prophetgoddess
@prophetgoddess

i think i've mentioned it on here a couple of times, but i wanted to give a real earnest dedicated recommendation of one of my favorite podcasts, the history of philosophy without any gaps. it is what it says on the tin: an attempt to cover every single person in history who has ever done philosophy that we know about with a 20-ish minute episode about their thought.

there are a bunch of things i think are great about this podcast. the host, historian of philosophy peter adamson, has the vibe of many good teachers i've had: he's a big dork who clearly loves the subject and teaching it. he's fond of puns and has a small set of characters he uses to illustrate almost every philosophical idea he talks about: buster keaton, a giraffe named hiawatha, the marx brothers, his nonexistent trapeze artist philosopher sister, etc. he also has a rather broad definition of what constitutes "philosophy," and tackles a lot of thinkers who would probably not have considered themselves "philosophers," as well as thinkers outside the eurocentric white male philosophy tradition that dominates most conversations about philosophy. much of his focus is devoted to philosophy in the muslim world, for instance, and he's also produced many episodes on african and indian philosophy.

the thing i find most valuable about it though is how it's changed my perspective on ancient and medieval philosophy. it's very common these days to criticize philosophers of the past as stupid or not understanding obvious things; everyone these days loves to make fun of aristotle for his range of beliefs about the natural world that seem strange to us today. peter adamson takes a very different approach: he is dedicated to approaching every single philosopher he talks about in the most generous way possible, and helping you understand why you would care about the things they care about, why you might think about things in the way they did, why their thought was valuable and interesting at the time, and why it might still remain so today. there's plenty to criticize about a lot of the philosophers he talks about, but it's refreshing to consider them as complete human beings in context instead of just making fun of their beliefs that we now think of as silly.


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