Philosopher's Zone ABC listen
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- Society & Culture
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The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
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Style wars pt 1: Postwar France and a new philosophical mode
In the aftermath of the Second World War, France was in a state of creative ferment that affected politics, culture - and philosophy. A new mode of philosophical writing emerged in the form of the review, and it was being done in an idiom that we've since come to recognise as typical of modern French theory: dense, experimental, multivocal, open-ended, very much the opposite of traditional analytic philosophical style. It grabbed scholarly attention then, and is still controversial today.
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The predicament of existence
Pain is part of life, and none of us can escape it. And yet most of us feel that the deal is worth it, that the pleasure of life outweighs the suffering. Anti-natalist philosophy takes a different view.
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Mary Midgley, public philosophy and plumbing
British thinker Mary Midgley (1919-2018) believed that philosophy should be a public undertaking, concerned with issues that have their genesis out in the world rather than within the academy. But what is the proper relationship between public and academic philosophy? And why are we talking about plumbing this week?
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Intellectual humility
Humility is the capacity for acknowledging that your own wisdom may be flawed, and that your epistemic commitments may be misplaced - but how can that acknowledgement honestly take place if you believe that the things you know are true?
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Freedom or liberty?
"Freedom" has become a familiar catchcry in Western democracies, as individuals and protest groups increasingly push back against government restrictions of any and all kinds. The problems this poses for communal life and social cohesion are obvious - so how should freedom be properly understood?
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Philosophy, angst and hope
How does a woman philosopher deal with the challenges posed by conservative, masculinist culture within her own academic discipline? Our guest this week turns to the work of Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German thinker who formulated a fine-grained philosophy of hope.
Customer Reviews
Generally good but where are the theists?
These guys present so many great ideas and ask so many great questions. I can’t help but think it’s a little one-sided, but they’re definitely doing a good job of getting certain backwards and forwards conversations happening. I would appreciate some more respected theists on the show having heard, well not really much from that side. But perhaps this is not the place to be talking about those arguments when there are 1000 different podcast talking about those things really. Otherwise really top stuff and thought-provoking.
Made me think
Women in Philosophy guest said “She also had an extremely violent death, which of course made her famous in her own life time”…
I’ll have to think about that one for a while.
Extremist nonsense
The latest episode ("Race, biology and medicine") is nonsense. I don’t mean that I disagree with it, I mean it is actual nonsense: incoherent rambly sentences, highly fallacious/unsound reasoning to achieve logical conclusions that contradicted the premise, et cetera. It seems to be an exercise in oratory 'sleight-of-hand' to push an extremist identity-politics agenda. What’s more scary than the extremism itself, is that anyone could take it seriously. It is reminiscient of some other extremist populist movements that gained traction…