Open Door Philosophy

Send us Fan Mail It's time we say goodbye. This is the final episode of Open Door Philosophy. We had such a wonderful time doing it and thank everyone so deeply for listening. We pull back the curtain on this last episode and discuss the journey, so please join us one last time.  Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy on Instagram @opendoorphilosophy Open Do...

Send us Fan Mail Is the self a soul that is immortal? Is the self a thinking thing or a bundle of perceptions? The Existentialists take this question and place at the center the importance of choice. The self emerges through our experiences and the choices we make. Join us as we discuss Kierkegaard and Sartre in this final episode on The Self.  Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com...

Send us Fan Mail Ancient philosophers believed the self was an immortal soul. This began to shift in the late 16th century when the concept of the self began to radically change to a more abstracted, biological self. Join us as we look at Rene Descartes and David Hume's theories on the self.  Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy on Instagram @opendoorphilo...

Send us Fan Mail What is the self? Something immaterial? Something like a soul? Or perhaps consciousness? Is it you? Join us for this episode as we look to ancient explanations of the self from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Hinduism.   Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy on Instagram @opendoorphilosophy Open Door Philosophy website at opendoorphilosophy.com

Send us Fan Mail Ah love, a many splendored thing. At first you are attracted to their looks, but then you realize there's something more to them, something beautiful within, their beautiful soul. Join us for this third and final part on Plato's Symposium where we review the speech of Socrates.  Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy on Instagram @opend...

Send us Fan Mail Are you destined to be with someone? Is there a soul-mate out there, somewhere, just for you? Is love something that comes upon us, or is it something we cultivate within ourselves? Join us for this second episode on Plato's Symposium where we discuss the speeches of Aristophanes and Agathon.   Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy on Insta...

Send us Fan Mail What is love? Can it inspire us to be better? Can it bring harmony to opposites? These are of the most enduring questions we have, so much so that Plato wrote an entire dialogue about it called Symposium. Join us for this episode in which we give some background and discuss the first three speeches on love! Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy...

Send us Fan Mail We finish our overview of The Oxford Four with Mr. Parsons' favorite, Mary Midgley. She wrote on the topic of metaphilosophy, championed a pluralistic view of morality, and raged against scientism and reductionism. AND she had swaggy hats! Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy on Instagram @opendoorphilosophy Open Door Philosophy website at...

Send us Fan Mail She protested WWII and abortion. She was the pupil of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the eventual conservator of his work. She turned moral philosophy on it's head with her paper Modern Moral Philosophy. She was a Catholic convert. And she's Andrew's philosophical hero. Join us this week for another installment of the Oxford Four series, this time featuring Elizabeth Ansco...

Send us Fan Mail Ever heard of the Trolly Problem? Of course you have, even if you don't know you have. This episode we turn our attention to Philippa Foot, the originator of the famous thought experiment, but she was know for so much more. Her moral philosophy focusing on natural goodness helped usher in the revival of virtue ethics in the second half of the 20th century. Join us as we explo...

Send us Fan Mail  Dive into the fascinating world of Iris Murdoch, one of four trailblazing women who revolutionized philosophy at Oxford University before and during World War II. These extraordinary friends reshaped philosophical thought with their groundbreaking ideas. In this episode, we explore Murdoch's impressive literary achievements and delve into her profound moral philosophy which...

Send us Fan Mail People do not have any virtues, and people do not have any vices. You wouldn't be blamed for thinking this is a surprising take, but our guest Christian Miller thinks this is the case. Join us as Dr. Miller walks us through the argument in this captivating interview that canvases the landscape of character and virtue.  Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open...

Send us Fan Mail Roughly 1800 years ago, the most powerful person in the world wrote a book. Actually, back then it was only his journal, but today it is considered one of the great books of world wisdom. Known simply as Meditations, the emperor of the Roman Empire, Marcus Aurelius, for ten years wrote most mornings about the challenges he was to face and how he intended to approach them through t...

Send us Fan Mail Can morality be entirely relative to an individual or a cultural standard? Does the diversity of moral beliefs across cultures undermine the existence of objective moral principles? Does the fact that human sacrifice once existed in one culture but looked down upon but another disprove the fact that there are objective morals? Or if we accept that moral subjectivism exists, is the...

Send us Fan Mail Last weekend, as I was driving down the interstate in Houston, I noticed, not for the first time, a billboard that claims, “Signs, Miracles, and Wonders! Every Sunday at 11:00 AM.” I turned towards my wife and quipped, “I didn’t realize you could schedule them.” But in all seriousness, how should one express such things to others, something like a miracle or a sign? If language is...

Send us Fan Mail In the book of Exodus, God appears to the biblical patriarch Moses in the form of a burning bush, and tells him he is to lead the Isrealites, enslaved by the Egyptians, to freedom. In the Bhagavad Gita, the source of all things, lord Krisha, appears to prince Arjuna as his charioteer and helps him understand his identity and potential on the eve of a major battle. These appearance...

Send us Fan Mail What’s the most important question in philosophy? Our guest Jack Symes believes it to be the question of God’s existence, no matter where you fall on the belief spectrum.  In this episode, Jack discusses with us his latest book, Philosophers on God: Talking about Existence which directly address this question. What is the origin of the universe? What are the most powerful argument...

Send us Fan Mail Included in this episode are feminist icons Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir, champions of new ethics Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, and Elizabeth Anscombe, and contemporary powerhouse on love and other moral stances Susan Wolf. It's a lot packed into one hour! Join us for this final installment of the series: Women Who Shaped Philosophy! Contact us via...

Send us Fan Mail Throughout the history of philosophy, women have been active, yet markedly absent from much of the scholarship. If you go into a book store or do a google search for the greatest philosophers, you would most likely see one or two women, at most on any given list. How can those two things coexist together? In Han Dynasty China, a female scholar was employed by the Emporer to write...

Send us Fan Mail Throughout the history of philosophy, women have been active, yet markedly absent from much of the scholarship. If you go into a book store or do a google search for the greates philosohers, you would most likely see one or two women, at most on any given list. How can those two things coexist together? In Ancient Greece and Rome, a few women were revered as philosophical teachers...

Send us Fan Mail Whether concepts such as the Golden Ratio or more subjective standards of aesthetic judgments, beauty has been the subject of debate for every era of philosophical history. In the ancient world, it was the Greeks that formed much of what the ancient era would think about when considering beauty in concepts such as symmetry and ratios. The Enlightenment era philosophers of the mode...

Send us Fan Mail Beauty and aesthetics seems to be one of the least discussed branches of philosophy, yet occupied the minds of some of the greatest philosophers such as: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hume, just to name a few. Its appeal is immediately obvious, however, when someone asks the seemingly simple question of exactly what beauty is. The conversation that typically follows involves topics...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Open Door Philosophy! We're happy you stopped by! Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy on Instagram @opendoorphilosophy Open Door Philosophy website at opendoorphilosophy.com

Send us Fan Mail Join us as we discuss our goals and plans for Open Door Philosophy in 2024. We discuss upcoming guests, episode topics, and more! Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy on Instagram @opendoorphilosophy Open Door Philosophy website at opendoorphilosophy.com

Send us Fan Mail In this bit of nonsense, Andrew tries to convince Mr. Parsons to learn Latin, no one is sure what whiskey is, Mr. Parsons ditches the neck ties, and there's some dissatisfaction with camera angles.   Contact us via email at opendoorphilosophy@gmail.com Open Door Philosophy on Instagram @opendoorphilosophy Open Door Philosophy website at opendoorphilosophy.com