Podcasts about descartes

17th-century French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

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Latest podcast episodes about descartes

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
HoP 470 Gary Hatfield on Descartes' Meditations

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2025 36:09


We're joined in this episode by a leading expert on one of the most famous works of philosophy ever written: Descartes' Meditations.

Un Jour dans l'Histoire
Athanasius Kircher : la science au service de la foi

Un Jour dans l'Histoire

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2025 39:06


Nous sommes dans les années 1650-1670, à Rome. Une période durant laquelle la réputation d'Athanasius Kircher est au Zénith. Ainsi, les nobles étrangers, de passage dans la ville éternelle, se font-ils un devoir de visiter le célèbre musée où le savant jésuite a rassemblé les témoignages les plus fameux de la nature et de l'activité humaine et d'où se détachent quelques instruments directement issus de son imagination fertile et dont il fait, lui-même, la démonstration. A la reine Christine de Suède, en visite à Rome, le bon père a fait cadeau d'un obélisque de sa composition. Kircher, qui a été instruit dans les principales sciences de son temps, qu'il a en partie enseignées et pour lesquelles il a mené des recherches dont attestent ses publications, est un as dans le domaine des hiéroglyphes. Une expertise qu'il met au service de sa foi. Toutefois si l'érudit polyglotte jouit d'une position enviable dans le grand monde, celui de l'Eglise et de l'aristocratie, il n'en va pas toujours comme cela dans le cercle, plus restreint, des savants. Des esprits scientifiques éminents, comme Descartes, iront jusqu'à le traiter de charlatan. Mais l'une de ses forces et, sans doute, l'une de ses faiblesses, est qu'il ne doute jamais. Son ambition fut, non seulement, de montrer l'unité profonde d'un monde qui est la manifestation de Dieu et où « tout est dans tout », mais encore, de dégager les connexions et les correspondances les plus secrètes entre les choses. Que faut-il retenir du parcours d'Athanasius Kircher ? La leçon se limite-t-elle à une union impossible entre sciences et foi ? Avec nous : Jean Winand, docteur en Philologie orientale (égyptologie), professeur ordinaire à l'Université de Liège. Sujets traités : Athanasius Kircher, science, foi, hiéroglyphes, Eglise, aristocratie, savant, Descartes, Dieu, Merci pour votre écoute Un Jour dans l'Histoire, c'est également en direct tous les jours de la semaine de 13h15 à 14h30 sur www.rtbf.be/lapremiere Retrouvez tous les épisodes d'Un Jour dans l'Histoire sur notre plateforme Auvio.be :https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/5936 Intéressés par l'histoire ? Vous pourriez également aimer nos autres podcasts : L'Histoire Continue: https://audmns.com/kSbpELwL'heure H : https://audmns.com/YagLLiKEt sa version à écouter en famille : La Mini Heure H https://audmns.com/YagLLiKAinsi que nos séries historiques :Chili, le Pays de mes Histoires : https://audmns.com/XHbnevhD-Day : https://audmns.com/JWRdPYIJoséphine Baker : https://audmns.com/wCfhoEwLa folle histoire de l'aviation : https://audmns.com/xAWjyWCLes Jeux Olympiques, l'étonnant miroir de notre Histoire : https://audmns.com/ZEIihzZMarguerite, la Voix d'une Résistante : https://audmns.com/zFDehnENapoléon, le crépuscule de l'Aigle : https://audmns.com/DcdnIUnUn Jour dans le Sport : https://audmns.com/xXlkHMHSous le sable des Pyramides : https://audmns.com/rXfVppvN'oubliez pas de vous y abonner pour ne rien manquer.Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Grand bien vous fasse !
Courir après le bonheur, librement

Grand bien vous fasse !

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2025 4:28


durée : 00:04:28 - Choses vues - par : Laurence Devillairs - Et si le vrai bonheur n'était pas dans le faire, mais dans l'être, et surtout dans la liberté ? Laurence Devillairs revisite Sénèque, Descartes et La Fontaine pour repenser notre quête de joie et de sens.

Cette semaine en Chine
16 mai 2025

Cette semaine en Chine

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2025 7:48


Chine : l'IPC en hausse de 0,1 % sur un mois;Un séisme de magnitude 5,5 secoue le Xizang, aucune victime signalée;Le 14e lot d'aide humanitaire d'urgence de la Chine remis au Myanmar ;La Chine lance une constellation de satellites de calcul spatial;La Chine achève les essais d'un moteur-fusée liquide, lourd et réutilisable ;La construction des projets ferroviaires s'accélère en Chine ;Le secteur chinois des voitures particulières enregistre une hausse de vente en avril;Une université chinoise crée une "classe Descartes" pour former les futurs ingénieurs d'excellence;Bientôt l'ouverture d'un nouveau centre pour la protection des droits de propriété intellectuelle;De talents agricoles chinois et africains seront bientôt formés au Zhejiang;Les Viennois accueillent un couple de pandas géants en provenance de Chine

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
HoP 469 Ghost in the Machine: Cartesian Dualism

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2025 24:30


The word “Cartesian” is synonymous with a radical contrast between mind and body. What led Descartes to his dualism, and how can he explain vital activities in humans and animals having rejected the Aristotelian theory of soul?

OBS
Är Mamma Mu en himmelsk kviga eller klimatkass kossa?

OBS

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2025 9:59


Kon har vandrat från dyrkat gudaväsen till hornlös mjölkmaskin och metanrapande klimatbov. Ann-Helen Meyer von Bremen följer hennes väg in i fabriken. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. ESSÄ: Detta är en text där skribenten reflekterar över ett ämne eller ett verk. Åsikter som uttrycks är skribentens egna. I begynnelsen var kon. Audhumbla gav di åt jätten Ymer och slickade rimfrosten från stenarna och skapade på det viset Bure, han som blev gudarnas förfader i den nordiska gudasagan.I begynnelsen var kon, inte bara i den nordiska mytologin utan även i många andra skapelseberättelser och religioner. Den egyptiska Hathor, återfödelsens gudinna, födde varje morgon fram solen och bar den mellan sina horn. Israeliterna lät döda 3 000 av sitt eget folk för att de dansade runt guldkalven, en symbol för guden Baal och stark konkurrent till Jahve. Hinduismen har flera gudomliga nötkreatur. Tjurguden Nandi har stark koppling till Shiva och Nandi bär också de döda hinduernas själar i Vietnam, till Indien. Kogudinnan Surabhi, mor till alla kor, skapas när gudar och demoner kärnar det kosmiska mjölkhavet. Hela Vintergatan är för övrigt skapat av komjölk, när Krishna och mjölkerskornas gudinna Radha, råkade spilla ut drycken över hela himlen. I den grekiska mytologin är det istället gudinnan Heras mjölk som ger upphov till Vintergatan, eller Milchstrasse, Milky Way, Voie lactée eller Melkeveien som det heter på andra språk.Hur kommer det sig då att detta djur som inte bara i religioner utan också i människors vardagsliv så starkt har förknippats med skapelse, liv och fruktsamhet, i dag ses som ett hot mot vår existens? Eller rättare sagt, hennes rapar?Den ko som är den vanliga i Sverige, Bos taurus, härstammar från uroxen som var en imponerande bjässe. De största tjurarna hade en mankhöjd på två meter, kunde väga över ett ton, hade väldiga horn och ansågs vildsinta. Julius Caesar menade att de inte gick att tämja ens som kalvar. Så varför ge sig i kast med dessa farliga djur? Människan hade redan tämjt geten och fåret och det fanns gott om vilda djur där boskapsskötarna etablerade sig.En teori är att det inte var mjölken eller köttet utan rituella skäl bakom domesticeringen. De stora hornen sågs som symboler för himlakroppar som månen, med koppling till fertilitet. Kon blev också snabbt en statusmarkör och symbol för kapital. Ordet fä för boskap betydde ursprungligen egendom och latinets, pecunia, pengar, kommer från pecus, boskap. Fortfarande är rollen som flyttbart kapital, bytesmedel och status, den viktigaste rollen för kor i många boskapskulturer.Under lång tid sågs kon som något mycket värdefullt - religiöst, ekonomiskt men också som sällskap. Det finns många skildringar i litteraturen och filmen över den nära relationen mellan kon och människan. I novellen ”Skiljas från sin vän” skildrar lappmarksläkaren och författaren Einar Wallquist detta när han skriver om Mor Katrin som blivit gammal, sjuk och övertalats att skicka kon på slakt. Men det är inget lätt beslut. ”Kossan var hennes enda sällskap, hennes riktiga vän, som hon kunde få prata med så mycket hon ville i sin ensamhet och som hon mötte tillgivenhet av.”Efter nattens sömn ändrar hon sig dock och bestämmer sig för att säga nej till slaktaren: ”Ty det skulle han veta, att ömhet och sällskap och en ko, det säljer man inte!”I Sverige brukar det heta att malmen och skogen har spelat en stor roll för framväxten av det moderna Sverige, men man skulle också kunna nämna kon. Det var runt henne och hennes mjölk, kött, kalvar, gödsel, hud och dragkraft som det mesta kretsade inom lantbruket. Det var försäljningen av hennes smör och ost som gjorde det möjligt för lanthushållen att skaffa de saker som man behövde. Kon står också i centrum när Sverige anammar de nya jordbruksmetoderna från Europa under 1800-talet. Då börjar man bland annat att odla vall (en blandning av gräs och kvävefixerande grödor som klöver) på åkrarna. Det här gav inte bara mer mat till fler kor utan även till fler människor och fler händer kunde sättas i arbete, vilket var en förutsättning för industrialiseringen.Samtidigt som jordbruket börjar kommersialiseras under 1800-talet, växer statarsamhället fram. Herrgårdarna specialiserar sig på mjölkproduktionen som kräver mer arbetskraft och billig sådan. Statarna jobbar hårt och länge, bor i eländiga bostäder och får sin lön främst i form av stat, det vill säga i form av mat från gården. För statarfruarna innebär makens anställning ett extra gissel.”I stället för att hälsas med tillfredsställelse som en extra inkomstkälla har statarhustruns mjölkningsplikt nästan kommit att bli statsystemets värsta plågoris, dess vita piska”.Ivar Lo-Johansson beskriver träffande vad som har hänt. Mjölkningen som tidigare var något positivt, har blivit en plåga. Det vi ser, är början på den industrialiserade lagården.Om kvinnan var slaven i herrgårdarnas mjölkgårdar har kon alltmer axlat den rollen. Descartes syn på djuren som maskiner, har nu blivit verklighet i många av världens mjölkfabriker. De bönder som fortfarande spjärnar emot denna utveckling, ses som bakåtsträvande idealister. Dagens industrialiserade mjölkko är omgärdad av maskiner. Hon matas och mjölkas av maskiner, maskiner tar hand om hennes gödsel, mäter när hon är brunstig och reglerar hur mycket hon ska äta och mjölka. Bonden blir allt mer frånvarande. Hen sitter i sitt kontor och studerar all info från maskinerna. Att gå utomhus och beta, som är det mest essentiella för en ko, anses hon heller inte längre behöva eller klara av. Dyra maskiner vill man helst inte ta ut ur garaget.Problemet med maskiner är att de ger ifrån sig utsläpp. I kornas fall handlar det främst om växthusgasen metan. De har alltid rapat metan, precis som älgarna, rådjuren, hjortarna och de andra vilda idisslarna, men till skillnad från viltet räknas numera metanet från de tama idisslarna som antropogena utsläpp, påverkade av människan. Men även viltet regleras av människan, i form av jakt, skogsbruk, lantbruk, trafik, naturvård och byggande av infrastruktur och bostäder. Mänsklig påverkan har fått viltet att kraftigt öka, jämfört med mitten av 1800-talet då många djur var mer eller mindre utrotade. Ändå gäller inte samma måttstock för dem som för tamdjuren, trots att antalet kor, får och getter har minskat radikalt under samma period.Anledningen är kanske att vi ser viltet om en del av naturen, medan kon är mer en kugge i mjölk- och köttmaskineriet? Därmed viktas hennes metan lika tungt som metanet från utvinningen av fossila bränslen. Lösningen på problemet är lika industriell den, en kemikalieblandning som ska minska kons metanavgång genom att förändra hennes matsmältning.Människan tämjde uroxen för dess gudomliga horn. I dag har människan gjort de flesta kor hornlösa, genom avel eller genom att bränna bort hornanlagen hos kalven, allt för att passa in i matfabriken. Vi verkar inte behöva några gudar längre, kanske inte ens några kor. Men däremot en aldrig sinande ström av maskiner.Ann-Helen Meyer von Bremen, journalist, författare och deltidsbonde. Tillsammans med Gunnar Rundgren författare till boken ”Kornas planet” (2020).Essän producerades av Ann Lingebrandt

Purple Music - Un podcast sobre Prince
Purple Music Podcast -Private Joy #23 - Explorando el Vault (parte III) - Versiones alternativas, descartes y demos. - Episodio exclusivo para mecenas

Purple Music - Un podcast sobre Prince

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2025 48:51


Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! Damas y caballeros, bienvenidos a Private Joy, la sección para mecenas de Purple Music, el primer podcast en español creado por y para amantes del sonido Minneapolis y la música de Prince. Nueva entrega de nuestro recorrido por el Vault. En esta ocasión escuchamos versiones alternativas, descartes o demos de canciones publicadas en discos oficiales: Old Friends 4 Sale, New Position o Guitar, entre otras. Volvemos muy pronto, hasta entonces, stay Funky! Private Joy es un spin-off para mecenas de Purple Music Podcast llevado a cabo por Shockadelica junto a otros colaboradores puntuales. Síguenos en Instagram! (@purplemusicpodcast), Twitter (@purplemusicpod) y en Youtube (@purplemusic6489) Canción de sintonía: Private Joy (Controversy, 1981). The Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson is not affiliated, associated, or connected with Purple Music Podcast nor has it endorsed or sponsored Purple Music Podcast. Further, the Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson has not licensed any of its intellectual property to the producers of Purple Music Podcast. NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED. We just want to share our love for Prince music. Agradecimientos a nuestros mecenas: Blackbean, Miguel Ángel Tomé, Pilar de Giles, Luis Mendoza, Audrey Hawes-Mayayo, El Espectrumero Javi Ortiz, Miriam Palomo, Ale Stzul, Pablo Solares, César Villamil, Óscar Prieto, Mireia Castellà, Carmen Murillo, Cat, Leonor Pérez, Fani T., Molina, Mecky, Pablo Molla, David Pomar, Garoto, Carlos00, Sin nombre, blancamarina, Serblave, Nando7, David, La Vida Tiene música, fury71, Joaquín y varios usuarios anónimos. May U Live 2 See the Dawn! Escucha este episodio completo y accede a todo el contenido exclusivo de Purple Music - Un podcast sobre Prince. Descubre antes que nadie los nuevos episodios, y participa en la comunidad exclusiva de oyentes en https://go.ivoox.com/sq/738601

Get-Fit Guy's Quick and Dirty Tips to Slim Down and Shape Up
How your senses (and the fitness industry) might be lying to you

Get-Fit Guy's Quick and Dirty Tips to Slim Down and Shape Up

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2025 12:44


This week, Kevin goes off the fitness path and dives deep into philosophy, exploring how our senses—and even industries like fitness—can deceive us. From Plato and Descartes to The Matrix and Baudrillard, he explains why what you think is real might just be a well-crafted illusion. Plus, hear how you can keep connecting with Kevin after his final episode.Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.Have a fitness question? Email Kevin at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com or leave us a voicemail at (510) 353-3014.Find Get-Fit Guy on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe to the newsletter for more fitness tips.Get-Fit Guy is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.Links:https://www.quickanddirtytips.comhttps://www.facebook.com/GetFitGuyhttps://twitter.com/GetFitGuyhttps://www.kevindon.com/

Autour de la question
D'où vient la conscience ?

Autour de la question

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2025 48:30


Qu'est-ce que la conscience ? Que nous apprennent les neurosciences ? Pourquoi la célèbre formule de Descartes « je pense donc je suis » est à reprendre mais en sens inverse : « je suis donc je pense » et qu'est-ce que ça implique ? Jusqu'où va la conscience ?    C'est une certitude commune que de croire que notre existence est guidée par des choix raisonnés, et que notre cerveau n'est là que pour exécuter les intentions de notre conscience. Issue du dualisme cartésien, cette vision « cogito-centrée » est pourtant aujourd'hui remise en cause par les recherches actuelles en neurosciences.Avec :  Stéphane Charpier, coordinateur de l'équipe Excitabilité cellulaire et dynamique des réseaux neuronaux de l'Institut du cerveau et professeur de neurosciences à l'Université Pierre et Marie Curie. Son livre Le cauchemar de Descartes, ce que les neurosciences nous apprennent de la conscience paraît chez Albin Michel en mai 2025.Musiques diffusées pendant l'émission- Sting, Eric Clapton - It's Probably Me- Ours, Pierre Souchon, Alain Souchon - À quoi tu penses (playlist RFI).

Autour de la question
D'où vient la conscience ?

Autour de la question

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2025 48:30


Qu'est-ce que la conscience ? Que nous apprennent les neurosciences ? Pourquoi la célèbre formule de Descartes « je pense donc je suis » est à reprendre mais en sens inverse : « je suis donc je pense » et qu'est-ce que ça implique ? Jusqu'où va la conscience ?    C'est une certitude commune que de croire que notre existence est guidée par des choix raisonnés, et que notre cerveau n'est là que pour exécuter les intentions de notre conscience. Issue du dualisme cartésien, cette vision « cogito-centrée » est pourtant aujourd'hui remise en cause par les recherches actuelles en neurosciences.Avec :  Stéphane Charpier, coordinateur de l'équipe Excitabilité cellulaire et dynamique des réseaux neuronaux de l'Institut du cerveau et professeur de neurosciences à l'Université Pierre et Marie Curie. Son livre Le cauchemar de Descartes, ce que les neurosciences nous apprennent de la conscience paraît chez Albin Michel en mai 2025.Musiques diffusées pendant l'émission- Sting, Eric Clapton - It's Probably Me- Ours, Pierre Souchon, Alain Souchon - À quoi tu penses (playlist RFI).

El Semanal De El Rincon Legacy
El Rincón Legacy T8 E23 hoy nos visita "La pila de descartes"

El Semanal De El Rincon Legacy

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2025 131:03


Ven a divertirte con nosotros en Telegram: https://t.me/elrinconlegacy Síguenos en twitter: https://www.twtitter.com/elrinconlegacy Nuestros directos son en twitch https://twitch.com/elrinconlegacy Puedes visitar nuestra web en https:/www.elrinconlegacy.com Intro & Outro: By By Baby by Stefan Kartenberg (c) copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/JeffSpeed68/54266 Ft: Blue_Wave_Theory, Silke Schmiemann Background music: Bossa Antigua Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Incluimos también música creada con Suno.AI https://www.suno.ai/

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
HoP 468 Perchance to Dream: Descartes' Skeptical Method

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2025 29:29


How Descartes fashioned a “method” to repel even the strongest and most radical forms of doubt, with the cogito argument as its foundation.

Philosophy is Sexy
Collection- Que lire pour se faire du bien EP-2

Philosophy is Sexy

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2025 12:37


Philosophy Is Sexy n'est pas qu'un podcast, c'est une parenthèse intime, un pas de côté, pour oser la philosophie, la désacraliser, la remettre au cœur de notre vie et se laisser inspirer. Marie Robert, auteure du best-seller traduit en quinze langues, "Kant tu ne sais plus quoi faire", de "Descartes pour les jours de doute" et "Le Voyage de Pénélope" (Flammarion-Versilio) nous interpelle de son ton complice et entrainant. La prof qu'on aurait aimé avoir, celle surtout qui va faire des philosophes nos précieux alliés. https://www.susannalea.com/sla-title/penelopes-voyage/ Directrice Pédagogique des écoles Montessori Esclaibes. @PhilosophyIsSexy Production: Les podcasteurs Musique Originale: Laurent AkninDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

The Common Reader
Clare Carlisle: George Eliot's Double Life.

The Common Reader

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2025 81:19


Clare Carlisle's biography of George Eliot, The Marriage Question, is one of my favourite modern biographies, so I was really pleased to interview Clare. We talked about George Eliot as a feminist, the imperfections of her “marriage” to George Henry Lewes, what she learned from Spinoza, having sympathy for Casaubon, contradictions in Eliot's narrative method, her use of negatives, psychoanalysis, Middlemarch, and more. We also talked about biographies of philosophers, Kierkegaard, and Somerset Maugham. I was especially pleased by Clare's answer about the reported decline in student attention spans. Overall I thought this was a great discussion. Many thanks to Clare! Full transcript below. Here is an extract from our discussion about Eliot's narrative ideas.Clare: Yes, that's right. The didactic thing, George Eliot is sometimes criticized for this didacticism because what's most effective in the novel is not the narrator coming and telling us we should actually feel sorry for Casaubon and we should sympathize with him. We'd be better people if we sympathize with Casaubon. There's a moralizing lecture about, you should feel sympathy for this unlikable person. What is more effective is the subtle way she portrays this character and, as I say, lets us into his vulnerabilities in some obvious ways, as you say, by pointing things out, but also in some more subtle ways of drawing his character and hinting at, as I say, his vulnerabilities.Henry: Doesn't she know, though, that a lot of readers won't actually be very moved by the subtle things and that she does need to put in a lecture to say, "I should tell you that I am very personally sympathetic to Mr. Casaubon and that if you leave this novel hating him, that's not--"? Isn't that why she does it? Because she knows that a lot of readers will say, "I don't care. He's a baddie."Clare: Yes I don't know, that's a good question.Henry: I'm interested because, in The Natural History of German Life, she goes to all these efforts to say abstract arguments and philosophy and statistics and such, these things don't change the world. Stories change the world. A picture of life from a great artist. Then when she's doing her picture of life from a great artist she constantly butts in with her philosophical abstractions because it's, she can't quite trust that the reader will get it right as it were.Clare: Yes, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. You could say that or maybe does she have enough confidence in her ability to make us feel with these characters. That would be another way of looking at it. Whether her lack of confidence and lack of trust is in the reader or in her own power as an artist is probably an open question.TranscriptHenry: Today I am talking to Clare Carlisle, a philosopher at King's College London and a biographer. I am a big fan of George Eliot's Double Life: The Marriage Question. I've said the title backwards, but I'm sure you'll find the book either way. Clare, welcome.Clare Carlisle: Hi, Henry. Nice to be here.Henry: Is George Eliot a disappointing feminist?Clare: Obviously disappointment is relative to expectations, isn't it? It depends on what we expect of feminism, and in particular, a 19th-century woman. I personally don't find her a disappointing feminist. Other readers have done, and I can understand why that's the case for all sorts of reasons. She took on a male identity in order to be an artist, be a philosopher in a way that she thought was to her advantage, and she's sometimes been criticized for creating heroines who have quite a conventional sort of fulfillment. Not all of them, but Dorothea in Middlemarch, for example, at the end of the novel, we look back on her life as a wife and a mother with some sort of poignancy.Yes, she's been criticized for, in a way, giving her heroines and therefore offering other women a more conventional feminine ideal than the life she managed to create and carve out for herself as obviously a very remarkable thinker and artist. I also think you can read in the novels a really bracing critique of patriarchy, actually, and a very nuanced exploration of power dynamics between men and women, which isn't simplistic. Eliot is aware that women can oppress men, just as men can oppress women. Particularly in Middlemarch, actually, there's an exploration of marital violence that overcomes the more gendered portrayal of it, perhaps in Eliot's own earlier works where, in a couple of her earlier stories, she portrayed abused wives who were victims of their husband's betrayal, violence, and so on.Whereas in Middlemarch, it's interestingly, the women are as controlling, not necessarily in a nasty way, but just that that's the way human beings navigate their relations with each other. It seems to be part of what she's exploring in Middlemarch. No, I don't find her a disappointing feminist. We should be careful about the kind of expectations we, in the 21st century project onto Eliot.Henry: Was George Henry Lewes too controlling?Clare: I think one of the claims of this book is that there was more darkness in that relationship than has been acknowledged by other biographers, let's put it that way. When I set out to write the book, I'd read two or three other biographies of Eliot by this point. One thing that's really striking is this very wonderfully supportive husbands that, in the form of Lewes, George Eliot has, and a very cheerful account of that relationship and how marvelous he was. A real celebration of this relationship where the husband is, in many ways, putting his wife's career before his own, supporting her.Lewes acted as her agent, as her editor informally. He opened her mail for her. He really put himself at the service of her work in ways that are undoubtedly admirable. Actually, when I embarked on writing this book, I just accepted that narrative myself and was interested in this very positive portrayal of the relationship, found it attractive, as other writers have obviously done. Then, as I wrote the book, I was obviously reading more of the primary sources, the letters Eliot was writing and diary entries. I started to just have a bit of a feeling about this relationship, that it was light and dark, it wasn't just light.The ambiguity there was what really interested me, of, how do you draw the line between a husband or a wife who's protective, even sheltering the spouse from things that might upset them and supportive of their career and helpful in practical ways. How do you draw the line between that and someone who's being controlling? I think there were points where Lewes crossed that line. In a way, what's more interesting is, how do you draw that line. How do partners draw that line together? Not only how would we draw the line as spectators on that relationship, obviously only seeing glimpses of the inner life between the two people, but how do the partners themselves both draw those lines and then navigate them?Yes, I do suggest in the book that Lewes could be controlling and in ways that I think Eliot herself felt ambivalent about. I think she partly enjoyed that feeling of being protected. Actually, there was something about the conventional gendered roles of that, that made her feel more feminine and wifely and submissive, In a way, to some extent, I think she bought into that ideal, but also she felt its difficulties and its tensions. I also think for Lewes, this is a man who is himself conditioned by patriarchal norms with the expectation that the husband should be the successful one, the husband should be the provider, the one who's earning the money.He had to navigate a situation. That was the situation when they first got together. When they first got together, he was more successful writer. He was the man of the world who was supporting Eliot, who was more at the beginning of her career to some extent and helping her make connections. He had that role at the beginning. Then, within a few years, it had shifted and suddenly he had this celebrated best-selling novelist on his hands, which was, even though he supported her success, partly for his own financial interests, it wasn't necessarily what he'd bargained for when he got into the relationship.I think we can also see Lewes navigating the difficulties of that role, of being, to some extent, maybe even disempowered in that relationship and possibly reacting to that vulnerability with some controlling behavior. It's maybe something we also see in the Dorothea-Casaubon relationship where they get together. Not that I think that at all Casaubon was modeled on Lewes, not at all, but something of the dynamic there where they get together and the young woman is in awe of this learned man and she's quite subservient to him and looking up to him and wanting him to help her make her way in the world and teach her things.Then it turns out that his insecurity about his own work starts to come through. He reacts, and the marriage brings out his own insecurity about his work. Then he becomes quite controlling of Dorothea, perhaps again as a reaction to his own sense of vulnerability and insecurity. The point of my interpretation is not to portray Lewes as some villain, but rather to see these dynamics and as I say, ambivalences, ambiguities that play themselves out in couples, between couples.Henry: I came away from the book feeling like it was a great study of talent management in a way, and that the both of them were very lucky to find someone who was so well-matched to their particular sorts of talents. There are very few literary marriages where that is the case, or where that is successfully the case. The other one, the closest parallel I came up with was the Woolfs. Leonard is often said he's too controlling, which I find a very unsympathetic reading of a man who looked after a woman who nearly died. I think he was doing what he felt she required. In a way, I agree, Lewes clearly steps over the line several times. In a way, he was doing what she required to become George Eliot, as it were.Clare: Yes, absolutely.Henry: Which is quite remarkable in a way.Clare: Yes. I don't think Mary Ann Evans would have become George Eliot without that partnership with Lewes. I think that's quite clear. That's not because he did the work, but just that there was something about that, the partnership between them, that enabled that creativity…Henry: He knew all the people and he knew the literary society and all the editors, and therefore he knew how to take her into that world without it overwhelming her, giving her crippling headaches, sending her into a depression.Clare: Yes.Henry: In a way, I came away more impressed with them from the traditional, isn't it angelic and blah, blah, blah.Clare: Oh, that's good.Henry: What did George Eliot learn from Spinoza?Clare: I think she learned an awful lot from Spinoza. She translated Spinoza in the 1850s. She translated Spinoza's Ethics, which is Spinoza's philosophical masterpiece. That's really the last major project that Eliot did before she started to write fiction. It has, I think, quite an important place in her career. It's there at that pivotal point, just before she becomes an artist, as she puts it, as a fiction writer. Because she didn't just read The Ethics, but she translated it, she read it very, very closely, and I think was really quite deeply formed by a particular Spinozist ethical vision.Spinoza thinks that human beings are not self-sufficient. He puts that in very metaphysical terms. A more traditional philosophical view is to say that individual things are substances. I'm a substance, you're a substance. What it means to be a substance is to be self-sufficient, independent. For example, I would be a substance, but my feeling of happiness on this sunny morning would be a more accidental feature of my being.Henry: Sure.Clare: Something that depends on my substance, and then these other features come and go. They're passing, they're just modes of substance, like a passing mood or whatever, or some kind of characteristic I might have. That's the more traditional view, whereas Spinoza said that there's only one substance, and that's God or nature, which is just this infinite totality. We're all modes of that one substance. That means that we don't have ontological independence, self-sufficiency. We're more like a wave on the ocean that's passing through. One ethical consequence of that way of thinking is that we are interconnected.We're all interconnected. We're not substances that then become connected and related to other substances, rather we emerge as beings through this, our place in this wider whole. That interconnectedness of all things and the idea that individuals are really constituted by their relations is, I think, a Spinoza's insight that George Eliot drew on very deeply and dramatized in her fiction. I think it's there all through her fiction, but it becomes quite explicit in Middlemarch where she talks about, she has this master metaphor of the web.Henry: The web. Right.Clare: In Middlemarch, where everything is part of a web. You put pressure on a bit of it and something changes in another part of the web. That interconnectedness can be understood on multiple levels. Biologically, the idea that tissues are formed in this organic holistic way, rather than we're not composed of parts, like machines, but we're these organic holes. There's a biological idea of the web, which she explores. Also, the economic system of exchange that holds a community together. Then I suppose, perhaps most interestingly, the more emotional and moral features of the web, the way one person's life is bound up with and shaped by their encounters with all the other lives that it comes into contact with.In a way, it's a way of thinking that really, it questions any idea of self-sufficiency, but it also questions traditional ideas of what it is to be an individual. You could see a counterpart to this way of thinking in a prominent 19th-century view of history, which sees history as made by heroic men, basically. There's this book by Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle, called The Heroic in History, or something like that.Henry: Sure. On heroes and the heroic, yes.Clare: Yes. That's a really great example of this way of thinking about history as made by heroes. Emerson wrote this book called Representative Men. These books were published, I think, in the early 1850s. Representative Men. Again, he identifies these certain men, these heroic figures, which represent history in a way. Then a final example of this is Auguste Comte's Positivist Calendar, which, he's a humanist, secularist thinker who wants to basically recreate culture and replace our calendar with this lunar calendar, which, anyway, it's a different calendar, has 13 months.Each month is named after a great man. There's Shakespeare, and there's Dante, and there's-- I don't know, I can't remember. Anyway, there's this parade of heroic men. Napoleon. Anyway, that's the view of history that Eliot grew up with. She was reading, she was really influenced by Carlisle and Emerson and Comte. In that landscape, she is creating this alternative Spinozist vision of what an exemplar can be like and who gets to be an exemplar. Dorothea was a really interesting exemplar because she's unhistoric. At the very end of Middlemarch, she describes Dorothea's unhistoric life that comes to rest in an unvisited tomb.She's obscure. She's not visible on the world stage. She's forgotten once she dies. She's obscure. She's ordinary. She's a provincial woman, upper middle-class provincial woman, who makes some bad choices. She has high ideals but ends up living a life that from the outside is not really an extraordinary life at all. Also, she is constituted by her relations with others in both directions. Her own life is really shaped by her milieu, by her relationships with the people. Also, at the end of the novel, Eliot leaves us with a vision of the way Dorothea's life has touched other lives and in ways that can't be calculated, can't really be recognized. Yet, she has these effects that are diffused.She uses this word, diffusion or diffuseness. The diffuseness of the effects of Dorothea's life, which seep into the world. Of course, she's a woman. She's not a great hero in this Carlyle or Emerson sense. In all these ways, I think this is a very different way of thinking about individuality, but also history and the way the world is made, that history and the world is made by, in this more Spinozist kind of way, rather than by these heroic representative men who stand on the world stage. That's not Spinoza's, that's Eliot's original thinking. She's taking a Spinozist ontology, a Spinozist metaphysics, but really she's creating her own vision with that, that's, of course, located in that 19th-century context.Henry: How sympathetic should we be to Mr. Casaubon?Clare: I feel very sympathetic to Mr. Casaubon because he is so vulnerable. He's a really very vulnerable person. Of course, in the novel, we are encouraged to look at it from Dorothea's point of view, and so when we look at it from Dorothea's point of view, Casaubon is a bad thing. The best way to think about it is the view of Dorothea's sister Celia, her younger sister, who is a very clear-eyed observer, who knows that Dorothea is making a terrible mistake in marrying this man. She's quite disdainful of Casaubon's, well, his unattractive looks.He's only about 40, but he's portrayed as this dried-up, pale-faced scholar, academic, who is incapable of genuine emotional connection with another person, which is quite tragic, really. The hints are that he's not able to have a sexual relationship. He's so buttoned up and repressed, in a way. When we look at it from Dorothea's perspective, we say, "No, he's terrible, he's bad for you, he's not going to be good for you," which of course is right. I think Eliot herself had a lot of sympathy for Casaubon. There's an anecdote which said that when someone asked who Casaubon was based on, she pointed to herself.I think she saw something of herself in him. On an emotional level, I think he's just a fascinating character, isn't he, in a way, from an aesthetic point of view? The point is not do we like Casaubon or do we not like him? I think we are encouraged to feel sympathy with him, even as, on the one, it's so clever because we're taken along, we're encouraged to feel as Celia feels, where we dislike him, we don't sympathize with him. Then Eliot is also showing us how that view is quite limited, I think, because we do occasionally see the world from Casaubon's point of view and see how fearful Casaubon is.Henry: She's also explicit and didactic about the need to sympathize with him, right? It's often in asides, but at one point, she gives over most of a chapter to saying, "Poor Mr. Casaubon. He didn't think he'd end up like this." Things have actually gone very badly for him as well.Clare: Yes, that's right. The didactic thing, George Eliot is sometimes criticized for this didacticism because what's most effective in the novel is not the narrator coming and telling us we should actually feel sorry for Casaubon and we should sympathize with him. We'd be better people if we sympathize with Casaubon. There's a moralizing lecture about, you should feel sympathy for this unlikable person. What is more effective is the subtle way she portrays this character and, as I say, lets us into his vulnerabilities in some obvious ways, as you say, by pointing things out, but also in some more subtle ways of drawing his character and hinting at, as I say, his vulnerabilities.Henry: Doesn't she know, though, that a lot of readers won't actually be very moved by the subtle things and that she does need to put in a lecture to say, "I should tell you that I am very personally sympathetic to Mr. Casaubon and that if you leave this novel hating him, that's not--"? Isn't that why she does it? Because she knows that a lot of readers will say, "I don't care. He's a baddie."Clare: Yes I don't know, that's a good question.Henry: I'm interested because, in The Natural History of German Life, she goes to all these efforts to say abstract arguments and philosophy and statistics and such, these things don't change the world. Stories change the world. A picture of life from a great artist. Then when she's doing her picture of life from a great artist she constantly butts in with her philosophical abstractions because it's, she can't quite trust that the reader will get it right as it were.Clare: Yes, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. You could say that or maybe does she have enough confidence in her ability to make us feel with these characters. That would be another way of looking at it. Whether her lack of confidence and lack of trust is in the reader or in her own power as an artist is probably an open question.Henry: There's a good book by Debra Gettelman about the way that novelists like Eliot knew what readers expected because they were all reading so many cheap romance novels and circulating library novels. There are a lot of negations and arguments with the reader to say, "I know what you want this story to do and I know how you want this character to turn out, but I'm not going to do that. You must go with me with what I'm doing.Clare: Yes. You mean this new book that's come out called Imagining Otherwise?Henry: That's right, yes.Clare: I've actually not read it yet, I've ordered it, but funnily enough, as you said at the beginning, I'm a philosopher so I'm not trained at all as a reader of literary texts or as a literary scholar by any means, and so I perhaps foolishly embarked on this book on George Eliot thinking, "Oh, next I'm going to write a book about George Eliot." Anyway, I ended up going to a couple of conferences on George Eliot, which was interestingly like stepping into a different world. The academic world of literary studies is really different from the world of academic philosophy, interestingly.It's run by women for a start. You go to a conference and it's very female-dominated. There's all these very eminent senior women or at least at this conference I went to there was these distinguished women who were running the show. Then there were a few men in that mix, which is the inverse of often what it can be like in a philosophy conference, which is still quite a male-dominated discipline. The etiquette is different. Philosophers like to criticize each other's arguments. That's the way we show love is to criticize and take down another philosopher's argument.Whereas the academics at this George Eliot conference were much more into acknowledging what they'd learned from other people's work and referencing. Anyway, it's really interestingly different. Debra Gettelman was at this conference.Henry: Oh, great.Clare: She had a book on Middlemarch. I think it was 2019 because it was the bicentenary of Eliot's birth, that's why there was this big conference. Debra, who I'd never met before or heard of, as I just didn't really know this world, gave this amazing talk on Middlemarch and on these negations in Middlemarch. It really influenced me, it really inspired me. The way she did these close readings of the sentences, this is what literary scholars are trained to do, but I haven't had that training and the close reading of the sentences, which didn't just yield interesting insights into the way George Eliot uses language but yielded this really interesting philosophical work where Eliot is using forms of the sentence to explore ontological questions about negation and possibility and modality.This was just so fascinating and really, it was a small paper in one of those parallel sessions. It wasn't one of the big presentations at the conference, but it was that talk that most inspired me at the conference. It's a lot of the insights that I got from Debra Gettelman I ended up drawing on in my own chapter on Middlemarch. I situated it a bit more in the history of philosophy and thinking about negation as a theme.Henry: This is where you link it to Hegel.Clare: Yes, to Hegel, exactly. I was so pleased to see that the book is out because I think I must have gone up to her after the talk and said, "Oh, it's really amazing." Was like, "Oh, thank you." I was like, "Is it published? Can I cite it?" She said, "No. I'm working on this project." It seemed like she felt like it was going to be a long time in the making. Then a few weeks ago, I saw a review of the book in the TLS. I thought, "Oh, amazing, the book is out. It just sounds brilliant." I can't wait to read that book. Yes, she talks about Eliot alongside, I think, Dickens and another.Henry: And Jane Austen.Clare: Jane Austen, amazing. Yes. I think it's to do with, as you say, writing in response to readerly expectation and forming readerly expectations. Partly thanks to Debra Gettelman, I can see how Eliot does that. It'd be really interesting to learn how she sees Jane Austen and Dickens also doing that.Henry: It's a brilliant book. You're in for a treat.Clare: Yes, I'm sure it is. That doesn't surprise me at all.Henry: Now, you say more than once in your book, that Eliot anticipates some of the insights of psychotherapy.Clare: Psychoanalysis.Henry: Yes. What do you think she would have made of Freud or of our general therapy culture? I think you're right, but she has very different aims and understandings of these things. What would she make of it now?Clare: It seems that Freud was probably influenced by Eliot. That's a historical question. He certainly read and admired Eliot. I suspect, yes, was influenced by some of her insights, which in turn, she's drawing on other stuff. What do you have in mind? Your question suggests that you think she might have disapproved of therapy culture.Henry: I think novelists in general are quite ambivalent about psychoanalysis and therapy. Yes.Clare: For what reason?Henry: If you read someone like Iris Murdoch, who's quite Eliotic in many ways, she would say, "Do these therapists ever actually help anyone?"Clare: Ah.Henry: A lot of her characters are sent on these slightly dizzying journeys. They're often given advice from therapists or priests or philosophers, and obviously, Murdoch Is a philosopher. The advice from the therapists and the philosophers always ends these characters up in appalling situations. It's art and literature. As you were saying before, a more diffusive understanding and a way of integrating yourself with other things rather than looking back into your head and dwelling on it.Clare: Of course. Yes.Henry: I see more continuity between Eliot and that kind of thinking. I wonder if you felt that the talking cure that you identified at the end of Middlemarch is quite sound common sense and no-nonsense. It's not lie on the couch and tell me how you feel, is it?Clare: I don't know. That's one way to look at it, I suppose. Another way to look at it would be to see Eliot and Freud is located in this broadly Socratic tradition of one, the idea that if you understand yourself better, then that is a route to a certain qualified kind of happiness or fulfillment or liberation. The best kind of human life there could be is one where we gain insight into our own natures. We bring to light what is hidden from us, whether those are desires that are hidden away in the shadows and they're actually motivating our behavior, but we don't realize it, and so we are therefore enslaved to them.That's a very old idea that you find in ancient philosophy. Then the question is, by what methods do we bring these things to light? Is it through Socratic questioning? Is it through art? Eliot's art is an art that I think encourages us to see ourselves in the characters. As we come to understand the characters, and in particular to go back to what I said before about Spinozism, to see their embeddedness and their interconnectedness in these wider webs, but also in a sense of that embeddedness in psychic forces that they're not fully aware of. Part of what you could argue is being exposed there, and this would be a Spinozist insight, is the delusion of free will.The idea that we act freely with these autonomous agents who have access to and control over our desires, and we pick the thing that's in our interest and we act on that. That's a view that I think Spinoza is very critical. He famously denies free will. He says we're determined, we just don't understand how we're determined. When we understand better how we're determined, then perhaps paradoxically we actually do become relatively empowered through our understanding. I think there's something of that in Eliot too, and arguably there's something of that in Freud as well. I know you weren't actually so much asking about Freud's theory and practice, and more about a therapy culture.Henry: All of it.Clare: You're also asking about that. As I say, the difference would be the method for accomplishing this process of a kind of enlightenment. Of course, Freud's techniques medicalizes that project basically. It's the patient and the doctor in dialogue, and depends a lot on the skills of the doctor, doesn't it? How successful, and who is also a human being, who is also another human being, who isn't of course outside of the web, but is themselves in it, and ideally has themselves already undergone this process of making themselves more transparent to their own understanding, but of course, is going to be liable to their own blind spots, and so on.Henry: Which of her novels do you love the most? Just on a personal level, it doesn't have to be which one you think is the most impressive or whatever.Clare: I'm trying to think how to answer that question. I was thinking if I had to reread one of them next week, which one would I choose? If I was going on holiday and I wanted a beach read for pure enjoyment, which of the novels would I pick up? Probably Middlemarch. I think it's probably the most enjoyable, the most fun to read of her novels, basically.Henry: Sure.Clare: There'd be other reasons for picking other books. I really think Daniel Deronda is amazing because of what she's trying to do in that book. Its ambition, it doesn't always succeed in giving us the reading experience that is the most enjoyable. In terms of just the staggering philosophical and artistic achievement, what she's attempting to do, and what she does to a large extent achieve in that book, I think is just incredible. As a friend of Eliot, I have a real love for Daniel Deronda because I just think that what an amazing thing she did in writing that book. Then I've got a soft spot for Silas Marner, which is short and sweet.Henry: I think I'd take The Mill on the Floss. That's my favorite.Clare: Oh, would you?Henry: I love that book.Clare: That also did pop into my mind as another contender. Yes, because it's so personal in a way, The Mill on the Floss. It's personal to her, it's also personal to me in that, it's the first book by Eliot I read because I studied it for A-Level. I remember thinking when we were at the beginning of that two-year period when I'd chosen my English literature A-Level and we got the list of texts we were going to read, I remember seeing The Mill on the Floss and thinking, "Oh God, that sounds so boring." The title, something about the title, it just sounded awful. I remember being a bit disappointed that it wasn't a Jane Austen or something more fun.I thought, "Oh, The Mill on the Floss." Then I don't have a very strong memory of the book, but I remember thinking, actually, it was better than I expected. I did think, actually, it wasn't as awful and boring as I thought it would be. It's a personal book to Eliot. I think that exploring the life of a mind of a young woman who has no access to proper education, very limited access to art and culture, she's stuck in this little village near a provincial town full of narrow-minded conservative people. That's Eliot's experience herself. It was a bit my experience, too, as, again, not that I even would have seen it this way at the time, but a girl with intellectual appetites and not finding those appetites very easily satisfied in, again, a provincial, ordinary family and the world and so on.Henry: What sort of reader were you at school?Clare: What sort of reader?Henry: Were you reading lots of Plato, lots of novels?Clare: No. I'm always really surprised when I meet people who say things like they were reading Kierkegaard and Plato when they were 15 or 16. No, not at all. No, I loved reading, so I just read lots and lots of novels. I loved Jane Eyre. That was probably one of the first proper novels, as with many people, that I remember reading that when I was about 12 and partly feeling quite proud of myself for having read this grown-up book, but also really loving the book. I reread that probably several times before I was 25. Jane Austen and just reading.Then also I used to go to the library, just completely gripped by some boredom and restlessness and finding something to read. I read a lot and scanning the shelves and picking things out. That way I read more contemporary fiction. Just things like, I don't know, Julian Barnes or, Armistead Maupin, or just finding stuff on the shelves of the library that looked interesting, or Anita Brookner or Somerset Maugham. I really love Somerset Maugham.Henry: Which ones do you like?Clare: I remember reading, I think I read The Razor's Edge first.Henry: That's a great book.Clare: Yes, and just knowing nothing about it, just picking it off the shelf and thinking, "Oh, this looks interesting." I've always liked a nice short, small paperback. That would always appeal. Then once I found a book I liked, I'd then obviously read other stuff by that writer. I then read, so The Razor's Edge and-- Oh, I can't remember.Henry: The Moon and Sixpence, maybe?Clare: Yes, The Moon and Sixpence, and-Henry: Painted Veils?Clare: -Human Bondage.Henry: Of Human Bondage, right.Clare: Human Bondage, which is, actually, he took the title from Spinoza's Ethics. That's the title. Cluelessly, as a teenager, I was like, "Ooh, this book is interesting." Actually, when I look back, I can see that those writers, like Maugham, for example, he was really interested in philosophy. He was really interested in art and philosophy, and travel, and culture, and religion, all the things I am actually interested in. I wouldn't have known that that was why I loved the book. I just liked the book and found it gripping. It spoke to me, and I wanted to just read more other stuff like that.I was the first person in my family to go to university, so we didn't have a lot of books in the house. We had one bookcase. There were a few decent things in there along with the Jeffrey Archers in there. I read everything on that bookshelf. I read the Jeffrey Archers, I read the True Crime, I read the In Cold Blood, just this somewhat random-- I think there was probably a couple of George Eliots on there. A few classics, I would, again, grip by boredom on a Sunday afternoon, just stare at this shelf and think, "Oh, is there anything?" Maybe I'll end up with a Thomas Hardy or something. It was quite limited. I didn't really know anything about philosophy. I didn't think of doing philosophy at university, for example. I actually decided to do history.I went to Cambridge to do history. Then, after a couple of weeks, just happened to meet someone who was doing philosophy. I was like, "Oh, that's what I want to do." I only recognized it when I saw it. I hadn't really seen it because I went to the local state school, it wasn't full of teachers who knew about philosophy and stuff like that.Henry: You graduated in theology and philosophy, is that right?Clare: Yes. Cambridge, the degrees are in two parts. I did Part 1, theology, and then I did Part 2, philosophy. I graduated in philosophy, but I studied theology in my first year at Cambridge.Henry: What are your favorite Victorian biographies?Clare: You mean biographies of Victorians?Henry: Of Victorians, by Victorians, whatever.Clare: I don't really read many biographies.Henry: Oh, really?Clare: [laughs] The first biography I wrote was a biography of Kierkegaard. I remember thinking, when I started to write the book, "I'd better read some biographies." I always tend to read fiction. I'm not a big reader of history, which is so ironic. I don't know what possessed me to go and study history at university. These are not books I read for pleasure. I suppose I am quite hedonistic in my choice of reading, I like to read for pleasure.Henry: Sure. Of course.Clare: I don't tend to read nonfiction. Obviously, I do sometimes read nonfiction for pleasure, but it's not the thing I'm most drawn to. Anyway. I remember asking my editor, I probably didn't mention that I didn't know very much about biography, but I did ask him to recommend some. I'd already got the book contract. I said, "What do you think is a really good biography that I should read?" He recommended, I think, who is it who wrote The Life of Gibbon? Really famous biography of Gibbon.Henry: I don't know.Clare: That one. I read it. It is really good. My mind is going blank. I read many biographies of George Eliot before I wrote mine.Henry: They're not all wonderful, are they?Clare: I really liked Catherine Hughes's book because it brought her down from her pedestal.Henry: Exactly. Yes.Clare: Talking about hedonism, I would read anything that Catherine Hughes writes just for enjoyment because she's such a good writer. She's a very intellectual woman, but she's also very entertaining. She writes to entertain, which I like and appreciate as a reader. There's a couple of big archival biographies of George Eliot by Gordon Haight and by Rosemary Ashton, for example, which are both just invaluable. One of the great things about that kind of book is that it frees you to write a different kind of biography that can be more interpretive and more selective. Once those kinds of books have been published, there's no point doing another one. You can do something more creative, potentially, or more partial.I really like Catherine Hughes's. She was good at seeing through Eliot sometimes, and making fun of her, even though it's still a very respectful book. There's also this brilliant book about Eliot by Rosemary Bodenheimer called The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans. It's a biographical book, but it's written through the letters. She sees Eliot's life through her letters. Again, it's really good at seeing through Eliot. What Eliot says is not always what she means. She can be quite defensive and boastful. These are things that really come out in her letters. Anyway, that's a brilliant book, which again, really helped me to read Eliot critically. Not unsympathetically, but critically, because I tend to fall in love with thinkers that I'm reading. I'm not instinctively critical. I want to just show how amazing they are, but of course, you also need to be critical. Those books were--Henry: Or realistic.Clare: Yes, realistic and just like, "This is a human being," and having a sense of humor about it as well. That's what's great about Catherine Hughes's book, is that she's got a really good sense of humor. That makes for a fun reading experience.Henry: Why do you think more philosophers don't write biographies? It's an unphilosophical activity, isn't it?Clare: That's a very interesting question. Just a week or so ago, I was talking to Clare Mac Cumhaill I'm not quite sure how you pronounce her name, but anyway, so there's--Henry: Oh, who did the four women in Oxford?Clare: Yes. Exactly.Henry: That was a great book.Clare: Yes. Clare MacCumhaill co-wrote this book with Rachael Wiseman. They're both philosophers. They wrote this group biography of Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley. I happened to be having dinner with a group of philosophers and sitting opposite her. Had never met her before. It was just a delight to talk to another philosopher who'd written biography. We both felt that there was a real philosophical potential in biography, that thinking about a shape of a human life, what it is to know another person, the connection between a person's life and their philosophy. Even to put it that way implies that philosophy is something that isn't part of life, that you've got philosophy over here and you've got life over there. Then you think about the connection between them.That, when you think about it, is quite a questionable way of looking at philosophy as if it's somehow separate from life or detachment life. We had a really interesting conversation about this. There's Ray Monk's brilliant biography of Wittgenstein, The Duty of Genius. He's another philosopher who's written biography, and then went on to reflect, interestingly, on the relationship between philosophy and biography.I think on the one hand, I'd want to question the idea that biography and philosophy are two different things or that a person's life and their thought are two separate questions. On the other hand, we've got these two different literary forms. One of them is a narrative form of writing, and one of them- I don't know what the technical term for it would be- but a more systematic writing where with systematic writing, it's not pinned to a location or a time, and the structure of the text is conceptual rather than narrative. It's not ordered according to events and chronology, and things happening, you've just got a more analytic style of writing.Those two styles of writing are very, very different ways of writing. They're two different literary forms. Contemporary academic philosophers tend to write, almost always-- probably are pretty much forced to write in the systematic analytic style because as soon as you would write a narrative, the critique will be, "Well, that's not philosophy. That's history," or "That's biography," or, "That's anecdote." You might get little bits of narrative in some thought experiment, but by definition, the thought experiment is never pinned to a particular time, place, or context. "Let's imagine a man standing on a bridge. There's a fat man tied to the railway line [crosstalk]." Those are like little narratives, but they're not pinned. There is a sequencing, so I suppose they are narratives. Anyway, as you can tell, they're quite abstracted little narratives.That interests me. Why is it that narrative is seen as unphilosophical? Particularly when you think about the history of philosophy, and we think about Plato's dialogues, which tend to have a narrative form, and the philosophical conversation is often situated within a narrative. The Phaedo, for example, at the beginning of the book, Socrates is sitting in prison, and he's about to drink his poisoned hemlock. He's awaiting execution. His friends, students, and disciples are gathered around him. They're talking about death and how Socrates feels about dying. Then, at the end of the book, he dies, and his friends are upset about it.Think about, I know, Descartes' Meditations, where we begin in the philosopher's study, and he's describing--Henry: With the fire.Clare: He's by the fire, but he's also saying, "I've reached a point in my life where I thought, actually, it's time to question some assumptions." He's sitting by the fire, but he's also locating the scene in his own life trajectory. He's reached a certain point in life. Of course, that may be a rhetorical device. Some readers might want to say, "Well, that's mere ornamentation. We extract the arguments from that. That's where the philosophy is." I think it's interesting to think about why philosophers might choose narrative as a form.Spinoza, certainly not in the Ethics, which is about as un-narrative as you can get, but in some of his other, he experimented with an earlier version of the Ethics, which is actually like Descartes' meditation. He begins by saying, "After experience had taught me to question all the values I'd been taught to pursue, I started to wonder whether there was some other genuine good that was eternal," and so on. He then goes on to narrate his experiments with a different kind of life, giving up certain things and pursuing other things.Then you come to George Eliot. I think these are philosophical books.Henry: Yes.Clare: The challenge lies in saying, "Well, how are they philosophical?" Are they philosophical because there are certain ideas in the books that you could pick out and say, "Oh, here, she's critiquing utilitarianism. These are her claims." You can do that with Eliot's books. There are arguments embedded in the books. I wouldn't want to say that that's where their philosophical interest is exhausted by the fact that you can extract non-narrative arguments from them, but rather there's also something philosophical in her exploration of what a human life is like and how choices get made and how those choices, whether they're free or unfree, shape a life, shape other lives. What human happiness can we realistically hope for? What does a good life look like? What does a bad life look like? Why is the virtue of humility important?These are also, I think, philosophical themes that can perhaps only be treated in a long-form, i.e., in a narrative that doesn't just set a particular scene from a person's life, but that follows the trajectory of a life. That was a very long answer to your question.Henry: No, it was a good answer. I like it.Clare: Just to come back to what you said about biography. When I wrote my first biography on Kierkegaard, I really enjoyed working in this medium of narrative for the first time. I like writing. I'd enjoyed writing my earlier books which were in that more analytic conceptual style where the structure was determined by themes and by concepts rather than by any chronology. I happily worked in that way. I had to learn how to do it. I had to learn how to write. How do you write a narrative?To come back to the Metaphysical Animals, the group biography, writing a narrative about one person's life is complicated enough, but writing a narrative of four lives, it's a real-- from a technical point of view-- Even if you only have one life, lives are not linear. If you think about a particular period in your subject's life, people have lots of different things going on at once that have different timeframes. You're going through a certain period in your relationship, you're working on a book, someone close to you dies, you're reading Hegel. All that stuff is going on. The narrative is not going to be, "Well, on Tuesday this happened, and then on Wednesday--" You can't use pure chronology to structure a narrative. It's not just one thing following another.It's not like, "Well, first I'll talk about the relationship," which is an issue that was maybe stretching over a three-month period. Then in this one week, she was reading Hegel and making these notes that were really important. Then, in the background to this is Carlisle's view of history. You've got these different temporal periods that are all bearing on a single narrative. The challenge to create a narrative from all that, that's difficult, as any biographer knows. To do that with four subjects at once is-- Anyway, they did an amazing job in that book.Henry: It never gets boring, that book.Clare: No. I guess the problem with a biography is often you're stuck with this one person through the whole--Henry: I think the problem with a biography of philosophers is that it can get very boring. They kept the interest for four thinkers. I thought that was very impressive, really.Clare: Yes, absolutely. Yes. There's a really nice balance between the philosophy and the-- I like to hear about Philippa Foot's taste in cushions. Maybe some readers would say, "Oh, no, that's frivolous." It's not the view I would take. For me, it's those apparently frivolous details that really help you to connect with a person. They will deliver a sense of the person that nothing else will. There's no substitute for that.In my book about Kierkegaard, it was reviewed by Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books. It was generally quite a positive review. He was a bit sneering about the fact that it had what he calls "domestic flourishes" in the book. I'd mentioned that Kierkegaard's favorite flower was the lily of the valley. He's like, "Huh." He saw these as frivolities, whereas for me, the fact that Kierkegaard had a favorite flower tells us something about the kind of man he was.Henry: Absolutely.Clare: Actually, his favorite flower had all sorts of symbolism attached to it, Kierkegaard, it had 10 different layers of meaning. It's never straightforward. There's interesting value judgments that get made. There's partly the view that anything biographical is not philosophical. It is in some way frivolous or incidental. That would be perhaps a very austere, purest philosophical on a certain conception of philosophy view.Then you might also have views about what is and isn't interesting, what is and isn't significant. Actually, that's a really interesting question. What is significant about a person's life, and what isn't? Actually, to come back to Eliot, that's a question she is, I think, absolutely preoccupied with, most of all in Middlemarch and in Daniel Deronda. This question about what is trivial and what is significant. Dorothea is frustrated because she feels that her life is trivial. She thinks that Casaubon is preoccupied with really significant questions, the key to all mythologies, and so on.Henry: [chuckles]Clare: There's really a deep irony there because that view of what's significant is really challenged in the novel. Casaubon's project comes to seem really futile, petty, and insignificant. In Daniel Deronda, you've got this amazing question where she shows her heroine, Gwendolyn, who's this selfish 20-year-old girl who's pursuing her own self-interest in a pretty narrow way, about flirting and thinking about her own romantic prospects.Henry: Her income.Clare: She's got this inner world, which is the average preoccupation of a silly 20-year-old girl.Henry: Yes. [laughs]Clare: Then Eliot's narrator asks, "Is there a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl who's preoccupied with how to make her own life pleasant?" The question she's asking is-- Well, I think she wants to tell us that slender thread of the girl's consciousness is part of the universe, basically. It's integral. It belongs to a great drama of the struggle between good and evil, which is this mythical, cosmic, religious, archetypal drama that gets played out on the scale of the universe, but also, in this silly girl's consciousness.I think she's got to a point where she was very explicitly thematizing that distinction between the significant and the insignificant and playing with that distinction. It comes back to Dorothea's unhistoric life. It's unhistoric, it's insignificant. Yet, by the end of Middlemarch, by the time we get to that description of Dorothea's unhistoric life, this life has become important to us. We care about Dorothea and how her life turned out. It has this grandeur to it that I think Eliot exposes. It's not the grandeur of historic importance, it's some other human grandeur that I think she wants to find in the silly girls as much as in the great men.Henry: I always find remarks like that quite extraordinary. One of the things I want a biography to tell me is, "How did they come to believe these things?" and, "How did they get the work done?" The flowers that he likes, that's part of that, right? It's like Bertrand Russell going off on his bicycle all the time. That's part of how it all happened. I remember Elizabeth Anscombe in the book about the four philosophers, this question of, "How does she do it all when she's got these six children?" There's this wonderful image of her standing in the doorway to her house smoking. The six children are tumbling around everywhere. The whole place is filthy. I think they don't own a Hoover or she doesn't use it. You just get this wonderful sense of, "This is how she gets it done."Clare: That's how you do it.Henry: Yes. The idea that this is some minor domestic trivial; no, this is very important to understanding Elizabeth Anscombe, right?Clare: Yes, of course.Henry: I want all of this.Clare: Yes. One of the things I really like about her is that she unashamedly brings that domesticity into her philosophical work. She'll use examples like, "I go to buy some potatoes from the grocer's." She'll use that example, whereas that's not the thing that-- Oxford dons don't need to buy any potatoes because they have these quasi-monastic lives where they get cooked for and cleaned for. I like the way she chooses those. Of course, she's not a housewife, but she chooses these housewifely examples to illustrate her philosophy.I don't know enough about Anscombe, but I can imagine that that's a deliberate choice. That's a choice she's making. There's so many different examples she could have thought of. She's choosing that example, which is an example, it shows a woman doing philosophy, basically. Of course, men can buy potatoes too, but in that culture, the buying of the potatoes would be the woman's work.Henry: Yes. She wasn't going to run into AJ Ayre at the grocer's.Clare: Probably not, no.Henry: No. Are you religious in any sense?Clare: I think I am in some sense. Yes, "religious," I think it's a really problematic concept. I've written a bit about this concept of religion and what it might mean. I wrote a book on Spinoza called Spinoza's Religion. Part of what I learned through writing the book was that in order to decide whether or not Spinoza was religious, we have to rethink the very concept of religion, or we have to see that that's what Spinoza was doing.I don't know. Some people are straightforwardly religious and I guess could answer that question, say, "Oh yes, I've always been a Christian," or whatever. My answer is a yes and no answer, where I didn't have a religious upbringing, and I don't have a strong religious affiliation. Sorry, I'm being very evasive.Henry: What do you think of the idea that we're about to live through or we are living through a religious revival? More people going to church, more young people interested in it. Do you see that, or do you think that's a blip?Clare: That's probably a question for the social scientists, isn't it? It just totally depends where you are and what community you're--Henry: Your students, you are not seeing students who are suddenly more religious?Clare: Well, no, but my students are students who've chosen to do philosophy. Some of them are religious and some of them are not. It will be too small a sample to be able to diagnose. I can say that my students are much more likely to be questioning. Many of them are questioning their gender, thinking about how to inhabit gender roles differently.That's something I perceive as a change from 20 years ago, just in the way that my students will dress and present themselves. That's a discernible difference. I can remark on that, but I can't remark on whether they're more religious.Just actually just been teaching a course on philosophy of religion at King's. Some students in the course of having discussions would mention that they were Muslim, Christian, or really into contemplative practices and meditation. Some of the students shared those interests. Others would say, "Oh, well, I'm an atheist, so this is--" There's just a range-Henry: A full range.Clare: -of different religious backgrounds and different interests. There's always been that range. I don't know whether there's an increased interest in religion among those students in particular, but I guess, yes, maybe on a national or global level, statistically-- I don't know. You tell me.Henry: What do you think about all these reports that undergraduates today-- "They have no attention span, they can't read a book, everything is TikTok," do you see this or are you just seeing like, "No, my students are fine actually. This is obviously happening somewhere else"?Clare: Again, it's difficult to say because I see them when they're in their classes, I see them in their seminars, I see them in the lectures. I don't know what their attention spans are like in their--Henry: Some of the other people I've interviewed will say things like, "I'll set reading, and they won't do it, even though it's just not very much reading,"-Clare: Oh, I see. Oh, yes.Henry: -or, "They're on the phone in the--" You know what I mean?Clare: Yes.Henry: The whole experience from 10, 20 years ago, these are just different.Clare: I'm also more distracted by my phone than I was 20 years ago. I didn't have a phone 20 years ago.Henry: Sure.Clare: Having a phone and being on the internet is constantly disrupting my reading and my writing. That's something that I think many of us battle with a bit. I'm sure most of us are addicted to our phones. I wouldn't draw a distinction between myself and my students in that respect. I've been really impressed by my students, pleasantly surprised by the fact they've done their reading because it can be difficult to do reading, I think.Henry: You're not one of these people who says, "Oh students today, it's really very different than it was 20 years ago. You can't get them to do anything. The whole thing is--" Some people are apocalyptic about-- Actually, you're saying no, your students are good?Clare: I like my students. Whether they do the reading or not, I'm not going to sit here and complain about them.Henry: No, sure, sure. I think that's good. What are you working on next?Clare: I've just written a book. It came out of a series of lectures I gave on life writing and philosophy, actually. Connected to what we were talking about earlier. Having written the biographies, I started to reflect a bit more on biography and how it may or may not be a philosophical enterprise, and questions about the shape of a life and what one life can transmit to another life. Something about the devotional labor of the biographer when you're living with this person and you're-- It's devotional, but it's also potentially exploitative because often you're using your subjects, of course, without their consent because they're dead. You're presenting their life to public view and you're selling books, so it's devotional and exploitative. I think that's an interesting pairing.Anyway, so I gave these lectures last year in St Andrews and they're going to be published in September.Henry: Great.Clare: I've finished those really.Henry: That's what's coming.Clare: That's what's coming. Then I've just been writing again about Kierkegaard, actually. I haven't really worked on Kierkegaard for quite a few years. As often happens with these things, I got invited to speak on Kierkegaard and death at a conference in New York in November. My initial thought was like, "Oh, I wish it was Spinoza, I don't want to--" I think I got to the point where I'd worked a lot on Kierkegaard and wanted to do other things. I was a bit like, "Oh, if only I was doing Spinoza, that would be more up my street." I wanted to go to the conference, so I said yes to this invitation. I was really glad I did because I went back and read what Kierkegaard has written about death, which is very interesting because Kierkegaard's this quintessentially death-fixated philosopher, that's his reputation. It's his reputation, he's really about death. His name means churchyard. He's doomy and gloomy. There's the caricature.Then, to actually look at what he says about death and how he approaches the subject, which I'd forgotten or hadn't even read closely in the first place, those particular texts. That turned out to be really interesting, so I'm writing-- It's not a book or anything, it's just an article.Henry: You're not going to do a George Eliot and produce a novel?Clare: No. I'm not a novelist or a writer of fiction. I don't think I have enough imagination to create characters. What I love about biography is that you get given the characters and you get given the plots. Then, of course, it is a creative task to then turn that into a narrative, as I said before. The kinds of biography I like to write are quite creative, they're not just purely about facts. I think facts can be quite boring. Well, they become interesting in the context of questions about meaning interpretations by themselves. Again, probably why I was right to give up on the history degree. For me, facts are not where my heart is.That amount of creativity I think suits me well, but to create a world as you do when you're a novelist and create characters and plots, and so, that doesn't come naturally to me. I guess I like thinking about philosophical questions through real-life stories. It's one way for philosophy to be connected to real life. Philosophy can also be connected to life through fiction, of course, but it's not my own thing. I like to read other people's fiction. I'm not so bothered about reading other biographies.Henry: No. No, no.[laughter]Clare: I'll write the biographies, and I'll read the fiction.Henry: That's probably the best way. Clare Carlisle, author of The Marriage Question, thank you very much.Clare: Oh, thanks, Henry. It's been very fun to talk to you.Henry: Yes. It was a real pleasure. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe

De Balie Spreekt
Descartes herverteld: Ik denk dat ik ben met o.a. Coen Simon en Kader Abdolah

De Balie Spreekt

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2025 96:13


Coen Simon ‘hervertelde' Descartes. In de literatuur, het theater en de film is het heel gebruikelijk om bewerkingen te maken van aloude verhalen. Hoe werkt dat met filosofische klassiekers?Dubito, ergo cogito ergo sum. In de zeventiende eeuw deed Descartes de beroemdste vinding uit de geschiedenis van de filosofie. Zelfs als ik alles in twijfel trek blijft één zekerheid overeind, namelijk dat ik ben. In Ik denk dat ik ben repliceert filosoof Coen Simon het beroemde denkexperiment van Descartes. Zes dagen zit hij voor de haard om alles in twijfel trekken: zijn aannames, zijn zintuigen en uiteindelijk zichzelf. Wat levert deze ‘hervertelling' van Descartes op? En wat is de waarde van radicale twijfel in een ‘post-truth'-samenleving?Deze avond gaan we in gesprek over de filosofie van Descartes en onderzoeken we de waarde van de hervertelling.In samenwerking met Uitgeverij Athenaeum en Filosofie Magazine.Zie het privacybeleid op https://art19.com/privacy en de privacyverklaring van Californië op https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.Zie het privacybeleid op https://art19.com/privacy en de privacyverklaring van Californië op https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

KEXP Live Performances Podcast
Descartes A Kant

KEXP Live Performances Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 22, 2025 27:26


On the show this time, it's the futuristic rock drama of Guadalajara band Descartes a Kant. When Guadalajara-based group Descartes A Kant created their most recent album, 2023’s After Destruction, they actually made something much bigger. They built an entire concept and universe in which humans struggle to remain human in the face of relentless simulated reality. Their music is post-punk meets indie rock with incredibly intricate electronics. And you’ll want to make sure you check out the video for this one at some point, too. Recorded October 18, 2024 Hello User / Graceless Press Any Key / Woman Sobbing Self-F / The Mess We've Made A Catastrophe 47 Dogs / After Destruction Enlightenment Bubbles / Restart and Heal Watch the full Live on KEXP session on YouTube.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

KEXP Live Performances Podcast
Descartes A Kant [Performance & Interview Only]

KEXP Live Performances Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 22, 2025 42:58


On the show this time, it's the futuristic rock drama of Guadalajara band Descartes a Kant. When Guadalajara-based group Descartes A Kant created their most recent album, 2023’s After Destruction, they actually made something much bigger. They built an entire concept and universe in which humans struggle to remain human in the face of relentless simulated reality. Their music is post-punk meets indie rock with incredibly intricate electronics. And you’ll want to make sure you check out the video for this one at some point, too. Recorded October 18, 2024 Hello User / Graceless Press Any Key / Woman Sobbing Self-F / The Mess We've Made A Catastrophe 47 Dogs / After Destruction Enlightenment Bubbles / Restart and Heal Watch the full Live on KEXP session on YouTube.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
HoP 467 Written in Mathematics: Descartes' Physics

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2025 27:32


For Descartes body is purely geometrical. So how does he understand features we can perceive, like color, and causation between bodies?

El Villegas - Actualidad y esas cosas
Isaac Newton | Dominical

El Villegas - Actualidad y esas cosas

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2025 28:14


En el programa de hoy, se profundiza en la figura de Isaac Newton, uno de los más grandes genios de la historia, destacando su influencia decisiva en el desarrollo de la ciencia moderna. Se abordan sus aportes fundamentales como la ley de gravitación universal, las tres leyes de la mecánica clásica, y la invención del cálculo diferencial e integral. Además, se examinan sus contribuciones en óptica, astronomía y la invención del telescopio reflector. El programa también explora su lado menos conocido, como su dedicación a la alquimia y estudios bíblicos, reflejo de la dualidad intelectual del siglo XVII. Finalmente, se contextualiza a Newton dentro de una constelación de otros grandes pensadores de su tiempo como Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Spinoza y Locke. Para acceder al programa sin interrupción de comerciales, suscríbete a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/elvillegas 00:00:00 - El genio del siglo XVII 00:00:54 - Isaac Newton y la ciencia moderna 00:08:41 - Las leyes de la mecánica clásica 00:11:16 - El cálculo diferencial e integral 00:14:15 - Aportes en óptica y astronomía 00:20:04 - Newton esotérico y otros genios del siglo

Philosophy is Sexy
Episode 07 - Petite philosophie de la créativité

Philosophy is Sexy

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2025 29:44


Philosophy Is Sexy n'est pas qu'un podcast, c'est une parenthèse intime, un pas de côté, pour oser la philosophie, la désacraliser, la remettre au cœur de notre vie et se laisser inspirer. Marie Robert, auteure du best-seller traduit en quinze langues, "Kant tu ne sais plus quoi faire", de "Descartes pour les jours de doute" et "Le Voyage de Pénélope" (Flammarion-Versilio) nous interpelle de son ton complice et entrainant. La prof qu'on aurait aimé avoir, celle surtout qui va faire des philosophes nos précieux alliés. https://www.susannalea.com/sla-title/penelopes-voyage/ Directrice Pédagogique des écoles Montessori Esclaibes. @PhilosophyIsSexy Production: Les podcasteurs Musique Originale: Laurent AkninDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Die Hard On A Blank
THE MATRIX with Matt Zoller Seitz!

Die Hard On A Blank

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 9, 2025 105:55


It's Die Hard in a simulation!This week, hosts Phil and Liam are following the white rabbit into one of the most prophetic and influential movie of the 90s - The Matrix (1999) - with special guest Matt Zoller Seitz, the renowned Editor at Large of rogerebert.com. He is a Features Writer at New York Magazine, and is the author of many books, including books on Wes Anderson, Mad Men, The Sopranos, and many more. Matt not only loves this movie, but talks eloquently about how it changed his life. Released in the banner year of 1999, The Matrix follows Thomas Anderson, a mild-mannered software engineer who moonlights as a notorious hacker known as Neo, discovers to his horror that the world he lives in is actually an elaborate simulated reality created by intelligent machines who have subjugated humanity. Guided by the enigmatic resistance leader Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and the skilled warrior Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), Neo learns the truth about the Matrix and his potential role as "The One," a prophesied savior who can bend, and perhaps break, its rules. As he battles powerful Agents led by the ruthless Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), Neo must embrace his destiny and free his mind to prevent the machines' enslavement of humanity.We talk about the film's unexpected connections to Die Hard (Kinda blowing Matt's mind), the movie's philosophical complexity (Plato! Descartes! Baurdrillard!), it's appropriation by both the right and left-wing, and if it can be seen, 26 years on, as being somewhat optimistic. We also talk about the culture-chaning action, the amazing performances by Reeves, Moss, Fishburne, and Weaving, and how the movie's style hasn't aged a day. So call your operator and strap in for one of our most mind-blowing episodes yet!Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kulturreportaget i P1
Lyssnarjuryn: ”Jag tycker så synd om Descartes!”

Kulturreportaget i P1

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 9, 2025 23:49


Lyssnarjuryn, som utser Sveriges Radios Romanpris, diskuterar Tänkarens testamente av Jessica Schiefauer. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. När juryn beger sig in i Jessica Schiefauers ”Tänkarens testamente” handlar samtalen om kärleken till en dotter, jakten på själen och en huvudperson misstänkt lik filosofen René Descartes. ”Jag blir inte riktigt klok på den här figuren”, säger Teodor Fridén.För 32:a gången i ordningen väljer våra lyssnare i lyssnarjuryn vilken bok som ska tilldelas Sveriges Radios Romanpris. Vinnaren av Sveriges Radios Romanpris 2025 tillkännages i P1 Kultur fredagen 11 april.Lyssnarjuryn är: Jan Unga, 69, Östanbäck, Benigna Polonyi, 62, Stockholm, Cristina von Schéele, 58, Jönköping, Teodor Fridén, 30, Stockholm och Alma Martinsson, 25, Kalmar.Årets nominerade romaner: ”Allätaren” av Martin Engberg, ”Helga” av Bengt Ohlsson, ”Den första boken” av Karolina Ramqvist och ”Tänkarens testamente” av Jessica Schiefauer.Samtalsledare: Lina Kalmteg.Producent: Anna Tullberg.

Wissen
Pierre de Fermat und der Wettstreit wider Willen

Wissen

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 8, 2025 34:26


Pierre de Fermat ist vor allem berühmt für das Mathe-Rätsel, das er der Welt 1641 in einer Randnotiz aufgibt. Daneben gerät der gelernte Jurist in Konfikt mit dem namhaften Philosophen René Descartes — der Mathematik zuliebe. Die Idee für diesen Podcast hat Demian Nahuel Goos am MIP.labor entwickelt, der Ideenwerkstatt für Wissenschaftsjournalismus zu Mathematik, Informatik und Physik an der Freien Universität Berlin, ermöglicht durch die Klaus Tschira Stiftung. (00:00:00) Einleitung (00:04:48) Das Jahrhundert der Mathematik (00:05:45) Fermat zwischen Jura und Mathematik (00:08:36) Wie Descartes die Wissenschaft prägt (00:10:37) Der Konflikt mit Descartes (00:17:57) Der Satz von Fermat (und Pythagoras) (00:22:53) Fermats berühmte Randnotiz (00:24:36) Der Widerspruchsbeweis (00:26:39) Wiles‘ Beweis & der Simpsons-Gag (00:30:46) Fazit & Verabschiedung >> Artikel zum Nachlesen: https://detektor.fm/wissen/geschichten-aus-der-mathematik-pierre-de-fermat

Podcasts – detektor.fm
Geschichten aus der Mathematik | Pierre de Fermat und der Wettstreit wider Willen

Podcasts – detektor.fm

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 8, 2025 34:26


Pierre de Fermat ist vor allem berühmt für das Mathe-Rätsel, das er der Welt 1641 in einer Randnotiz aufgibt. Daneben gerät der gelernte Jurist in Konfikt mit dem namhaften Philosophen René Descartes — der Mathematik zuliebe. Die Idee für diesen Podcast hat Demian Nahuel Goos am MIP.labor entwickelt, der Ideenwerkstatt für Wissenschaftsjournalismus zu Mathematik, Informatik und Physik an der Freien Universität Berlin, ermöglicht durch die Klaus Tschira Stiftung. (00:00:00) Einleitung (00:04:48) Das Jahrhundert der Mathematik (00:05:45) Fermat zwischen Jura und Mathematik (00:08:36) Wie Descartes die Wissenschaft prägt (00:10:37) Der Konflikt mit Descartes (00:17:57) Der Satz von Fermat (und Pythagoras) (00:22:53) Fermats berühmte Randnotiz (00:24:36) Der Widerspruchsbeweis (00:26:39) Wiles‘ Beweis & der Simpsons-Gag (00:30:46) Fazit & Verabschiedung >> Artikel zum Nachlesen: https://detektor.fm/wissen/geschichten-aus-der-mathematik-pierre-de-fermat

Kids Talk Church History
The Princess and the Philosopher

Kids Talk Church History

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2025 29:36


Have you ever heard of a philosopher named Descartes? The one who said, "I think therefore I am"? Many Christians were not impressed because he made himself the proof of anything that is real. He also believed that soul and body are completely separate, while the Bible teaches they are tightly related. One of the first Christians who challenged his teachings was Elisabeth, Princess Palatine of Bohemia (in today's Czech Republic). Join Sophia, Emma, and Grace as they ask American philosopher and author Dr. Phillip Cary to explain Descartes's ideas and their impact on church history.   Show Notes:  Check our Dr. Cary's book: The Nicene Creed: An Introduction https://lexhampress.com/product/224267/the-nicene-creed-an-introduction

Grumble Goat
April FoOls

Grumble Goat

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2025 17:26


Descartes argues that the only thing I can be sure of with certainty is that my consciousness exists. Everything else is […] The post April FoOls appeared first on Mat Labotka.

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
HoP 466 Well Hidden: Descartes' Life and Works

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 30, 2025 20:13


How René Descartes' understanding of his own intellectual project evolved across his lifetime.

A Delectable Education Charlotte Mason Podcast
Episode 297: Balance of Educational Philosophy

A Delectable Education Charlotte Mason Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2025 78:25


Charlotte Mason viewed all educational possibilities as fitting into one or the other of two schools of philosophy: Materialism and Idealism. Instead, she offers a "middle way," a new path that draws on the strengths of both schools. The portion of Parents and Children where she discusses these ideas is dense. In this episode of the podcast, Jessica Becker guides us through what Miss Mason had to say, and, more importantly, why it is essential for parents and teachers to find balance between these two educational extremes.   Parents and Children (Volume 2), Charlotte Mason, chapters 11-13 "Probably the chief source of weakness in our attempt to formulate a science of education is that we do not perceive that education is the outcome of philosophy. We deal with the issue and ignore the source. Hence our efforts lack continuity and definite aim. We are content to pick up a suggestion here, a practical hint there, without even troubling ourselves to consider what is that scheme of life of which such hints and suggestions are the output." (2/118)  "Method implies two things-a way to an end, and step-by-step progress in that way." (1/8) "We need not aspire to a complete and exhaustive code of educational laws. This will· come to us duly when humanity bas, so to speak, fulfilled itself. Meantime, we have enough to go on with if we would believe it. What we have to do is to gather together and order our resources ; to put the first thing foremost and all things in sequence, and to see that education is neither more nor less than the practical application of our philosophy. Hence, if our educational thought is to be sound and effectual we must look to the philosophy which underlies it, and must be in a condition to trace every counsel of perfection for the bringing-up of children to one or other of the two schools of philosophy of which it must needs be the outcome." (2/119-120) "Is our system of education to be the issue of naturalism or of idealism, or is there indeed a media via?" (2/120) "The truth is, we are in the throes of an educational revolution ; we are emerging from chaos rather than about to plunge into it; we are beginning to recognise that education is the applied science of life, and that we really have existing material in the philosophy of the ages and the science of the day to formulate an educational code whereby we may order the lives of our children and regulate our own." (2/119) "The functions of education may be roughly defined as twofold : (a) the formation of habits; (b) the presentation of ideas. The first depends far more largely than we recognise on physiological processes. The second is purely spiritual in origin, method, and result. Is it not possible that here we have the meeting-point of the two philosophies which have divided mankind since men began to think about their thoughts and ways? Both are right ; both are necessary; both have their full activity in the development of a human being at his best." (2/125) "For a habit is set up by following out an initial idea with a long sequence of corresponding acts. You tell a child that the Great Duke slept in so narrow a bed that he could not turn over, because, said he, ' When you want to turn over it's time to get up.' The boy does not wish to get up in the morning, but he does wish to be like the hero of Waterloo. You stimulate him to act upon this idea day after day for a month or so, until the habit is formed, and it is just as easy as not to get up in good time." (2/125) "You may bring your horse to the water, but you can't make him drink; and you may present ideas of the fittest to the mind of the child; but you do not know in the least which he will take, and which he will reject." (2/127) "Our part is to see that his educational plat is constantly replenished with fit and inspiring ideas, and then we must needs leave it to the child's own appetite to take which he will have, and as much as he requires." (2/127) "We shall not be content that they learn geography, history, Latin, what not,-we shall ask what salient ideas are presented in each such study, and how will these ideas affect the intellectual and moral development of the child." (2/127) "We shall probably differ from him in many matters of detail, but we shall most likely be inclined to agree with his conclusion that, not some subject of mere utility, but moral and social science conveyed by means of history, literature, or otherwise, is the one subject which we are not at liberty to leave out from the curriculum of' a being breathing thoughtful breath.'" (2/127-28) "Two things are necessary. First, we must introduce into the study of each science the philosophic spirit and method, general views, the search for the most general principles and conclusions. We must then reduce the different sciences to unity by a sound training in philosophy, which will be as obligatory to students in science as to students in literature. . . • Scientific truths, said Descartes, are battles won ; describe to the young the principal and most heroic of these battles; you will thus interest them in the results of science, and you will develop in them a scientific spirit by means of the enthusiasm for the conquest of truth; you will make them see the power of the reasoning which has led to discoveries in the past, and which will do so again in the future. How interesting arithmetic and geometry might be if we gave a short history of their principal theorems; if the child were mentally present at the labours of a Pythagoras, a Plato, a Euclid, or in modern times of a Viete, a Descartes, a Pascal, or a Leibnitz. Great theories, instead of being lifeless and anonymous abstractions, would become human, living truths, each with its own history, like a statue by Michael Angelo, or like a painting by Raphael." (2/128) Atomic Habits, James Clear String, Straightedge and Shadow, Julia Diggins Men, Microscopes and Living Things, Katherine Shippen Nicole's Form 3-4 Biology Science Guide AWAKEN: A Living Books Conference Episode 167: Method vs. System Raphael's School of Athens Living Book Press ADE Teacher Training Videos

The Future of Supply Chain
Episode 101: Navigating the Digital Seas: The Future of Ocean Transportation with Descartes' Eric Geerts and SAP's Mark Averskog

The Future of Supply Chain

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2025 27:06


With insights from SAP's Mark Averskog and Descartes' Eric Geerts, together, we dive into the world of ocean transportation, highlighting the importance of sea freight in global trade, current challenges faced by shippers and carriers, and the ongoing digital transformation of the industry. Learn about the push for greater visibility, process automation, and sustainability in maritime logistics, and how these advancements are set to revolutionize supply chain management in the coming years. Come join us as we discuss the Future of Supply Chain.

Philosophy is Sexy
Collection- Que lire pour se faire du bien

Philosophy is Sexy

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 16, 2025 12:51


Philosophy Is Sexy n'est pas qu'un podcast, c'est une parenthèse intime, un pas de côté, pour oser la philosophie, la désacraliser, la remettre au cœur de notre vie et se laisser inspirer. Marie Robert, auteure du best-seller traduit en quinze langues, "Kant tu ne sais plus quoi faire", de "Descartes pour les jours de doute" et "Le Voyage de Pénélope" (Flammarion-Versilio) nous interpelle de son ton complice et entrainant. La prof qu'on aurait aimé avoir, celle surtout qui va faire des philosophes nos précieux alliés. https://www.susannalea.com/sla-title/penelopes-voyage/ Directrice Pédagogique des écoles Montessori Esclaibes. @PhilosophyIsSexy Production: Les podcasteurs Musique Originale: Laurent Aknin

Un Jour dans l'Histoire
La philo pour nous sauver ?

Un Jour dans l'Histoire

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 14, 2025 39:47


La philo pour nous sauver ? Descartes, Spinoza, Aristote, Platon, Rousseau, Bergson, Nietzsche, Deleuze et les autres peuvent-ils encore nous aider à comprendre ce qui nous entoure et nous constitue ? La philosophie peut-elle panser nos plaies, nous aider à grandir, nous apprendre à mieux aimer, à moins souffrir ? La route est longue ! Esquissons un premier pas … Pascale Seys, docteur en philosophie, enseignante à l'UCLouvain, journaliste à la RTBF, à la barre des « P'tits shoot de philo » sur Musiq3. Autrice de « Refaire un petit coin du monde » ; éd.Racine Sujets traités : Philosophie, Descartes, Spinoza, Aristote, Platon, Rousseau, Bergson, Nietzsche, Deleuze Merci pour votre écoute Un Jour dans l'Histoire, c'est également en direct tous les jours de la semaine de 13h15 à 14h30 sur www.rtbf.be/lapremiere Retrouvez tous les épisodes d'Un Jour dans l'Histoire sur notre plateforme Auvio.be :https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/5936 Intéressés par l'histoire ? Vous pourriez également aimer nos autres podcasts : L'Histoire Continue: https://audmns.com/kSbpELwL'heure H : https://audmns.com/YagLLiKEt sa version à écouter en famille : La Mini Heure H https://audmns.com/YagLLiKAinsi que nos séries historiques :Chili, le Pays de mes Histoires : https://audmns.com/XHbnevhD-Day : https://audmns.com/JWRdPYIJoséphine Baker : https://audmns.com/wCfhoEwLa folle histoire de l'aviation : https://audmns.com/xAWjyWCLes Jeux Olympiques, l'étonnant miroir de notre Histoire : https://audmns.com/ZEIihzZMarguerite, la Voix d'une Résistante : https://audmns.com/zFDehnENapoléon, le crépuscule de l'Aigle : https://audmns.com/DcdnIUnUn Jour dans le Sport : https://audmns.com/xXlkHMHSous le sable des Pyramides : https://audmns.com/rXfVppvN'oubliez pas de vous y abonner pour ne rien manquer.Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement.

Le 13/14
Les Bodin's partent en vrille avec Vincent Dubois et Jean-Christian Fraiscinet

Le 13/14

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 14, 2025 59:31


durée : 00:59:31 - Le 13/14 - par : Bruno Duvic - Cette année le duo des Bodin's fête ses 30 ans d'existence et leur nouveau film sortira en salle mercredi prochain. Retour sur ce succès incroyable, commencé dans la ferme des Souchons près de Descartes en Touraine, jusqu'aux Folies Bergères en passant par tous les Zéniths de France.

The Jim Rutt Show
EP 291 Jeff Sebo on Who Matters, What Matters, and Why

The Jim Rutt Show

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2025 83:54


Jim talks with Jeff Sebo about the ideas in his book The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why. They discuss the concept of the moral circle, harming cats vs harming cars, the case study of Happy the elephant, Descartes' view of animals, phenomenal consciousness, Thomas Nagel's bat argument, the Google engineer who claimed LaMDA was conscious, the substrate dependence of consciousness, a factory waste disposal dilemma, animal rescue triage scenarios, probability calculations in moral consideration, the "one in a thousand" threshold, computational constraints in moral calculations, human exceptionalism & its limitations, fully automated luxury communism & rewilding Earth, responsibilities to wild animals, humans as a custodial species, and much more. Episode Transcript The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, by Jeff Sebo "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas Nagel Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and other Catastrophes, by Jeff Sebo Ethics and the Environment, by Dale Jamieson Jeff Sebo is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. His research focuses on animal minds, ethics, and policy; AI minds, ethics, and policy; and global health and climate ethics and policy. He is the author of The Moral Circle and Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights and Food, Animals, and the Environment. He is also a board member at Minding Animals International, an advisory board member at the Insect Welfare Research Society, and a senior affiliate at the Institute for Law & AI. In 2024 Vox included him on its Future Perfect 50 list of "thinkers, innovators, and changemakers who are working to make the future a better place."

Filosofía Aplicada (a la vida)
T4. 4 ¿Tienes un cuerpo o eres un cuerpo? Parte 1

Filosofía Aplicada (a la vida)

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2025 22:52


¿Te has preguntado si tienes un cuerpo o eres un cuerpo? En este episodio revisaremos los problemas que implica en nuestra vida el dualismo de sustancias.Les dejo el enlace al libro de Descartes, Meditaciones metafísicas: https://amzn.to/43AZbVFMándame un whats app al +52 55 27 15 04 86O puedes donar directamente en www.araliavaldes.comO suscríbete a mi Patreon, para obtener contenido exclusivo: www.patreon.com/araliavaldesO dona a través de PayPal https://paypal.me/araliavaldes?country.x=MX&locale.x=es_XCO puedes suscribirte a mi canal de Telegram https://t.me/consultafilosoficaDale like y comparte. Muchas gracias.

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Ian Buruma On Spinoza And Free Thought

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2025 51:05


This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comIan is a historian, a journalist, and an old friend. He's currently the Paul Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. He served as the editor of The New York Review of Books and as foreign editor of The Spectator, where he still writes. He has written many books, including Theater of Cruelty, The Churchill Complex, and The Collaborators — which we discussed on the Dishcast in 2023. This week we're covering his latest book, Spinoza: Freedom's Messiah.For two clips of our convo — on cancel culture in the 17th century, and how Western liberalism is dying today — see our YouTube page.Other topics: Ian's Dutch and Jewish roots; the Golden Age of Amsterdam; its central role in finance and trade; when Holland was a republic surrounded by monarchies; the Quakers; Descartes; Hobbes; how sectarianism is the greatest danger to free thought; religious zealots; Cromwell; Voltaire; Locke; the asceticism of Spinoza; his practical skill with glasswork; the religious dissents he published anonymously; his excommunication; his lack of lovers but plentiful friends; how most of his published work was posthumous; his death at 44; the French philosophers of the Enlightenment shaped by Spinoza; how he inspired Marx and Freud; why he admired Jesus; Zionism; universalism; Socrates; Strauss' Persecution and the Art of Writing; Puritanism through today; trans activists as gnostic; Judith Butler; the right-wing populist surge in Europe; mass migration; Brexit and the Tory fuckup; Trump's near-alliance with Russia; DOGE; the rising tribalism of today; and thinking clearly as the secret to happiness.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Nick Denton on China and AI, Francis Collins on faith and science, Michael Lewis on government service, Douglas Murray on Israel and Gaza, and Mike White of White Lotus fame. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Le Précepteur
HUSSERL - La phénoménologie

Le Précepteur

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2025 44:18


Rejoignez-moi sur Patreon pour accéder à mon contenu exclusif : https://www.patreon.com/leprecepteurpodcastAu XXe siècle, un nouveau courant philosophique fait son apparition : la phénoménologie. Fondée par Edmund Husserl, la phénoménologie entend "revenir aux choses mêmes". Qu'est-ce que cela signifie ? C'est ce que nous allons tenter de comprendre dans cet épisode.

What Catholics Believe
Convert USA. Mar-a-Lago Prayers. Dem Lies. Patience! Heaven's Happiness? SSPV Principles. Descartes.

What Catholics Believe

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2025 76:46


Pray for conversion of America and its leaders. Catholic prayers at Mar-a-Lago. Democrats pledge "to continue speaking lies to Trump's truth." Video here: https://x.com/buzzpatterson/status/18... Saint Luke 8, 15: "Bring forth fruit in patience." Happy in Heaven when loved ones are in Hell? The General Judgment. SSPV Statement of Principles: invalid sacraments? Viewer comments. Descartes thinks, therefore he is? Praying for enemies! This episode was recorded on 3/4/2025. Our Links: http://linkwcb.com/ Please consider making a monetary donation to What Catholics Believe. Father Jenkins remembers all of our benefactors in general during his daily Mass, and he also offers one Mass on the first Sunday of every month specially for all supporters of What Catholics Believe. May God bless you for your generosity! https://www.wcbohio.com/donate Subscribe to our other YouTube channels: ‪@WCBHighlights‬ ‪@WCBHolyMassLivestream‬ May God bless you all!

Les chemins de la philosophie
Laurence Devillairs : "Oubliez Descartes en pantoufles, pensez-le en action"

Les chemins de la philosophie

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2025 59:23


durée : 00:59:23 - Le Souffle de la pensée - par : Géraldine Mosna-Savoye - La philosophe Laurence Devillairs nous parle d'un classique de la philosophie, celui qui, avec son "je pense, donc je suis" continue encore à influencer l'ensemble de la discipline  : le "Discours de la Méthode" de René Descartes, qui nous enjoint à agir avec volonté et vivre avec passion. - réalisation : Nicolas Berger - invités : Laurence Devillairs Philosophe, enseignante à Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne

Les Nuits de France Culture
Le "Cogito" de Descartes : de l'affirmation du doute à la liberté de la pensée

Les Nuits de France Culture

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2025 16:02


durée : 00:16:02 - Les Nuits de France Culture - par : Albane Penaranda - "Je pense, donc je suis"...Que révèle au fond cette célèbre et banale expression de Descartes ? En 1955, dans l'émission "Connaissance de l'homme", le philosophe Ferdinand Alquié nous éclaire en profondeur sur son sens et sa valeur, de l'affirmation d'une pensée qui doute à l'existence de l'âme. - réalisation : Virginie Mourthé - invités : Ferdinand Alquié

Overthink
Intuition

Overthink

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2025 54:21 Transcription Available


Our intuitions are never wrong… right? In episode 124 of Overthink, Ellie and David wonder what intuition actually is. Is it a gut feeling, a rational insight, or just a generalization from past experience? They talk about the role intuition has played in early modern philosophy (in the works of Descartes, Hume, and Mill), in phenomenology (in the philosophies of Husserl and Nishida), and in the philosophy of science (in the writings of Bachelard). They also call into question the use of intuitions in contemporary analytic philosophy while also highlighting analytic critiques of the use of intuition in philosophical discourse. So, the question is: Can we trust our intuitions or not? Are they reliable sources of knowledge, or do they just reveal our implicit biases and cultural stereotypes? Plus, in the bonus, they dive into the limits of intuition. They take a look at John Stuart Mill's rebellion against intuition, the ableism involved in many analytic intuitions, and Foucault's concept of historical epistemes.Works Discussed:Maria Rosa Antognazza and Marco Segala, “Intuition in the history of philosophy (what's in it for philosophers today?)”Gaston Bachelard, Rational MaterialismGaston Bachelard, The Philosophy of NoGaston Bachelard, The Rationalist CompromiseImmanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure ReasonJohn Stuart Mill, A System of LogicMoti Mizrahi, “Your Appeals to Intuition Have No Power Here!”Nishida Kitaro, Intuition and Reflection in Self-ConsciousnessSupport the showPatreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast Website | overthinkpodcast.comInstagram & Twitter | @overthink_podEmail | dearoverthink@gmail.comYouTube | Overthink podcast

Les chemins de la philosophie
Comment définir le style ?

Les chemins de la philosophie

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2025 3:38


durée : 00:03:38 - Le Pourquoi du comment : philo - par : Frédéric Worms - Denis Kambouchner analyse le style de Descartes, souvent perçu comme absent en raison de la clarté de sa pensée. Pourtant, il révèle une singularité littéraire et un ancrage historique, comparant ses phrases au style Louis XIII. Le style, n'est-ce pas ce qui individualise toute technique humaine ? - réalisation : Riyad Cairat

Philosophy is Sexy
Episode 06 - Comment faire plus de place à l'amour

Philosophy is Sexy

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 23, 2025 29:11


Philosophy Is Sexy n'est pas qu'un podcast, c'est une parenthèse intime, un pas de côté, pour oser la philosophie, la désacraliser, la remettre au cœur de notre vie et se laisser inspirer. Marie Robert, auteure du best-seller traduit en quinze langues, "Kant tu ne sais plus quoi faire", de "Descartes pour les jours de doute" et "Le Voyage de Pénélope" (Flammarion-Versilio) nous interpelle de son ton complice et entrainant. La prof qu'on aurait aimé avoir, celle surtout qui va faire des philosophes nos précieux alliés. https://www.susannalea.com/sla-title/penelopes-voyage/ Directrice Pédagogique des écoles Montessori Esclaibes. @PhilosophyIsSexy Production: Les podcasteurs Musique Originale: Laurent Aknin

The European Skeptics Podcast
TheESP – Ep. #466 – Science and Politics

The European Skeptics Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2025 52:45


Lots about guns and politics this week, as well as science, homeopathy and a little bit about lost pants. In TWISH we hear about Descartes and his suspicious death in 1650. Was it murder?Here is a list of the news:SWEDEN: Mass shooting in ÖrebroGERMANY: Is this the descent of Homeopathy?SWEDEN: Government wants stricter laws regarding guns – Sweden Democrats in uproarUK: Evidence week a big successSCOTLAND: Alien abductee trousers(?)The Really Wrong Award goes the Swedish government for their misuse of science to legitimize killing half the wolves.Enjoy!https://theesp.eu/podcast_archive/theesp-ep-466.htmlSegments:0:00:27 Intro0:00:50 Greetings0:07:12 TWISH0:16:14 News0:44:42 Really Wrong0:49:17 Quote0:50:41 Outro0:52:04 Outtakes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Les chemins de la philosophie
Pourquoi les révolutions sont-elles interdisciplinaires ?

Les chemins de la philosophie

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 13, 2025 3:39


durée : 00:03:39 - Le Pourquoi du comment : philo - par : Frédéric Worms - L'interdisciplinarité façonne l'histoire des savoirs et engendre des révolutions. Descartes, Leibniz, Foucault ou l'IA montrent comment les disciplines se croisent pour transformer nos sociétés. Pourquoi ces interactions sont-elles si puissantes ? Vers quel avenir nous mènent-elles aujourd'hui ? - réalisation : Riyad Cairat

Philosophy is Sexy
Episode 05 - La sagesse

Philosophy is Sexy

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2025 32:04


Philosophy Is Sexy n'est pas qu'un podcast, c'est une parenthèse intime, un pas de côté, pour oser la philosophie, la désacraliser, la remettre au cœur de notre vie et se laisser inspirer. Marie Robert, auteure du best-seller traduit en quinze langues, "Kant tu ne sais plus quoi faire", de "Descartes pour les jours de doute" et "Le Voyage de Pénélope" (Flammarion-Versilio) nous interpelle de son ton complice et entrainant. La prof qu'on aurait aimé avoir, celle surtout qui va faire des philosophes nos précieux alliés. https://www.susannalea.com/sla-title/penelopes-voyage/ Directrice Pédagogique des écoles Montessori Esclaibes. @PhilosophyIsSexy Production: Les podcasteurs Musique Originale: Laurent Aknin

Not Just the Tudors
Rene Descartes

Not Just the Tudors

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 6, 2025 36:55


The famous saying "I think, therefore I am" was the cornerstone of the philosophy of Rene Descartes, who died 375 years ago this month at the age of 53. His groundbreaking ideas shaped Western thought and continue to influence our understanding of existence, knowledge and the nature of reality. Descartes' ground-breaking approach involved questioning all beliefs to determine those which are absolutely certain. Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Professor Catherine Wilson to discuss Descartes' ideas and how they continue to resonate in modern philosophy, science and even popular culture.Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Alice Smith, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.Theme music from All3Media. Other music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Not Just the Tudors is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK

Dragões de Garagem
Descartes e música – Dragões de Garagem #310

Dragões de Garagem

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2025 98:31


Neste episódio, André e Tupá conversam com Tiago de Lima Castro para conversar sobre o seu livro Descartes: diálogos musicais. Nesta conversa acabam explorando um pouco de Descartes e suas obras, do percurso que Tiago precisou realizar para conseguir que avaliassem seu trabalho e porque se esquece tanto das reflexões musicais de Descartes, talvez isso […]

The Propaganda Report
Makers of the Modern Mind, part 6: Descartes, continued

The Propaganda Report

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2025 90:45


*Book discussion starts at 18:10 Part VI - Join us for a reading and conversation about the 12 men who had the greatest influence on the way we think. Written in 1958, this work stands the test of time. There is no theory, conspiracy or otherwise, just the simple facts about these men, their thoughts and their influence--draw your own conclusions! Support: True Hemp Science https://truehempscience.com/ PROMO CODE: MONICA Support me on substack for ad-free content, bonus material, personal chatting and more! https://substack.com/@monicaperezshow Become a PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER on Apple Podcasts for AD FREE episodes! all for the cost of one newspaper a month--i read the news so you dont have to! Find, Follow, Subscribe & Rate on your favorite podcasting platform AND for video and social & more... Rokfin:  https://rokfin.com/monicaperez Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/monicaperezshow YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MonicaPerez Twitter/X: @monicaperezshow Instagram: @monicaperezshow For full shownotes visit: https://monicaperezshow.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Deep Dives with Monica Perez
Makers of the Modern Mind, part 6: Descartes, continued

Deep Dives with Monica Perez

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2025 78:00


*Book discussion starts at 18:10 Part VI - Join us for a reading and conversation about the 12 men who had the greatest influence on the way we think. Written in 1958, this work stands the test of time. There is no theory, conspiracy or otherwise, just the simple facts about these men, their thoughts and their influence--draw your own conclusions! Support: True Hemp Science https://truehempscience.com/ PROMO CODE: MONICA Support me on substack for ad-free content, bonus material, personal chatting and more! https://substack.com/@monicaperezshow Become a PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER on Apple Podcasts for AD FREE episodes! all for the cost of one newspaper a month--i read the news so you dont have to! Find, Follow, Subscribe & Rate on your favorite podcasting platform AND for video and social & more... Rokfin:  https://rokfin.com/monicaperez Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/monicaperezshow YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MonicaPerez Twitter/X: @monicaperezshow Instagram: @monicaperezshow For full shownotes visit: https://monicaperezshow.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Propaganda Report
Makers of the Modern Mind, part 5: Descartes

The Propaganda Report

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2025 67:09


Join us for a reading and conversation about the 12 men who had the greatest influence on the way we think. Written in 1958, this work stands the test of time. There is no theory, conspiracy or otherwise, just the simple facts about these men, their thoughts and their influence--draw your own conclusions! Support: True Hemp Science https://truehempscience.com/ PROMO CODE: MONICA Support me on substack for ad-free content, bonus material, personal chatting and more! https://substack.com/@monicaperezshow Become a PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER on Apple Podcasts for AD FREE episodes! all for the cost of one newspaper a month--i read the news so you dont have to! Find, Follow, Subscribe & Rate on your favorite podcasting platform AND for video and social & more... Rokfin:  https://rokfin.com/monicaperez Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/monicaperezshow YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MonicaPerez Twitter/X: @monicaperezshow Instagram: @monicaperezshow For full shownotes visit: https://monicaperezshow.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices