Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we discuss Benedict de Spinoza’s work on the good embodied life with Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. Click here to listen to our conversation. Spinoza (1632-1677) was born in what was then one of Europe’s most free Jewish communities, in Holland. Perhaps thanks to that, he developed ideas centuries ahead of his time....
Please join me in welcoming Dominic Surya, our new blogger! We are excited to have him with us. Matt Teichman...
If you’d like to do more reading on the topic of our last epsiode, check out Christel Fricke’s paper, Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and The Origin and Function Of Conscience, in the Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith. Matt Teichman...
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we discuss the moral philosophy of Adam Smith with Christel Fricke, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, and Research Director at the Center for the Study of Mind in Nature in the Department of Philosophy, Classics, and History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo. Click here to listen to our conversation....
For those of you who would like to follow up on our previous episode, Mark Lance recommends the following website, which is quite a thorough resource! http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html Matt Teichman...
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we talk political philosophy with Mark Lance, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Justice and Peace at Georgetown University. Click here to listen to our conversation. Anarchy. Sounds like the wild west or something, doesn’t it? Lawlessness indeed sounds pretty terrifying. But our guest argues that anarchism isn’t at all about lawlessness; that anarchists are indeed very much in favor of society being governed....
So a good starting point for those of you who are curious to read up on the topic of our last episode would be John Protevi’s own ‘Darwin, Disaster, and War.’ Our distinguished guest also recommends looking at the website for a course he recently taught on the topic: http://www.protevi.com/john/Morality/index.html Happy reading! Matt Teichman...
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we chat with John Protevi (Professor of Philosophy and Phyllis M. Taylor Professor of French Studies at Louisiana State University) about whether human beings may have evolved an altruism instinct. Click here to listen to our conversation. Thomas Hobbes famously argued that deep down, we’re all selfish creatures. Some philosophers think that disaster situations are test cases for this hypothesis, because it’s in the midst of a crisis that we shed all of our politeness and express our natural instinct for self-preservation....
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we talk recreational mathematics with Haim Gaifman, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. Click here to listen to our conversation. Are numbers mind-independent entites, or are they just social constructs? A mountain is definitely real–you can climb it, take pictures of it, fall off it, show it to your friends, and so on....
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we consider the role of enhancement in sports with Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. Click here to listen to our conversation. These days, we take it for granted that taking drugs to enhance athletic performance is wrong. After all, it’s cheating: the rules of all professional sports place strict limits on which drugs their athletes are allowed to use, and for good reason....