History of Philosophy Audio Archive William Engels | Writer @ williamengels.substack.com

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.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism_Is_a_Humanism

This is probably the single best philosophical introduction to Existentialism on the market - the best literary introduction is likely Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, which is absolutely wild, by the way.

This text was very influential for me, and pushed me in my first year of college away from the Analytic tradition and towards Continental philosophy (Heidegger, Husserl, Foucault, Zizek, etc) which in hindsight I'm going to go ahead and say was a great move; no regrets. I don't agree with everything Sartre says in this, but if I only posted stuff I completely agreed with I'd be reduced to posting algebra or something.

If you're keeping score at home, this is the text/translation I used:

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm

The photo is Sartre and the philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir being in love and rebellion all that fun mid-century stuff that we can barely even imagine anymore.

https://history.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf5351/files/european-intellectuals.png

Anyway, thanks to all the subscribers for taking a shot on a new thing - I'm gonna keep this going and post more regularly. Keep your eyes peeled for wrapping the Greek Tragedy series, new content from Roy Casagranda, Noam Chomsky, and James Baldwin/Franz Fanon.

I've received a few wonderful messages from subscribers. If you want to make my day (or chew me out) you can reach me at this email, feel free to send anything:

williamengels@substack.com

Enjoy.


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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, incidentally) is will they:

A) do nothing and take no vengeance for my father, which would upset Zeus and Apollo especially, orrrrr

B) do I kill my mom, which Zeus/Apollo would like, but which the Furies (avenging spirits especially of wronged women) will definitely not like.

No surprises here; he's gonna go with B.

By the way, if you've wondered where the "Elektra Complex" (the gender-inverse of the Oedipus complex) comes from, this is it, although Sophocles is much more explicit about Elektra's role than Aeschylus who relegates her to a more minor status.

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Original video:

https://youtu.be/zlun2zJIQHA?si=6XevB1nsKs9Bu078

Original writing:

williamengels.substack.com

Enjoy.


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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

wounds me, dyes me black and I, I revel

like the Earth when the spring rains come down,

the blessed gifts of god, and the new green spear

splits the sheath and rips to birth in glory!

...

It is right, and more than right. He flooded

the vessel of our proud house with misery,

with the vintage of the curse and now

he drains the dregs. My lord is home at last.

-Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, 1401-1423, trans R. Fagles.

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Original YouTube playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiyEzRZtxXGU

Thumbnail Photo:

The Mask of Agamemnon

Original writing:

williamengels.substack.com

Enjoy.


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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...

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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.


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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

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Original writing:

williamengels.substack.com

Enjoy.


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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.

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Original video link:

https://youtu.be/8rf3uqDj00A

Original writing:

williamengels.substack.com

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Enjoy


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/william-engels/support