Soul and the Self
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In the Phaedo, Plato depicts the death of Socrates, and argues for two of his most distinctive doctrines: the immortality of the soul and the theory of Forms.
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Peter tackles the De Anima (“On the Soul”), focusing on the definition of soul as the form of the body and Aristotle’s theory of sensation.
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Leading Hellenistic philosophy scholar Tony Long talks to Peter about the self, ethics and politics in the Stoics, Epicureans and Skeptics.
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We put the Philo in philosophy this week, as Philo of Alexandria reads the Bible through the lens of Middle Platonism.
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Plutarch, a major figure of early Imperial literature, was also a Platonist philosopher. He gives us insight into Platonism before Plotinus, and also the letter E.
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For Plotinus, Soul is on the border between the physical and intelligible realms. Can he convince us to identify ourselves with its highest part?
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Origen, greatest of the Greek Church Fathers, sets out a stunning theory of human redemption as he marries philosophical rigor to theological speculation.
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The Latin church fathers Tertullian, Lactantius, Jerome, and Ambrose discuss soul, ethics, and the dangers of Hellenic philosophy.
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Augustine’s life story is related in the Confessions, a work that combines autobiography, theology, and metaphysical discussions of the nature of time.
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Augustine explores the nature of the human mind in order to establish its similarity to, and dissimilarity from, the divine Trinity.
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Al-Kindī uses Hellenic materials to discuss the eternity of the world, divine attributes, and the nature of the soul.
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With his Flying Man argument, Avicenna explores self-awareness and the relation between soul and body.
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Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī makes up his own mind about physics and the soul, and along the way inaugurates a new style of doing philosophy.
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Suhrawardī, founder of the Illuminationist (ishrāqī) tradition, proposes a metaphysics of light on the basis of his theory of knowledge by presence.
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The Illuminationists carry on Suhrawardī’s critique of “Peripatetic” philosophy and wonder if they will be reborn as giraffes.
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John Blund and William of Auvergne draw on Aristotle and Avicenna to argue that the soul is immaterial and immortal.
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Peter Olivi proposes that awareness occurs not through passively being affected by things, but by actively paying attention to them.
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Robert Kilwardby is infamous for his ban on teaching certain philosophical ideas at Oxford, yet made contributions in logic and on the soul.
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The ancient texts known as the Upaniṣads claim to expose the hidden connections between things, including the self and the world.
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The god Indra seeks to learn the nature of his own self from another god, Prajāpati, and receives an answer worth waiting for.
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Therese Cory tells Peter what 13th century philosophers thought about self-awareness.
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Thomas Aquinas makes controversial claims concerning the unity of the soul and the empirical basis of human knowledge.
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Peter speaks to Rupert Gethin about the no-self theory, and its implications for Buddhist ethics and meditation practices.
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The founding text of the Vedānta school, the Vedānta- or Brahma-Sūtra, interprets the Upaniṣads as teaching that all things derive from brahman.
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Śaṅkara and his “non-dual” (Advaita) Vedānta, which teaches that only brahman is real, and the world of experience and individual self are mere illusion.
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The oldest treatise of Sāṃkhya enumerates the principles of the cosmos and of the human mind.
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Yoga as presented by Patañjali offers a practical complement to the Sāṃkhya theory of the cosmos and the self.
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A leading expert on the founding text of Yoga tells us why, when, and by whom it was written, and what it has to do with modern day yoga practice.
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Nyāya proposes that each of us has both a self and a mind, in addition to the body.
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Monima Chadha takes Peter through Buddhist-Hindu debates over mind and self.
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The Jain theory of standpoints or non-onesidedness (anekāntavāda) makes truth a matter of perspective.
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Vasubandhu’s path to Yogācāra Buddhism, a form of idealism which holds that nothing can be mind-independent.
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Martin Pickavé returns to the podcast to talk about theories of the emotions in Aquinas, Scotus and Wodeham.
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Dignāga argues that all perception is accompanied by self-awareness.
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Buddhaghosa, a major figure in the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, argues against the need for a self to control and coordinate mental activities.
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Three guests to celebrate 300 episodes! Rachel Barney, Christof Rapp, and Mark Kalderon join Peter to discuss the importance of ancient philosophy for today's philosophers.
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Peter King, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, and Russ Friedman discuss their approaches to medieval philosophy and its contemporary relevance.
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Demands for ma’at (justice or truth) and a confrontation with the soul, in the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant and Dispute Between a Man and his Ba.
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Teodros Kiros discusses his work in political philosophy and the history of Ethiopian philosophical thought.
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Traditional African ideas about personhood, which challenge assumptions about the relation between mind and body, self and other.
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Emphasis on the value of community as a major theme in African philosophy.
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Anton Wilhelm Amo, brought to Germany from his native Ghana, defends a rigorous dualism of mind and body. Was this philosophy connected to his African origins?
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Lorenzo Valla launches a furious attack on scholastic philosophy, favoring the resources of classical Latin.
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An interview with Sabrina Ebbersmeyer about the relation of emotion to reason and the body, and panpsychism, in the Renaissance.
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Marsilio Ficino’s revival of Platonism, with a focus on his proofs for the soul’s immortality in his magnum opus, the Platonic Theology.
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Pico della Mirandola and Giannozzo Manetti praise humans as the centerpiece of the created world. But what about the other animals?
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An interview with Cecilia Muratori, an expert on the surprisingly modern ideas about non-human animals that emerged in the Renaissance.
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Pietro Pomponazzi and Agostino Nifo debate the immortality of the soul and the cogency of Averroes’ theory of intellect.
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The polymath Girolamo Cardano explores medicine, mathematics, philosophy of mind, and the interpretation of dreams.
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Was the anti-Aristotelian natural philosophy of Bernardino Telesio and Tommaso Campanella the first modern physical theory?
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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.
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In his Essays Montaigne uses wit, insight, and humanist training to tackle his favorite subject: Montaigne.
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Marie le Jars de Gourney, the “adoptive daughter” of Montaigne, lays claim to his legacy and argues for the equality of the sexes.
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How the Renaissance turn towards individual identity is reflected in Shakespeare's most famous play.
