History of Philosophy Audio Archive

How would a Marxist economy function without a state that backs property rights? How could a corporation operate without a board of directors? How could wealth be redistributed in an orderly, rational, and humane way? These questions and more answered in Professor Richard Wolff's seminar on the fundamentals of practical Marxist economics. Enjoy. -//- Original video: https://youtu.be/T9Whccunka...

The Russian painter and synesthete Wassily Kandinsky developed a vision of art as a spiritual pursuit and elaborated that vision in his book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art". Digitized on Librivox, edited by yours truly. Enjoy. -//- https://librivox.org/concerning-the-spiritual-in-art-by-wassily-kandinsky/

Do you ever feel guilty? You probably should. Especially if you're an American.

John Dupré is a leading philosopher of biology working at the intersection between the humanities, social sciences, and biological sciences. The term "process philosophy" is drawn from Alfred North Whitehead who advanced a metaphysics of panpsychism in his text Process and Reality driven by what he called the "experience" embedded in all wave-like entities. In this Gifford Lect...

This year (2024) Dr. Cornel West was invited to give the annual Gifford Lecture Series at the University of Edinburgh. He shook things up - rather than outlining a theory or justifying a method for doing philosophy, he traced a new approach rooted in the language of jazz, blues, and the black freedom struggle in America. (00:00:00) Philosophic Prelude (00:49:55) Metaphilosophic Andante (01:43:07)...

In 1993 Rick Roderick. professor of philosophy at Duke University and elsewhere delivered a capstone eight-part series reviewing philosophers who posed the deepest and most contemporary challenges to our conventional (Western) concept of "the self". They were: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud ("The Masters of Suspicion"), Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Ha...

In 1988 veteran journalist Bill Moyers sat down for a series of six interviews with leading scholar of comparative religion and mythology Joseph Campbell. In their wide ranging discussion, televised to millions, they discuss the origins of human storytelling, the unitary character of religious motifs, and how mythology from around the world can serve as a blueprint for personal spiritual growth an...

In this 2015 talk, philosopher Wendy Brown, author of "Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution" and "Regulating Aversion" gives a fascinating overview and analysis of the phenomenon of cultural decay under neoliberalism and offers a fascinating perspective on the early days of the US-Iraq War, especially the "leadership" of a certain Ian Bremmer, who as head of the Coa...

Do animals deserve rights in the same way that human beings do? How can those rights be determined, and do they differ from animal to animal based on complexity? In this presentation at the University of Chicago in 2021, Professor Nussbaum walks us through different intellectual and political approaches to animal rights, and some of the controversies that exist in this poorly explored and under-re...

Herbert Marcuse was one of the leading intellectuals of the 1960s, and did more than perhaps any other philosopher to shape the intellectual foundations of the counterculture. In this episode, I include first an interview between Bryan Magee and the man himself, and then afterwards and always punchy analysis by the fantastic Rick Roderick. The original videos can be found here: Rick Roderick on Ma...

Presentation by Robert C. Solomon Existentialism began not in philosophy but primarily in literature - Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and Kafka's Metamorphosis along with Hesse's Steppenwolf were the clearest and earliest expositions of existentialist themes and ideas. In this presentation, Solomon walks us through Dostoevsky's The Idiot , selections from Kafka, and finall...

Julian Assange is one of the few heroes to have lived and worked in my lifetime. It is clear that he will never receive a fair trial, never exercise his right to face his accusers, or be treated humanely during the series of ordeals that have comprised his exile, capture, and torture under conditions of solitary confinement. We must demand amnesty for Julian Assange - without journalists like him,...

I've committed a grave sin - coining a new term - and that terms is soterioactive . The soterioactive is all forms of human activity that serve primarily and expediently to liberate, deliver, or emancipate human beings from a condition of ignorance, vice, or hate. In this talk, I lay out what that looks like in the realms of public discourse, art/aesthetics, and in history. 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 pla...

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...

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)...

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 th...

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 rec...

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.wikipe...

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, incidental...

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 wou...

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...

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 o...

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 Origina...

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 MediaSanctua...