Podcasts about human difference race

What does it mean to be a philosopher? What does it mean to DO Philosophy? What are the boundaries of philosophy as a discipline? These are just some of the themes that have pervaded the work of Justin Smith. Justin Smith is a professor of philosophy in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Paris, and he has written several books, including the upcoming “The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning” out March 22nd 2022.Justin and Greg dive deep into Justin's 2016 book “The Philosopher: A History in Six Types,” what it means to be a modern philosopher, the “bookshelf classification” problem, and how philosophy can address the modern economy of attention. Episode Quotes:On social media:And rather than social media being truly subjected to democratic oversight, things are going to continue to get worse. In terms of the topsy turvy social upheaval of social mobbing that is, in a sense, ruining everything. You can't do anything in the way you could have expected to do it 10 years ago.And in terms of the universal surveillance that these new technologies are affording, these things are just going to keep getting worse and worse until there's real democratic oversight. And that's going to be extremely hard. And I think that it's only going to come after a period of worsening of the conditions of our social life together up to a point where people just won't take it anymore.Philosophy as an academic discipline:Now, I think philosophy as an academic discipline has failed tremendously to discover interesting things about how we think. Because what it in fact ends up doing is reflecting on the way “we,” not Qua* human beings, but “we, Qua* WEIRD, 21st century wealthy, educated Americans take things to be.The importance of philosophy:One thing is that we live in a world where we're side by side, neighbor by neighbor, with people we don't understand. People who are strangers to us and of whom we're extremely suspicious and this leads to constant conflict. And one thing about this approach that I am promoting is that it enables a kind of humility.Once you start to realize all of the delirious range of ways people have made sense of the world around them and still somehow managed to thrive, even though these ways are totally foreign from the way we make sense of the world. Modern philosophy:So there's this new demand to find philosophy where we weren't detecting it before. That's coming down almost as a kind of administrative pressure - like philosophers, at least in the United States are under pressure to do this. And ironically for me, it's making them open, but also somewhat inconsistent because even though they're becoming more open about what can count as philosophy, they're still pretending, there is somewhere, a well-defined demarcation such that such that John Locke is a philosopher and Lawrence Stern is not, right?Show Links:Guest Profile:Professional Profile at Paris Diderot UniversityJustin E. H. Smith's WebsiteJustin E. H. Smith on TwitterHis work:Justin E.H Smith on SubstackThe Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a WarningIrrationality: A History of the Dark Side of ReasonNature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern PhilosophyThe Philosopher: A History in Six TypesDivine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life

Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason by Justin E. H. Smith Jehsmith.com A fascinating history that reveals the ways in which the pursuit of rationality often leads to an explosion of irrationality It’s a story we can’t stop telling ourselves. Once, humans were benighted by superstition and irrationality, but then the Greeks invented reason. Later, the Enlightenment enshrined rationality as the supreme value. Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal.” But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today―from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump―Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite. From sex and music to religion and war, irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history. Rich and ambitious, Irrationality ranges across philosophy, politics, and current events. Challenging conventional thinking about logic, natural reason, dreams, art and science, pseudoscience, the Enlightenment, the internet, jokes and lies, and death, the book shows how history reveals that any triumph of reason is temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes, notably including many from Silicon Valley, often result in their polar opposite. The problem is that the rational gives birth to the irrational and vice versa in an endless cycle, and any effort to permanently set things in order sooner or later ends in an explosion of unreason. Because of this, it is irrational to try to eliminate irrationality. For better or worse, it is an ineradicable feature of life. Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is fascinating, provocative, and timely. Justin E. H. Smith is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris. He is the author of Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life (2011), Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (2015), The Philosopher: A History in Six Types (2016), and Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason (2019), all published with Princeton University Press. He is an editor-at-large of Cabinet Magazine. The main-belt asteroid 13585 Justinsmith was named after him in 2015.

Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015) argues that “in order to understand the forces that shaped thinking about racial difference in early modern philosophy, we must look to the philosophers' own interest in a scientific classification and physical anthropology, with an eye to the way these projects were influenced by early modern globalization and by the associated projects of global commerce, collection, and systematization of the order of nature.” The resulting book is a thoughtful contribution to both the history of philosophy and science in early modernity, and to the modern history of concepts of race and identity, and is highly recommended to readers and teachers in both fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015) argues that “in order to understand the forces that shaped thinking about racial difference in early modern philosophy, we must look to the philosophers' own interest in a scientific classification and physical anthropology, with an eye to the way these projects were influenced by early modern globalization and by the associated projects of global commerce, collection, and systematization of the order of nature.” The resulting book is a thoughtful contribution to both the history of philosophy and science in early modernity, and to the modern history of concepts of race and identity, and is highly recommended to readers and teachers in both fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015) argues that “in order to understand the forces that shaped thinking about racial difference in early modern philosophy, we must look to the philosophers’ own interest in a scientific classification and physical anthropology, with an eye to the way these projects were influenced by early modern globalization and by the associated projects of global commerce, collection, and systematization of the order of nature.” The resulting book is a thoughtful contribution to both the history of philosophy and science in early modernity, and to the modern history of concepts of race and identity, and is highly recommended to readers and teachers in both fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015) argues that “in order to understand the forces that shaped thinking about racial difference in early modern philosophy, we must look to the philosophers’ own interest in a scientific classification and physical anthropology, with an eye to the way these projects were influenced by early modern globalization and by the associated projects of global commerce, collection, and systematization of the order of nature.” The resulting book is a thoughtful contribution to both the history of philosophy and science in early modernity, and to the modern history of concepts of race and identity, and is highly recommended to readers and teachers in both fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015) argues that “in order to understand the forces that shaped thinking about racial difference in early modern philosophy, we must look to the philosophers’ own interest in a scientific classification and physical anthropology, with an eye to the way these projects were influenced by early modern globalization and by the associated projects of global commerce, collection, and systematization of the order of nature.” The resulting book is a thoughtful contribution to both the history of philosophy and science in early modernity, and to the modern history of concepts of race and identity, and is highly recommended to readers and teachers in both fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015) argues that “in order to understand the forces that shaped thinking about racial difference in early modern philosophy, we must look to the philosophers’ own interest in a scientific classification and physical anthropology, with an eye to the way these projects were influenced by early modern globalization and by the associated projects of global commerce, collection, and systematization of the order of nature.” The resulting book is a thoughtful contribution to both the history of philosophy and science in early modernity, and to the modern history of concepts of race and identity, and is highly recommended to readers and teachers in both fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015) argues that “in order to understand the forces that shaped thinking about racial difference in early modern philosophy, we must look to the philosophers’ own interest in a scientific classification and physical anthropology, with an eye to the way these projects were influenced by early modern globalization and by the associated projects of global commerce, collection, and systematization of the order of nature.” The resulting book is a thoughtful contribution to both the history of philosophy and science in early modernity, and to the modern history of concepts of race and identity, and is highly recommended to readers and teachers in both fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015) argues that “in order to understand the forces that shaped thinking...