History of Philosophy Audio Archive

In this episode, Michael Davis discusses the first work in Aeschylus' trilogy, the Agamemnon. Short story short: Agamemnon wants to go do the Trojan War because his brother Menelaus got cucked by Paris, who ran off with his wife Helen back to Troy. Unfortunately the God Poseidon is on the side of the Trojans and so when Agamemnon is getting ready to launch his fleet the sea becomes stormy and impassable. To counteract this, Agamemnon decides that he will sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods so that the storm will be quelled, so he has her bound and sacrificed like a sheep. 10 years later, Agamemnon returns home triumphant. His wife, Clytemnestra however, is pretty unhappy about the fact that her husband slaughtered their daughter and has had a decade to plot her revenge... --- The link to the entire playlist is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiyEzRZtxXGU My original writing &c is here: williamengels.substack.com The cover photo is Herbert Gustave Schmalz "Iphigenia" Enjoy.

Lectures by Michael Davis, Professor of Philosophy, delivered in the fall semester of 2018 at Sarah Lawrence College. Davis works primarily in Greek philosophy, in moral and political philosophy, and in what might be called the “poetics” of philosophy. He is the translator, with Seth Benardete, of Aristotle's On Poetics and has written on a variety of philosophers from Plato to Heidegger and of literary figures from Homer and the Greek tragedians to Saul Bellow and Tom Stoppard. More information about Davis is available at michaelpeterdavis.com. More philosophical content can be found at www.thinkinvisible.com. Videos edited by Sebastian Soper and Alexandre Legrand. The above is taken from the video description, which is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0w1jqwoiwk --- Original writing: williamengels.substack.com Enjoy.

I've taken a few of Professor Sugrue's lectures and stitched them together to make a complete, one-stop shopping guide to Plato's Republic that is pleasant to listen to, interesting, and intellectually rich. Reuploaded to include Books VI-X. Professor Sugrue passed away in the last year; part of my effort here is a memorial. --- Original video link: https://youtu.be/8rf3uqDj00A Original writing: williamengels.substack.com --- Enjoy

Advisory: This episode is INTENSE and it is not suitable for children. Discusses violence against women and children as well as warfare and torture. Chris Hedges is one of my living heroes; to the extent that anyone can tell the truth in this blizzard of lies we are all trying to survive, it's him. --- Original video here: https://youtu.be/OGCFVc-5yTM?si=HhqMk3G2tLHg_yqN Thanks to MediaSanctuary for hosting these talks, it makes a huge difference. https://www.youtube.com/@mediasanctuary --- My writing lives here: https://williamengels.substack.com/

Judith Herman wrote an incredible book called "Trauma and Recovery" which I would wholeheartedly recommend to everyone. Advisory: Discusses incest, sexual assault, and PTSD. --- The original video can be found here: https://youtu.be/USTKmffoQms?si=mikorNz7weMjdNpu My thanks to University of California television for providing and maintaining this recording which was first recorded in March 2002. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. They are free, as in libre, and free as in “beer”. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are.  Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, performed by Gregor Quendel) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

In this talk, Jonathan Lear reviews one of my favorite philosophers, the British virtue ethicist and founder of the Neoareatic movement Alasdair MacIntyre, whose 2016 book Ethics In the Conflicts of Modernity has been hugely influential in my own thinking about how we relate, socially and individually, to the questions about justice, beauty, goodness, and truth that run through our lives. Professor Lear is a practicing clinical psychoanalyst, moral philosopher, and First Nations scholar and advocate whose work on the Crow Nation, "Radical Hope" I strongly recommend. --- The original video can be found here, my thanks to the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame for providing and maintaining this recording which was first recorded July 25-27, 2019. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. They are free, as in libre, and free as in “beer”. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are.  Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, performed by Gregor Quendel) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

On March 22, 2005, Martha Nussbaum visited the John Adams Institute to talk about Upheavals of Thought - The Intelligence of Emotions. For everybody who thinks that philosophy is a stuffy dull science, practiced by unworldly absent-minded professors: Martha Nussbaum isn’t an abstract scientist who occupies herself with the universe and metaphysics. She is in touch with daily life. The underlying assumption of her ideas is based on human emotions. According to Nussbaum emotions are no irritating uncontrollable upheavals, which we have to master at all cost, but sensible reactions to everything that really matters to us. For that reason Nussbaum is considered (as) a typical female philosopher, also because she has an open eye for commonplace things, and knows to empathize with all kind of people. The above was reproduced from a video description. --- The original video can be found here, my thanks to the John Adams Institute for American Culture in the Netherlands for providing and maintaining this recording, made in 2005. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. They are free, as in libre, and free as in “beer”. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are.  Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, performed by Gregor Quendel) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

This talk describes the ethics and aesthetics of unsentimentality as practiced by some of the late twentieth-century’s most notable women artists and intellectuals. We will consider what it would mean to have an ethics without empathy even in the face of extreme suffering. Deborah Nelson's Franke Forum talk is titled “An Unsentimental Education: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil." Deborah Nelson is Chair and Professor in the Department of English Language & Literature and the College. Her book: Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, and Weil won the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize for Best Book of 2017 and the Gordan Laing Prize in 2019 for the most distinguished contribution to the University of Chicago Press by a faculty member. The above is reproduced from the YouTube video description. The original video can be found here, my thanks to the University of Chicago, my alma mater, for providing and maintaining this recording which was first recorded in November 2017. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. They are free, as in libre, and free as in “beer”. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are. If I provide links to books, they are affiliate links, all others are not.  Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, performed by Gregor Quendel) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

Chris Hedges explores the cultural, economic, and political forms of fascism that are dredged up by the political phenomenon of Donald Trump's presidency. Advisory: This presentation is graphic, and contains many detailed descriptions of violence. --- The original video can be found here, my thanks to Media Sanctuary for providing and maintaining this recording which was first recorded in November of 2017. As always these talks are syndicated for educational and nonprofit purposes in accordance with Fair Use. They are produced ad-free, because I listen to my own stuff on here and like you, I hate ads. They are free, as in libre, and free as in “beer”. These recordings have been remastered for clarity, ease of listening, and concision and have been downmixed to mono so that they are lighter and easier to stream, wherever you are.  Furthermore my historical and philosophical writing, which is also entirely free is available at my blog, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Hemlock⁠⁠⁠⁠, on Substack. The music of the intro and outro (Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, performed by Gregor Quendel) is licensed under non-commercial attribution, and can be ⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠ and has been remixed by me. Enjoy.

John Searle, a leading philosopher of mind famous for his critique of machine intelligence, engages with Nick Bostrom, an AI safety expert. They dissect the nature of consciousness, rejecting fears of machines gaining self-awareness. Searle argues that machines lack the necessary semantics to possess true motivation or understanding. The conversation explores the distinctions between subjective and objective experiences, blindsight phenomena, and the complexities of visual perception. Their insights challenge contemporary misconceptions about AI and consciousness.