early modern Iran, unveils a radical new understanding of existence.
16 comments
Posted on 19 October 2014
From Sabzawārī in the 19th century to Seyyed Hossein Nasr today, Iranian thinkers promote and respond to the thought of Mullā Ṣadrā.
26 comments
Posted on 14 December 2014
Little-known authors prepare the way for scholasticism with glosses on logic, metaphysical debate, and a poem about a cat.
5 comments
Posted on 14 June 2015
Philip the Chancellor introduces the transcendentals, a key idea in medieval metaphysics and aesthetics.
6 comments
Posted on 22 November 2015
Albert the Great’s theory of being and his attempt to explain what changes in the human mind when we come to see God in the afterlife.
2 comments
Posted on 19 June 2016
Henry of Ghent, now little known but a leading scholastic in the late 13th century, makes influential proposals on all the debates of his time.
10 comments
Posted on 11 September 2016
Duns Scotus attacks the proposal of Aquinas and Henry of Ghent that being is subject to analogy.
15 comments
Posted on 11 June 2017
Nāgārjuna founds the Mādhyamaka (“middle way”) Buddhist tradition by “relinquishing all views” and arguing that everything is “empty.”
2 comments
Posted on 23 July 2017
A discussion with Jan Westerhoff, an expert on the great Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna, dealing with the notion of emptiness, the tetralemma, and Nāgārjuna's reception in India and Tibet.
4 comments
Posted on 22 October 2017
The scholastic and mystic Meister Eckhart sets out his daring speculations about God and humankind in both Latin and German.
7 comments
Posted on 5 November 2017
Dietrich of Freiberg, Berthold of Moosburg, John Tauler and Henry Suso explore Neoplatonism and mysticism.
4 comments
Posted on 21 April 2019
Gregory Palamas and the controversy over his teaching that we can go beyond human reason by grasping God through his activities or “energies”.
7 comments
Posted on 19 May 2019
Was Gemistos Plethon, the last great thinker of the Byzantine tradition, a secret pagan or just a Christian with an unusual enthusiasm for Platonism?
8 comments
Posted on 2 June 2019
When the Byzantine empire ended in 1453, philosophy in Greek did not end with it. In this episode we bring the story up to the 20th century.
10 comments
Posted on 8 March 2020
Pico della Mirandola argues for the harmony of the ancient authorities, draws on Jewish mysticism, and questions the value of humanist rhetoric.
4 comments
Posted on 16 January 2011
Peter discusses the "father of metaphysics," Parmenides, and his argument that all being is one.