Podcast appearances and mentions of Alexander Nehamas

This program aims to recover Plato's idea of craft or art, Greek technê, in the expansive sense which includes not only the handicrafts but skilled practices from housebuilding to navigation. Rachel Barney, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, examines Plato and other Greek thinkers who were fascinated by the craft model: the idea that both the moral virtue of the good person and the political widom of the expert ruler are — or could be made into — skilled practices as reliable as shoemaking or carpentry. Similar ideas appear in classical Chinese philosophy, developed in very different ways by Daoist and Confucian thinkers. In our time, craft is in a bad way: marginalized in theory and everywhere endangered in practice. Ancient thinkers can help us to see what remains valuable and urgent about craft today, and what a reinvigorated understanding of it might contribute to our ethical and political thought. Crafts to be considered include carpentry, medicine, drawing, film editing, the ‘multicraft' of the restaurant, tennis, and traditional Polynesian navigation. Philosophical points of reference, in addition to Plato, Aristotle, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi, include Murdoch, MacIntyre, Korsgaard, and the Hart-Fuller debate, as well as literary reflections from Kazuo Ishiguro and Cormac McCarthy. Barney is joined by Adam Gopnik, Rachana Kamtekar, Christine Korsgaard, and Alexander Nehamas to discuss the topic of craft. Series: "Tanner Lectures on Human Values" [Humanities] [Business] [Show ID: 39865]

This program aims to recover Plato's idea of craft or art, Greek technê, in the expansive sense which includes not only the handicrafts but skilled practices from housebuilding to navigation. Rachel Barney, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, examines Plato and other Greek thinkers who were fascinated by the craft model: the idea that both the moral virtue of the good person and the political widom of the expert ruler are — or could be made into — skilled practices as reliable as shoemaking or carpentry. Similar ideas appear in classical Chinese philosophy, developed in very different ways by Daoist and Confucian thinkers. In our time, craft is in a bad way: marginalized in theory and everywhere endangered in practice. Ancient thinkers can help us to see what remains valuable and urgent about craft today, and what a reinvigorated understanding of it might contribute to our ethical and political thought. Crafts to be considered include carpentry, medicine, drawing, film editing, the ‘multicraft' of the restaurant, tennis, and traditional Polynesian navigation. Philosophical points of reference, in addition to Plato, Aristotle, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi, include Murdoch, MacIntyre, Korsgaard, and the Hart-Fuller debate, as well as literary reflections from Kazuo Ishiguro and Cormac McCarthy. Barney is joined by Adam Gopnik, Rachana Kamtekar, Christine Korsgaard, and Alexander Nehamas to discuss the topic of craft. Series: "Tanner Lectures on Human Values" [Humanities] [Business] [Show ID: 39865]

This program aims to recover Plato's idea of craft or art, Greek technê, in the expansive sense which includes not only the handicrafts but skilled practices from housebuilding to navigation. Rachel Barney, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, examines Plato and other Greek thinkers who were fascinated by the craft model: the idea that both the moral virtue of the good person and the political widom of the expert ruler are — or could be made into — skilled practices as reliable as shoemaking or carpentry. Similar ideas appear in classical Chinese philosophy, developed in very different ways by Daoist and Confucian thinkers. In our time, craft is in a bad way: marginalized in theory and everywhere endangered in practice. Ancient thinkers can help us to see what remains valuable and urgent about craft today, and what a reinvigorated understanding of it might contribute to our ethical and political thought. Crafts to be considered include carpentry, medicine, drawing, film editing, the ‘multicraft' of the restaurant, tennis, and traditional Polynesian navigation. Philosophical points of reference, in addition to Plato, Aristotle, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi, include Murdoch, MacIntyre, Korsgaard, and the Hart-Fuller debate, as well as literary reflections from Kazuo Ishiguro and Cormac McCarthy. Barney is joined by Adam Gopnik, Rachana Kamtekar, Christine Korsgaard, and Alexander Nehamas to discuss the topic of craft. Series: "Tanner Lectures on Human Values" [Humanities] [Business] [Show ID: 39865]

Especially when practiced as a line of work — as a job or métier — craft sets norms for its practitioners. On the whole, a shoemaker should try to be a good shoemaker, and the good person who is a shoemaker routinely does just that. But what kind of ‘should' is this, and what could connect these two kinds of goodness? Rachel Barney, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, examines prominent philosophical conceptions of craft, ancient and modern, offer wildly various explanations of its normative authority. The picture is complicated by the way in which craft-as-work is paradigmatic both for successful practical reason and for social roles or practical identities in general. But the most fundamental source of craft's normativity is the one which Plato and Aristotle bring out: the fact that, when practised as a job or métier, practicing your craft can be a way to realize the human good. And so thinking about craft turns out to be a way of thinking about Utopia: a society in which a just distribution of work could secure both the flourishing of the worker and the common good. Barney is joined by Christine Korsgaard and Alexander Nehamas for commentary on the topic of craft. Series: "Tanner Lectures on Human Values" [Humanities] [Business] [Show ID: 39864]

Especially when practiced as a line of work — as a job or métier — craft sets norms for its practitioners. On the whole, a shoemaker should try to be a good shoemaker, and the good person who is a shoemaker routinely does just that. But what kind of ‘should' is this, and what could connect these two kinds of goodness? Rachel Barney, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, examines prominent philosophical conceptions of craft, ancient and modern, offer wildly various explanations of its normative authority. The picture is complicated by the way in which craft-as-work is paradigmatic both for successful practical reason and for social roles or practical identities in general. But the most fundamental source of craft's normativity is the one which Plato and Aristotle bring out: the fact that, when practised as a job or métier, practicing your craft can be a way to realize the human good. And so thinking about craft turns out to be a way of thinking about Utopia: a society in which a just distribution of work could secure both the flourishing of the worker and the common good. Barney is joined by Christine Korsgaard and Alexander Nehamas for commentary on the topic of craft. Series: "Tanner Lectures on Human Values" [Humanities] [Business] [Show ID: 39864]

Especially when practiced as a line of work — as a job or métier — craft sets norms for its practitioners. On the whole, a shoemaker should try to be a good shoemaker, and the good person who is a shoemaker routinely does just that. But what kind of ‘should' is this, and what could connect these two kinds of goodness? Rachel Barney, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, examines prominent philosophical conceptions of craft, ancient and modern, offer wildly various explanations of its normative authority. The picture is complicated by the way in which craft-as-work is paradigmatic both for successful practical reason and for social roles or practical identities in general. But the most fundamental source of craft's normativity is the one which Plato and Aristotle bring out: the fact that, when practised as a job or métier, practicing your craft can be a way to realize the human good. And so thinking about craft turns out to be a way of thinking about Utopia: a society in which a just distribution of work could secure both the flourishing of the worker and the common good. Barney is joined by Christine Korsgaard and Alexander Nehamas for commentary on the topic of craft. Series: "Tanner Lectures on Human Values" [Humanities] [Business] [Show ID: 39864]

This podcast episode explores the role of art criticism, especially the question whether critics can establish a standard for determining what constitutes beauty in art. For this episode, I took inspiration from my thesis where I assessed three thinkers who offer contrasting perspectives on this matter: David Hume, Pierre Bourdieu, and Alexander Nehamas.Hume, in his work Of The Standard of Taste, suggests that although aesthetic judgments are subjective, they can be assessed by competent critics. This is not to say that there is an objective standard for beauty, but that judgements made by those possessing certain qualities that make for a good critic hold more weight. Pierre Bourdieu, in his work Distinction, contends that taste is shaped by social factors, such as cultural upbringing and class distinctions, thereby challenging the notion of such a standard and arguing instead that taste is a marker of social class that perpetuates already existing hierarchies. In order to show that elitism and social power is not all there is to art criticism, I introduced Alexander Nehamas' ideas from his book, Only a Promise of Happiness, presenting a view of critics who, instead of imposing a standard, are encouraging us to engage with artworks on a personal level, inducing a diversity of interpretations and evaluations.In this podcast episode, I will take these thinkers as my inspiration for interviewing Katrin Heinrich, an art historian and critic based in Vienna. She studied art history and comparative literature at the University of Vienna, and currently she works in research support at the University of Music and Performing Arts. Kathrin is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she was on a scientific staff from 2020 to 2022, has taught courses and co-organized a research project called Addressing Amnesia, Performing Trauma. Her writing has been published in newspapers and magazines like Der Standard, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frieze, Texte zur Kunst, Springerin, Eikon and PW Magazine. In 2018, she was awarded the AICA Austria Prize for Young Art Criticism. (music for intro and outro is by Lili Kátai, playing an improvised version of Debussy's Arabesque L. 66 No. 1 in E Major on piano)Special thanks to Thomas Aichinger and Cathy Mason.

Alexander Nehamas is a professor of philosophy and comparative literature at Princeton University. In this episode, we discuss some of the main themes of his book Only a Promise of Happiness. 

Aesthetic beautification is a familiar artistic phenomenon: Even as they face death, heroes and heroines in operas still sing glorious music. Characters in Shakespearean tragedies still deliver beautifully eloquent speeches in the throes of despair. Even depicting suffering and horror, paintings can still remain a transfixing delight for the eyes. In such cases, the work of art represents or expresses something we would, in ordinary life, attribute a negative valence (suffering, horror, death, and the like), but it does so beautifully. Doubtless there is not a single explanation for what transpires in art of this sort or in our experience of it. With some aesthetically beautified art, its foremost goal might be giving aesthetic pleasure, and the beauty of the aesthetic form, even when depicting horrors, is in the service of this primary aim. In other art, the beautification might seek to be jarring and thought-provoking, highlighting a disconnect between the aesthetic frame and what is portrayed. These routes explain much of aesthetic beautification. But I am particularly interested in considering another more specific response still: finding ourselves somehow consoled by the beautification. I begin with some reflections on aesthetic beautification in general, and then turn to consider how beautification and consolation might be connected, and what to make of this. Andrew Huddleston is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, where he is co-Director of the Centre for Research in Post-Kantian European Philosophy. He studied as an undergraduate at Brown and at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and did his PhD at Princeton under the supervision of Alexander Nehamas. Huddleston previously taught at Exeter College, Oxford and at Birkbeck College, University of London. He specializes in 19th and 20th Century European Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Ethics. His book Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture (2019) was published by Oxford University Press, and he is presently at work on a book tentatively titled Art's Highest Calling: The Religion of Art in a Secular Age. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr Huddleston's talk - "Aesthetic Beautification" - at the Aristotelian Society on 21 February 2022. This recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Original interview with Alexander Nehamas here: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-friendship-is-like-art/481083/Topics: Waxing philosophic on finding & vetting good friendship, supportive situations, and love as an autistic, balancing the naïveté and skills of a child scribbler/friend with the passionate enthusiasm for life and life-saving skepticism and self-defense of my person that have allowed me to survive to age 40. Wit vs. wisdom vs. witty wisdom vs. witlessness vs. gutlessness. Where and how have I found love and what I most need? When I had given up, but kept pursuing rabbits down holes to see where they go in spite of the danger and fear and memories of pain, plus a serendipitous stroke of fortune, lightning in a bottle, and recognizing the blinding light and seizing the moment that will never come again. Letting go. Letting it be imperfect. Getting on with the next necessary thing: in this case, taking care of my body. Imperfect and rejected and reviled it be, it is my own and only, and I need not join the world in hurting or neglecting my person and needs anymore. That hole leads only to hell.

Octavio y David discuten "On Friendship" (Sobre la amistad), donde Alexander Nehamas ofrece una de las discusiones filosóficas más interesantes en años recientes sobre el tema de la amistad.Si estás interesado en el taller de Filosofía, este es el link a la página de nuestros amigos de Bukz:https://bukz.co/products/urbi-et-urbi-el-nacimiento-de-la-tragedia

William O. Stephens was born in June 1962 in Lafayette, Indiana. He was raised in West Lafayette, Indiana, the second son of Purdue University professors. He attended West Lafayette Senior High School where he earned varsity letters in tennis and began his study of ancient civilizations and Latin with an inspiring teacher named Oliver S. Oesch. After two years at the College of Wooster in Ohio studying philosophy with James Coke Haden and Latin with Joe and Leslie P. Day, Stephens transferred to Earlham, a Quaker college in Richmond, Indiana. At Earlham he studied philosophy with Robert L. Horne and Peter Suber, Greek and Latin with Steve Heiny and Liffey Thorpe, and played varsity tennis (doubles). After graduating from Earlham in 1984, Stephens moved to Philadelphia to do his graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn he studied with Charles H. Kahn, Alexander Nehamas, and Martin Ostwald, and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1990. In autumn of that year he joined the Arts & Sciences faculty at Creighton University.   He has published articles on topics in Stoicism, Epicureanism and friendship, ecology and food ethics, ethics and animals, sex and love, sportsmanship, and the concept of a person. His books include an English translation of Adolf Bonhöffer's work The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus (Peter Lang, 1996), an edited collection The Person: Readings in Human Nature (Prentice Hall, 2006), Stoic Ethics: Epictetus and Happiness as Freedom (Continuum, 2007), and Marcus Aurelius: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2012). A manuscript entitled Lessons in Liberation: Epictetus as Educator is his current research project. He teaches a variety of courses in philosophy.   Stephens has traveled widely. In May 2016 he toured much of Poland, from Wiżajny (near the Lithuania border) and Suwałki in the northeast to the lakes of Mikołajki. After presenting two papers at the University of Warsaw he visited Kraków, the Wieliczka salt mine, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. In June 2017 he returned to Poland, presented two papers at the University of Warsaw, and visited Poznań, Jastrowie, and the village of Chwalimie before traveling to Marseille and Aix, France.   He has presented papers abroad at conferences in London, England (Stoicon 2018), in Toronto, Canada (Stoicon 2017), at Aix-en-Provence, on the island of Rhodes, at Vilia, Greece, and at Palmerston North, New Zealand. He has toured the island of Crete, the northern and southern islands of New Zealand, Iceland, and several of the Galapagos Islands. Stephens has taken cruises to Ensenada, Mexico, the Bahamas, and the Isle of Symi in the Dodecanese island chain. His expedition aboard the National Geographic Endeavor to the Antarctic peninsula was by way of Santiago, Chile and Ushuaia, Argentina. In England he has toured Cornwall, East Sussex, Bournemouth County, the Salisbury Plain (and Stonehenge), the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands, and the Isle of Skye. He has visited Montreal, Vancouver Island, and Victoria, British Columbia. In the Hawaiian islands he has visited Maui (and Haleakalā), Kauai (and Waimea Canyon), and much of Oahu.   Stephens enjoys tennis, chess, hiking, spelunking, kayaking, and nature photography. His domestic treks include the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier, the Cascades, and the Olympic peninsula in Washington. He has kayaked in the San Juan Islands of Washington and in the Point Reyes National Seashore area of California. He has visited Crater Lake in Oregon and Boundary County, the Kootenai River, and Coeur d' Alene in the Idaho panhandle. In California Stephens has hiked in Redwood, Yosemite, and Joshua Tree National Parks, spelunked in Lava Beds National Monument, and visited Crescent City, Tule Lake, Bodega Bay, Monterey, and Big Sur. He has explored Arches National Park, the Moab area, the Valley of the Gods, and Monument Valley in Utah. His travels in Arizona include the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Petrified Forest National Park, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and Sedona. He has visited Shiprock, Petroglyph National Monument, and Santa Fe in New Mexico. In Colorado he has visited Rocky Mountain National Park, Crested Butte, Mesa Verde, Durango, Royal Gorge, Silverthorne, Breckenridge, Vail, and has traveled over Loveland Pass. In August 2016 Stephens drove Mount Herman Road from Monument to Woodland Park, Colorado. As a boy he visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. His travels include the Badlands, Wind Cave, and the Black Hills of South Dakota, Madeline Island off the northern coast of Wisconsin, Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave of Kentucky (the longest known cave system in the world), Acadia National Park in Maine, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and many parts of Florida. He has yet to visit Alaska, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Mississippi.   From an early age Stephens has closely followed the misadventures of the Chicago Cubs, which helps explain his interest in Stoicism. Stephens watched his Cubs win game seven of the World Series Nov. 2, 2016 at Progressive Field in Cleveland, Ohio. He lives in the Bemis Park neighborhood of Omaha in an arts & crafts style house built in 1912 he shares with four cats and a talented chef blessed with a beautiful singing voice. Website: https://williamostephens.wordpress.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-stephens-b76369b/   Simon Drew Links   Patreon: patreon.com/simonjedrew Coaching: simonjedrew.com/coaching/ Practical Stoic Mastermind: facebook.com/groups/practicalstoicmastermind Facebook: facebook.com/simonjedrew Instagram: instagram.com/simonjedrew LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/simonjedrew Website: simonjedrew.com

"Nietzsche was friends with Wagner, Copperfield with Steerforth, Rick Blaine with Louis Renault...one who enters into a friendship with a bad person very much seems to have gone wrong somewhere," writes Isserow. But what is wrong, exactly, with choosing to make friends with bad people? Does it tell us something important about ourselves and could this fact maybe even reveal a glimmer of truth about cancel culture? Links and Resources * Jessica Isserow (https://www.jessicaisserow.com/) * The paper - "On Having Bad Persons as Friends" (https://www.jessicaisserow.com/uploads/1/1/3/5/113519203/[j.isserow_website]_on_having_bad_persons_as_friends.pdf) * Background on philosophy of friendship (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friendship/) * Interview with Alexander Nehamas (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-friendship-is-like-art/481083/) * Paper by Cocking & Kennett "Friendship and moral danger" (https://philpapers.org/rec/COCFAM) * Recent work in philosophy of friendship (https://philpapers.org/browse/friendship/) Paper Quotes "Some values are incredibly weighty, and as such, they ought to occupy an important role in our moral priorities. One could understand an individual who was willing to forgive a friend’s failure to recycle; for this is a fault in spite of which we could plausibly accept someone. But an individual who discounted a friend’s rampant racism would suggest to us that she could not care less about the values which tell against racism, or for the potential victims of racist attitudes. At the very least, she would suggest to us that she does not stand for (or is not standing up for) such values in the fullest sense. Her willingness to discount vices of this extreme sort would suggest that there are certain values to which she is not properly responsive." "I think that this gets right to the heart of where our individual goes wrong in counting a bad person as a friend. The problem is that she likes him in spite of his shortcomings, and the shortcomings in question are incredibly weighty. But it would seem that they are not sufficiently weighty for her, and this points towards something worrying about her moral priorities. In choosing to pursue a friendship with a bad person, she effectively suggests that a serious moral flaw—vehement racism, say—is a minor vice that can be outweighed by a person’s other recommending qualities." Special Guest: Jessica Isserow.

This episode of The Grindstone features the lecture given by Alexander Nehamas (Princeton University) at Purdue University on Friday, 26 April 2019. The lecture was given at a conference honoring the career of Dr. Patricia Curd, Professor Emerita of the Department of Philosophy at Purdue.The title of the lecture is: "The Academy at Work: Dialectic in the Parmenides".Dr. Nehamas' abstract of the talk is below:Plato's Parmenides comes in two parts. The first presents several crucial criticisms of Plato's metaphysics. The second illustrates a dialectical method that Parmenides tells Socrates he must master if he is to answer these criticisms. I try to offer a new account of the metaphysical and linguistic objections of the first part in order to understand better the nature of the dialectic of its second part. I suggest that Parmenides' demonstration of that method prepares the way for a radical new understanding of Plato's own theory of Forms and may well be an instance of the actual dialectic practiced during the first, and very obscure, years of Plato's Academy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we are excited to welcome three experts to discuss their views on Plato’s Apology. Professor of Political Philosophy Steven Smith at Yale University joins us to describe the political importance of the dramatic moment of the trial of Socrates. Next, Katja Vogt, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia, talks about her understanding of Socrates’ famous quote: “I know that I know nothing.” Finally, Alexander Nehamas, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, discusses what true Socratic irony and dialectic are. Listeners will be able to discuss these views on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, or on rereadingspodcast.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In his essay "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," Nietzsche attacks the notion that humans are totally determined by the historical forces that shape their physical and mental environment. Where other philosophers like Plato saw virtue in remembering eternal truths that earthly existence had wiped from our memories, Nietzsche extolled the virtues of forgetting, of becoming "untimely" and creating a zone where something new could arise. For Nietzsche, history was useful only if it served Life. Because we live in an age which constantly reifies history (through movies, news, social media, etc.) while also tricking us into thinking we somehow exist outside of history, the essay remains as relevant today as it was when Nietzsche wrote it a century and a half ago. REFERENCES Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" in [Untimely Meditations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UntimelyMeditations)_ Epic Rap Battles of History: Eastern Philosophers vs Western Philosophers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N_RO-jL-90) Ernest Newman, Life of Wagner (https://www.amazon.com/Life-Wagner-Volumes-Ernest-Newman/dp/0521291496) Alexander Nehamas, [Nietzsche: Life as Literature](https://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Life-Literature-Alexander-Nehamas/dp/0674624262/ref=sr11?keywords=Nietzsche%3A+Life+as+Literature&qid=1560911442&s=books&sr=1-1) Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25457/25457-pdf.pdf) Michael Foucault, "What is Englightenment?" (https://leap.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/01/Foucault-What-is-enlightenment.pdf) Antinatalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism) Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm) James Carse, [Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FiniteandInfiniteGames)_ P. J. O’Rourke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke), American writer Richard Pryor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pryor), American comedian

Thanks to Alexander Nehamas, we're looking at some modern thought on friendship this week. Also, I reveal that I left out (on purpose) an important part of the tale of Damon and Phintias last time and, like, almost all of the major plot points of Thelma and Louise!

Thanks to Alexander Nehamas, we're looking at some modern thought on friendship this week. Also, I reveal that I left out (on purpose) an important part of the tale of Damon and Phintias last time and, like, almost all of the major plot points of Thelma and Louise!

More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/what-art. Anything someone wants to call art? Or are there some objective criteria, that not every instance of paint smeared on canvas and not every murder mystery meets? What are the main philosophies of art? Are any of them plausible? John and Ken talk about the nature of art with Alexander Nehamas from Princeton University.

More at www.philosophytalk.org/shows/what-beauty. Are there objective standards of beauty? Or is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Must art be beautiful to be great art? What is the role of the experience of beauty in a good life? John and Ken take in the beauty with Alexander Nehamas from Princeton University, author of "Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art."

Big Ideas presents Princeton University professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature, Alexander Nehamas, on how individual character defines our ideas of what is beautiful

Big Ideas presents Princeton University professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature, Alexander Nehamas, on how individual character defines our ideas of what is beautiful

Nicolas de Warren reads an excerpt from Plato's Symposium translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, published by Hackett Publishing Company. (7:05) "It's obvious that every soul of every lover longs for something else. A soul cannot say what it is, but like an oracle, it has a sense of what it wants, and like an oracle, it hides behind a riddle."

Alexander Nehamas explores the value of friendship in this interview with Nigel Warburton for the Philosophy Bites podcast.