Free Will
Posted on 19 February 2012
Peter chats about Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus with John Sellars, an expert on Roman Stoicism and the reception of Stoicism in the early modern era.
10 comments
Posted on 20 January 2013
Augustine attempts to reconcile human freedom with God’s foreknowledge and his own claim that we need divine grace to avoid sin.
32 comments
Posted on 24 March 2013
A first look at the philosophical contributions of Islamic theology (kalām) and its political context, focusing on the Mu'tazilites Abū l-Hudhayl and al-Naẓẓām.
36 comments
Posted on 14 July 2013
Al-Ash'arī puts his stamp on the future of Islamic theology by emphasizing God’s untrammeled power and freedom.
35 comments
Posted on 12 January 2014
Abraham Ibn Ezra, Ibn Daud and Maimonides consider the philosophical implications of astrology as science flourishes in the Jewish culture of Andalusia.
24 comments
Posted on 8 February 2015
John Marenbon returns to the podcast to discuss Abelard's views on necessity and freedom.
26 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 3 July 2016
An interview with Martin Pickavé on voluntarism and the interaction of will and intellect, according to Henry of Ghent.
3 comments
Posted on 25 September 2016
Scotus develops a novel theory of free will and, along the way, rethinks the notions of necessity and possibility.
2 comments
Posted on 4 December 2016
A conversation with Tom Pink about medieval theories of freedom and action.
14 comments
Posted on 18 December 2016
Marguerite Porete is put to death for her exploration of the love of God, The Mirror of Simple Souls.
17 comments
Posted on 12 February 2017
William of Ockham on freedom of action and freedom of thought.
8 comments
Posted on 23 April 2017
Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine ask how we can be free if God knows and chooses the things we will do in the future.
15 comments
Posted on 16 July 2017
The hipster’s choice for favorite scholastic, John Buridan, sets out a nominalist theory of knowledge and language, and explains the workings of free will.
7 comments
Posted on 31 December 2017
Philosophical themes in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and “Troilus and Criseyde,” as well as Langland’s “Piers Plowman.”
0 comments
Posted on 22 March 2020
Pico della Mirandola and Giannozzo Manetti praise humans as the centerpiece of the created world. But what about the other animals?
3 comments
Posted on 25 April 2021
How humanism and scholasticism came together with the Protestant Reformation to create the philosophy of 15 - 16th century Europe.
6 comments
Posted on 18 July 2021
Trends in Aristotelian philosophy in northern and eastern Europe in the fifteenth century, featuring discussion of the “Wegestreit” and the nominalist theology of Gabriel Biel.
0 comments
Posted on 1 August 2021
How Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone and his attack on the Church relate to the history of philosophy.
4 comments
Posted on 26 September 2021
Erasmus clashes with Martin Luther over the question whether our wills are free or enslaved to sin.
3 comments
Posted on 10 October 2021
Luther’s close ally Melanchthon uses his knowledge of ancient philosophy and rhetoric in the service of the Reformation.
4 comments
Posted on 21 November 2021
John Calvin's views on predestination and the limits of human reason.
10 comments
Posted on 5 December 2021
In a surprise twist, some Protestant thinkers embrace the methods of scholasticism, and even find something to admire in the work of Catholic authors like Aquinas.
3 comments
Posted on 13 February 2022
Amidst religious conflict in the Netherlands, Dirck Coornhert pleads for religious toleration and freedom of expression.
6 comments
Posted on 24 July 2022
Frantz Fanon combines psychoanalysis and existential phenomenology to diagnose neuroses deriving from the colonial condition.
8 comments
Posted on 5 February 2012
The greatest of the Roman Stoics is Epictetus, arguably the first thinker to discuss the nature of human will, and author of some of the most powerful and demanding ethical writings in history.
22 comments