Love and Sexuality

31 - Wings of Desire: Plato's Erotic Dialogues

Posted on 1 May 2011

In this episode, Peter discusses Plato’s erotic dialogues, the Lysis, the Phaedrus and the Symposium, and talks about the relationship between love, friendship and philosophy in Plato’s thought.

11 comments
32 - Frisbee Sheffield on Platonic Love

Posted on 7 May 2011

Frisbee Sheffield, an expert on Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, chats to Peter about love and friendship in the erotic dialogues.

5 comments
178 - Eyes Wide Shut: Rūmī and Philosophical Sufism

Posted on 1 June 2014

The Persian poet Rūmī and mystical philosopher al-Qūnawī carry on the legacy of Sufism.

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212. Like Father, Like Son: Debating the Trinity

Posted on 22 February 2015

Discussion, debate and denunciation of philosophical attempts to explain the Trinity in Abelard, Richard of St Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux.

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237. Begin the Beguine: Hadewijch and Mechthild of Magdeburg

Posted on 27 September 2015

Two Beguine authors, Hadewijch and Mechthild of Magdeburg, deploy the tropes of courtly love in vernacular writings about their mystical experiences.

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254. Love, Reign Over Me: The Romance of the Rose

Posted on 22 May 2016

Sex, reason, and religion in Jean de Meun’s completion of an allegory of courtly love, the Roman de la Rose.

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267. After Virtue: Marguerite Porete

Posted on 18 December 2016

Marguerite Porete is put to death for her exploration of the love of God, The Mirror of Simple Souls.

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292. Say it With Poetry: Chaucer and Langland

Posted on 31 December 2017

Philosophical themes in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and “Troilus and Criseyde,” as well as Langland’s “Piers Plowman.”

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57. Learn by Doing: Tantra

Posted on 7 January 2018

Philosophy is put into practice in Kashmir Śaivite Tantra and Buddhist Tantra.

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293. The Good Wife: Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages

Posted on 14 January 2018

Medieval attitudes towards homosexuality, sex and chastity, and the status of women. Authors discussed include Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, and Chaucer.

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294. Isabel Davis on Sexuality and Marriage in Chaucer

Posted on 28 January 2018

Peter is joined by Isabel Davis to discuss marriage, sex and chastity in Chaucer, focusing on the Wife of Bath's speech.

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7. Richard Parkinson on Egyptian Poetry

Posted on 24 June 2018

Egyptologist Richard Parkinson joins us to talk about the context and meaning of the Eloquent Peasant and other literary works of ancient Egypt.

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315. Wiser Than Men: Gender in Byzantium

Posted on 30 December 2018

The role of women in Byzantine society and the complex attitudes surrounding eunuchs: did they make up a “third gender”?

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341. True Romance: Theories of Love

Posted on 26 January 2020

Ficino describes a “Platonic” love purified of sexuality, prompting a debate carried on by Pico della Mirandola, Pietro Bembo, and Tullia d’Aragona.

7 comments
343. As Far as East from West: Jewish Philosophy in Renaissance Italy

Posted on 23 February 2020

Jewish philosophers in Renaissance Italy, focusing on Leone Ebreo’s Dialogues of Love, the Averroism of Elijah del Medigo, and Italian Kabbalah.

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353. The Good Place: Utopias in the Italian Renaissance

Posted on 12 July 2020

Tommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun and other utopian works of the Italian Renaissance describe perfect cities as an ideal for real life politics.

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378. Faith, No More: Martin Luther

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.

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379. Lyndal Roper on Luther

Posted on 12 September 2021

How radical was Luther? We find out from Lyndal Roper, who also discusses Luther and the Peasants' War, sexuality, anti-semitism, and the visual arts.

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96. A Lover’s War: James Baldwin

Posted on 20 March 2022

In The Fire Next Time and other writings, the essayist and novelist James Baldwin seeks to dispel the illusions surrounding racial and sexual difference.

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398. Pearls of Wisdom: Marguerite of Navarre

Posted on 5 June 2022

A Renaissance queen supports philosophical humanism and produces literary works on spirituality, love, and the soul.

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399. Seriously Funny: Rabelais

Posted on 19 June 2022

In his outrageous novel about the giants Pantagruel and Gargantua, Rabelais engages with scholasticism, humanism, medicine, the reformation, and the querelle des femmes.

1 comments
105. Meeting the Gaze: Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks

Posted on 24 July 2022

Frantz Fanon combines psychoanalysis and existential phenomenology to diagnose neuroses deriving from the colonial condition.

8 comments
108. Or Does It Explode? Lorraine Hansberry

Posted on 2 October 2022

The author of the famous play, A Raisin in the Sun, explores questions of violence, sexuality, and more during her too brief life. 

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