History of Philosophy Audio Archive

The Arab Spring was not just an Arab revolution - it was a wave of revolutionary activity that touched Brazil, Myanmar, the United States (Occupy) and Southeast Asia. It began in Tunisia, when a vegetable vendor who had been insulted and abused by police seeking bribes decided he had had enough and made the decision to self-immolate. In this lecture, Professor Roy provides both historical background and personal eyewitness testimony to the nature of the Arab Spring. The original video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL0nswvZRwo The original channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@ACCTVStudios My thanks to Austin Community College TV for making this recording available. Enjoy.

"Anomie" is a term from the foundational French sociologist Emile Durkheim. It refers to the rage and chaos created in individuals and the networks they interact with when social disconnection and personal alienation reach dangerous levels. In this talk, Hedges turns his lens towards our cultural patterns of alienation, loneliness, resentment, frustration, and despair. He attempts to place the cause of mass shootings, ethnonationalist violence, and crimes of despair and self-harm within a sociological context responsive to our times. The original video is here: https://youtu.be/HV0cS1TGve4?si=VM8IEWYI3LdTfV-L My thanks to the Sanctuary for Independent Media for hosting the presentation and uploading the material. https://www.youtube.com/@mediasanctuary Enjoy.

In this talk Professor Roy breaks down: Where ISIS really comes from How the Syrian Civil War began Which countries benefited and which suffered following the Arab Spring revolution How the US supported Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, Kurdistan, and Syria The origins of al-Qaeda and the relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. I found this presentation extremely effective and politically relevant, and I hope you did as well. As always, please go over to YouTube and give the man some love. YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAustinSchool YouTube Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBeFTcK9U5s This material is taken from publicly available sources and is syndicated/curated for educational and nonprofit objectives in accordance with Fair Use Enjoy.

Hey everybody - this is a personal episode, I saw that there are a few people listening now and I wanted to say a few things about what I have learned studying philosophy and talk about a few of the major pitfalls and pathmarks that you can reasonably expect as you get deeper into the study of philosophy. I also tell a few jokes. If you feel like reaching out, you can hit me up here: williamengels@substack.com Enjoy

In 1965, James Baldwin debated William F. Buckley on the following topic: "Has the American Dream been Achieved at the Expense of the American Negro?" Baldwin argued first in the Affirmative, followed by Buckley. I wanted to post this debate, not because I regard the terms of the debate as legitimate (I do not, and in case it isn't obvious, I think Baldwin is completely in the right) but because of the fact that despite its historicity, this debate is almost mythological in status in the sense that it is still, somehow, continuing in America. My thanks to OpenCulture and Aeon for providing the source material for the audio. https://www.openculture.com/2020/07/watch-the-famous-james-baldwin-william-f-buckley-debate-in-full-with-restored-audio-1965.html

ATHENA: Nothing that strikes a note of brutal conquest. Only peace- blessings, rising up from the earth and the heaving sea, and down the vaulting sky let the wind-gods breathe a wash of sunlight streaming through the land, and the yield of soil and grazing cattle flood our city's life with power and never flag with time. Make the seed of men live on, the more they worship you the more they thrive. I love them as a gardener loves his plants, these upright men, this breed fought free of grief. All that is yours to give. And I, in the trials of war where fighters burn for fame, will never endure the overthrow of Athens - all will praise her, victor city, pride of man. The Eumenides, 913-926, trans. Robert Fagles --- The wonderful Michael Davis did no fewer than five lectures on the final play in the Oresteia, the Eumenides (one of my all-time favorites) so I went ahead and slammed them into one giga-episode rather than just lazily uploading each one. Please remember to check out and subscribe to his page, which seems to have been recorded and A/V'd by some very skilled student volunteers. https://www.youtube.com/@thephilosophyoftragedy6720 Please enjoy yourself.

https://apnews.com/article/noam-chomsky-hospitalized-stroke-recovery-brazil-4fb6782abf6a7b6d0bbb30cefa05cede I learned yesterday that Noam Chomsky has had a massive stroke, one which has paralyzed the right side of his body and impaired his speech, from which he is now recovering. Coverage of this medical episode should be minimal, in order to give an opportunity for the family to traverse the recovery process in peace, as these scientific collaborators and friends of Chomsky describe here: https://youtu.be/KWKQIqzotLQ I hope that he recovers, but I also know that such a recovery is deeply unlikely, if not impossible. My strong wishes for recovery and privacy are with his family; I could not stop myself however, from reacting to the sudden and sad news with a profound sense of loss. This is what I had to say, brief and insufficient, about the man who gave first a scared child, and later a young scholar, so much truth during a time of so many lies. -- My gratitude to the Orion String Quartet for uploading this lovely performance of Beethoven's 13th String Quartet to IMSLP. The music is the fifth movement, the Cavatina. https://imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No.13,_Op.130_(Beethoven,_Ludwig_van)

500 subscribers is a surprise and a delight. I started this thing just for myself and a small group of interested friends, and I'm really happy to see that 500 other fellow travelers are finding something to enjoy in all of this. As a thank-you, I performed a reading, in my own voice and in English translation, of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1945 work Existentialism is a Humanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism_Is_a_Humanism This is probably the single best philosophical introduction to Existentialism on the market - the best literary introduction is likely Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, which is absolutely wild, by the way. This text was very influential for me, and pushed me in my first year of college away from the Analytic tradition and towards Continental philosophy (Heidegger, Husserl, Foucault, Zizek, etc) which in hindsight I'm going to go ahead and say was a great move; no regrets. I don't agree with everything Sartre says in this, but if I only posted stuff I completely agreed with I'd be reduced to posting algebra or something. If you're keeping score at home, this is the text/translation I used: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm The photo is Sartre and the philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir being in love and rebellion all that fun mid-century stuff that we can barely even imagine anymore. https://history.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf5351/files/european-intellectuals.png Anyway, thanks to all the subscribers for taking a shot on a new thing - I'm gonna keep this going and post more regularly. Keep your eyes peeled for wrapping the Greek Tragedy series, new content from Roy Casagranda, Noam Chomsky, and James Baldwin/Franz Fanon. I've received a few wonderful messages from subscribers. If you want to make my day (or chew me out) you can reach me at this email, feel free to send anything: williamengels@substack.com Enjoy.

Synopsis: Orestes, the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon is in a real pickle. His mother has conspired with her new boy-toy/husband Aegisthus to murder Agamemnon, who is now dead and whose grave Orestes and his sister Elektra are on their way to visit. In the slack years since the murder both Orestes and Elektra have grown up and come of age. The problem for Orestes/Elektra (and Hamlet, incidentally) is will they: A) do nothing and take no vengeance for my father, which would upset Zeus and Apollo especially, orrrrr B) do I kill my mom, which Zeus/Apollo would like, but which the Furies (avenging spirits especially of wronged women) will definitely not like. No surprises here; he's gonna go with B. By the way, if you've wondered where the "Elektra Complex" (the gender-inverse of the Oedipus complex) comes from, this is it, although Sophocles is much more explicit about Elektra's role than Aeschylus who relegates her to a more minor status. --- Original video: https://youtu.be/zlun2zJIQHA?si=6XevB1nsKs9Bu078 Original writing: williamengels.substack.com Enjoy.

He had no way to flee or right his destiny- our never-ending, all embracing net, I cast it wide for the royal haul, I coil him round and round in the wealth, the robes of doom, and then I strike him once, twice, and at each stroke he cries in agony- he buckles at the knees and crashes here! ... So he goes down, and the life is bursting out of him great sprays of blood, and the murderous shower wounds me, dyes me black and I, I revel like the Earth when the spring rains come down, the blessed gifts of god, and the new green spear splits the sheath and rips to birth in glory! ... It is right, and more than right. He flooded the vessel of our proud house with misery, with the vintage of the curse and now he drains the dregs. My lord is home at last. -Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, 1401-1423, trans R. Fagles. --- Original YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiyEzRZtxXGU Thumbnail Photo: The Mask of Agamemnon Original writing: williamengels.substack.com Enjoy.