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My guest on the show today is Jonny Thakkar. Jonny is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Swarthmore College and one of the founding editors of The Point. He's the author of various articles, most recently “Beyond Equality” in the newest issue of the Point, and the 2018 book Plato as Critical Theorist.I asked Jonny on to talk about his late friend and mentor the philosopher and psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear, who was his advisor at the University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought and, as you'll hear in our discussion, his occasional advisor on matters of the heart.He wrote about Lear, after his death, along with a collection of other remembrances from friends and colleagues of Lear's:His own career path was so individual as to be impossible to emulate. Institutionally speaking, he had completed two undergraduate degrees, one in history and the other in philosophy, followed by two graduate degrees, the first a Ph.D. on Aristotle's logic under the supervision of Saul Kripke—a prodigy in contemporary logic and metaphysics who was only eight years older than Jonathan, had no expertise in Aristotle and only ever supervised one other dissertation—and the second a professional qualification in psychoanalysis that licensed him to treat patients clinically. His philosophical interlocutors were many and various, among them Plato, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Williams, J. M. Coetzee and Marilynne Robinson, but he was no dilettante. He wanted to understand what it meant to be human, and he simply followed that question wherever it took him. Without end, I should add: he took up the study of ancient Hebrew in his mid-seventies because he had become so puzzled by the treatment of the prophet Balaam that he wanted to make sure he wasn't missing anything in translation!That ethos of constant self-development was central to what you might call Jonathan's philosophy of life. Some people use the term “perpetual student” pejoratively; for Jonathan, being open to learning from the world was the key to human flourishing. As he told matriculating undergraduates in a 2009 address, “the aim of education is to teach us how to be students.” In the preface to Open Minded, he wrote that achieving tenure at Cambridge in his twenties freed him from professional pressures to such an extent that he was forced to confront the meaning of his own existence. “I realized that before I died, I wanted to be in intimate touch with some of the world's greatest thinkers, with some of the deepest thoughts which humans have encountered. I wanted to think thoughts—and also to write something which mattered to me.”We talk about Lear's work, but also about what it means to be, or be influenced by, what Lear called a “local exemplar,” which is someone who has a profound influence on the people around him or her. An exemplar could be a real mentor in the classic sense, as Lear was for Jonny and other students of his, or a writer who affects other people just through text, which is how he functioned in my life. It could also be someone who just said or did something once or a few times that stays with us, imprints itself on us, and changes us in ways that unfold over time.So we talk about how Lear played that role in our lives, but also about the ways in which Thakkar may be playing the role of local exemplar, as a teacher, in the lives of his students, and more generally what it is about someone, or something, that makes it capable of influencing us in these ways.One reason we ended up in this space, I think, is that I've been wrestling a lot, lately, with the question of how writing does or doesn't influence people, because I'm writing a book, on relationships and therapy, that edges into the territory of self-help, and I've become moderately obsessed with not replicating the mistake that so many self-help books make on this front, which is thinking that in order to help people, the thing to do is give them straightforward advice on how to do or be better.This always seems to me like a fundamental misunderstanding of how texts change people, and in some ways an odd one to make in particular for the therapists and psychologists who write so many of these books. If anyone should understand that the human psyche is tricky and that real change tends be a product of close relationships and communal structures playing out over time, rather than advice distilled to words, it should be therapists.Texts do change people's lives, but it's indirect. They're poetic. They're narrative. They're allusive and elusive. They're not precision tools to achieve a predictable outcome in readers.Lear understood this. I asked him once if the style of his essays was deliberately looping and associative because he was trying to emulate something about the rhythms of psychoanalytic practice, and his response was surprise. I just try to write clearly, he said, and the more I think the more I believe him. I think there was something so integrated in the way he did all these things – teach, write, practice psychoanalysis – that his version of writing clearly became this thing that I perceived as indirect, and that it is because of this, in some sense, that his writing has the capacity to affect people in a way that most self-help literature doesn't.I didn't know Lear well, as a person, but he had, and continues to have, a big influence on me. That's even more the case for Jonny, as you'll hear. I don't think he's for everyone, but if he might be for you, I really encourage you to pick up one of his books or find one of his essays online. I'll drop in some links to a few of below. He was a remarkable person.Hope you enjoy. Peace.Jonathan Lear articles:* “Aims of Education”* “Inside and Outside the Republic”* “A Case for Irony”* “Wisdom Won from Illness” [this is actually the whole text of one of his books]* “Transience and hope: A return to Freud in a time of pandemic”* “Jumping from the Couch: An Essay on Phantasy and Emotional Structure”* “Can the virtuous person exist in the modern world?” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe
En un contexto marcado por la prisa, la hiperconexión y una ventana de atención cada vez más estrecha, dedicamos estas recomendaciones culturales de febrero a pensar el encierro no como castigo, sino como condición cultural y creativa. A partir de libros, películas, música y experiencias personales, Tommaso Koch, Sergio C. Fanjul y Jimena Marcos conversan sobre la posibilidad (y el privilegio) de parar el mundo para pensar, escribir o simplemente... estar. Desde las cabañas de filósofos como Wittgenstein o Heidegger hasta los encierros forzados para componer música o que sirven como inspiración para videojuegos. La conversación se amplía con las aportaciones de la diseñadora gráfica Laura Millán para descubrirnos el “ephemera” en el cine y la periodista Selva Vargas trasladará el debate a otros lenguajes y soportes. ¿Quién puede permitirse el tiempo y el silencio necesarios para crear? ¿qué queda dentro y fuera del encierro? Algunas de las recomendaciones que encontrarás en el podcast: Coloquio de invierno (Tusquets) de Luis Landero Los ensayos (Editorial Acantilado) de Michel de Montaigne suma noche (Ediciones Godall) de Blanca Morel El videojuego Blue Prince Un cuarto propio conectado: (ciber) espacio y (auto)gestión del yo (Fórcola Ediciones) de Remedios Zafra Saída Game de Arthur Moura Campos CRÉDITOS: Realizan: Tommaso Koch y Jimena Marcos Diseño de sonido: Nicolás Tsabertidis Coordina: José Juan Morales Dirige: Ana Alonso Sintonía: Jorge Magaz Si tienes quejas, dudas o sugerencias, escribe a defensora@elpais.es o manda un audio a +34 649362138 (no atiende llamadas).
Hermione Lee is the renowned biographer of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Penelope Fitzgerald, and, most recently, Tom Stoppard. Stoppard died at the end of last year, so Hermione and I talked about the influence of Shaw and Eliot and Coward on his work, the recent production of The Invention of Love, the role of ideas in Stoppard's writing, his writing process, rehearsals, revivals, movies. We also talked about John Carey, Brian Moore, Virginia Woolf as a critic. Hermione is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. Her life of Anita Brookner will be released in September.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today I have the great pleasure of talking to Professor Dame Hermione Lee. Hermione was the first woman to be appointed Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, and she is the most renowned and admired living English biographer. She wrote a seminal life of Virginia Woolf. She's written splendid books about people like Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and my own favorite, Penelope Fitzgerald. And most recently she has been the biographer of Tom Stoppard, and I believe this year she has a new book coming out about Anita Brookner. Hermione, welcome.Hermione Lee: Thank you very much.Oliver: We're mostly going to talk about Tom Stoppard because he, sadly, just died. But I might have a few questions about your broader career at the end. So tell me first how Shavian is Stoppard's work?Lee: He would reply “very close Shavian,” when asked that question. I think there are similarities. There are obviously similarities in the delighting forceful intellectual play, and you see that very much in Jumpers where after all the central character is a philosopher, a bit of a bonkers philosopher, but still a very rational one.And you see it in someone like Henry, the playwright in The Real Thing, who always has an answer to every argument. He may be quite wrong, but he is full of the sort of zest of argument, the passion for argument. And I think that kind of delight in making things intellectually clear and the pleasure in argument is very Shavian.Where I think they differ and where I think is really more like Chekov, or more like Beckett or more in his early work, the dialogues in T. S. Elliot, and less like Shaw is in a kind of underlying strangeness or melancholy or sense of fate or sense of mortality that rings through almost all the plays, even the very, very funny ones. And I don't think I find that in Shaw. My prime reading time for Shaw was between 15 and 19, when I thought that Shaw was the most brilliant grownup that one could possibly be listening to, and I think now I feel less impressed by him and a bit more impatient with him.And I also think that Shaw is much more in the business of resolving moral dilemmas. So in something like Arms and the Man or Man and Superman, you will get a kind of resolution, you will get a sort of sense of this is what we're meant to be agreeing with.Whereas I think quite often one of the fascinating things about Stoppard is the way that he will give all sides of the question; he will embody all sides of the question. And I think his alter ego there is not Shaw, but the character of Turgenev in The Coast of Utopia, who is constantly being nagged by his radical political friends to make his mind up and to have a point of view and come down on one side or the other. And Turgenev says, I take every point of view.Oliver: I must confess, I find The Coast of Utopia a little dull compared to Stoppard's other work.Lee: It's long. Yes. I don't find it dull. But I think it may be a play to read possibly more than a play to see now. And you're never going to get it put on again anyway because the cast is too big. And who's going to put on a nine-hour free play, 50 people cast about 19th-century Russian revolutionaries? Nobody, I would think.But I find it very absorbing actually. And partly because I'm so interested in Isaiah Berlin, who is a very strong presence in the anti-utopianism of those plays. But that's a matter of opinion.Oliver: No. I like Berlin. One thing about Stoppard that's un-Shavian is that he says his plays begin as a noise or an image or a scene, and then we think of him as this very thinking writer. But is he really more of an intuitive writer?Lee: I think it's a terribly good question. I think it gets right at the heart of the matter, and I think it's both. Sorry, I sound like Turgenev, not making my mind up. But yes, there is an image or there is an idea, or there are often two ideas, as it were, the birth of quantum physics and 18th-century landscape gardening. Who else but Stoppard would put those two things in one play, Arcadia, and have you think about both at once.But the image and the play may well have been a dance between two periods of time together in one room. So I think he never knew what the next play was going to be until it would come at him, as it were. He often resisted the idea that if he chose a topic and then researched it, a play would come out of it. That wasn't what happened. Something would come at him and then he would start doing a great deal of research usually for every play.Oliver: What sort of influence did T. S. Elliot have on him? Did it change the dialogue or, was it something else?Lee: When I was working with him on my biography, he gave me a number of things. I had extraordinary access, and we can perhaps come back to that interesting fact. And most of these things were loans he gave them to me to work on. Then I gave them back to him.But he gave me as a present one thing, which was a black notebook that he had been keeping at the time he was writing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and also his first and only novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, which is little known, which he thought was going to make his career. The book was published in the same week that Rosencrantz came up. He thought the novel was going to make his career and the play was going to sink without trace. Not so. In the notebook there are many quotations from T. S. Elliot, and particularly from Prufrock and the Wasteland, and you can see him working them into the novel and into the play.“I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be.” And that sense of being a disconsolate outsider. Ill at ease with and neurotic about the world that is charging along almost without you, and you are having to hang on to the edge of the world. The person who feels themself to be in internal exile, not at one with the universe. I think that point of view recurs over and over again, right through the work, but also a kind of epigrammatical, slightly mysterious crypticness that Elliot has, certainly in Prufrock and in the Wasteland and in the early poems. He loved that tone.Oliver: Yes. When I read your paper about that I thought about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern quite differently. I've always disliked the idea that it's a sort of Beckett imitation play. It seems very Elliotic having read what you described.Lee: There is Beckett in there. You can't get away from it.Oliver: Surface level.Lee: Beckett's there, but I think the sense of people waiting around—Stoppard's favorite description of Rosencrantz was: “It's two journalists on a story that doesn't add up, which is very clever and funny.”Yes. And that sense of, Vladimir going, “What are we supposed to be doing and how are we going to pass the time?” That's profoundly influential on Stoppard. So I don't think it's just a superficial resemblance myself, but I agree that Elliot just fills the tone of that play and other things too.Oliver: In the article you wrote about Stoppard and Elliot, the title is about biographical questing, and you also described Arcadia as a quest. How important is the idea of the quest to the way you work and also to the way you read Stoppard?Lee: I took as the epigraph for my biography of Stoppard a line from Arcadia: “It's wanting to know that makes us matter, otherwise we're going out the way we came in.” So I think that's right at the heart of Stoppard's work, and it's right at the heart of any biographical work, whether or not it's mine or someone else's. If you can't know, in the sense of knowing the person, knowing what the person is like, and also knowing as much as possible about them from different kinds of sources, then you might as well give up.You can't do it through impressions. You've got to do it through knowledge. Of course, a certain amount of intuition may also come into play, though I'm not the kind of biographer that feels you can make things up. Working on a living person, this is the only time I've done that.It was, of course, a very different thing from working on a safely dead author. And I knew Penelope Fitzgerald a little bit, but I had no idea I was going to write her biography when I had conversations with her and she wouldn't have told me anything anyway. She was so wicked and evasive. But it was a set up thing; he asked me to do it. And we had a proper contract and we worked together over several years, during which time he became a friend, which was a wonderful piece of luck for me.I was doing four things, really. One was reading all the material that he produced, everything, and getting to know it as well as I could. And that's obviously the basic task. One was talking to him and listening to him talk about his life. And he was very generous with those interviews. I'm sure there were things he didn't tell me, but that's fine. One was talking to other people about him, which is a very interesting process. And with someone like him who knew everyone in the literary, theatrical, cultural world, you have to draw a halt at some point. You can't talk to a thousand people, or I'd have still been doing it, so you talk to particularly fellow playwrights, directors, actors who've worked with him often, as well as family and friends. And then you start pitting the versions against each other and seeing what stands up and what keeps being said.Repetition's very important in that process because when several people say the same thing to you, then you know that's right. And that quest also involves some actual footsteps, as Richard Holmes would say. Footsteps. Traveling to places he'd lived in and going to Darjeeling where he had been to school before he came to England, that kind of travel.And then the fourth, and to me, in a way, almost the most exciting, was the opportunity to watch him at work in rehearsal. So with the director's permissions, I was allowed to sit in on two or three processes like that, the 50th anniversary production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the Old Vic with David Lavoie. And Patrick Marber's wonderful production of Leopoldstadt and Nick Hytner's production of The Hard Problem at the National. So I was able to witness the very interesting negotiations going on between Tom and the director and the cast.And also the extraordinary fact that even with a play like Rosencrantz, which is on every school syllabus and has been for 50—however many years—he was still changing things in rehearsal. I can't get over that. And in his view, as he often said, theater is an event and not a text, and so one could see that actual process of things changing before one's very eyes, and that for a biographer, it's a pretty amazing privilege.Oliver: How much of the plays were written during rehearsal do you think?Lee: Oh, 99% of the plays were written with much labor, much precision, much correction alone at his desk. The text is there, the text is written, and everything changes when you go into the rehearsal room because you suddenly find that there isn't enough time with that speech for the person to get from the bed to the door. It's physics; you have to put another line in so that someone can make an entrance or an exit, that kind of thing.Or the actors will say quite often, because they were a bit in awe—by the time he became well known—the actors initially would be a bit in awe of the braininess and the brilliance. And quite often the actors will be saying, “I'm sorry, I don't understand. I don't understand this.” You'd often get, “I don't really understand.”And then he would never be dismissive. He would either say, “No, I think you've got to make it work.” I'm putting words into his mouth here. Or he would say, “Okay, let's put another sentence or something like that.”Oliver: Between what he wrote at his desk and the book that's available for purchase now, how much changed? Is it 10%, 50? You know what I mean?Lee: Yes. You should be talking to his editor at Faber, Dinah Wood. So Faber would print a relatively small number for the first edition before the rehearsal process and the final production. And then they would do a second edition, which would have some changes in it. So 2%. Okay. But crucial sometimes.Oliver: No, sure. Very important.Lee: And also some plays like Jumpers went through different additions with different endings, different solutions to plot problems. Travesties, he had a lot of trouble with the Lenins in Travesties because it's the play in which you've got Joyce and you've got Tristan Tzara and you've got the Lenins, and they're all these real people and he makes him talk.But he was a little bit nervous about the Lenin. So what he gave him to say were things that they had really said, that Lenin had really said. As opposed to the Tzara-Joyce stuff, which is all wonderfully made up. The bloody Lenins became a bit of a problem for him. And so that gets changed in later editions you'll find.Oliver: How closely do you think The Real Thing is based on Present Laughter by Noël Coward?Lee: Oh, I think there's a little bit of Coward in there. Yes, sure. I think he liked Coward, he liked Wilde, obviously. He likes brilliant, witty, playful entertainers. He wants to be an entertainer. But I think The Real Thing, he was proud of the fact that The Real Thing was one of the few examples of his plays at that time, which weren't based on something else. They weren't based on Hamlet. They weren't based on The Importance of Being Earnest. It's not based on a real person like Housman. I think The Real Thing came out of himself much more than out of literary models.Oliver: You don't think that Henry is a bit like the actor character in Present Laughter and it's all set in his flat and the couples moving around and the slight element of farce?The cricket bat speech is quite similar to when Gary Essendine—do you remember that very funny young man comes up on the train from Epping or somewhere and lectures him about the social value of art. And Gary Essendine says, “Get a job in a theater rep and write 20 plays. And if you can get one of them put on in a pub, you'll be damn lucky.” It's like a model for him, a loose model.Lee: Yes. Henry, I think you should write an article comparing these two plays.Oliver: Okay. Very good. What does Stoppardian mean?Lee: It means witty. It means brilliant with words. It means fizzing with verbal energy. It means intellectually dazzling. The word dazzling is the one that tends to get used. My own version of Stoppardian is a little bit different from, as it were, those standard received and perfectly acceptable accounts of Stoppardian.My own sense of Stoppardian has more to do with grief and mortality and a sense of not belonging and of puzzlement and bewilderment, within all that I said before, within the dazzling, playful astonishing zest and brio of language and the precision about language.Oliver: Because it's a funny word. It's hard to include Leopoldstadt under the typical use of Stoppardian, because it's an untypical Stoppard.Lee: One of the things about Leopoldstadt that I think is—let's get rid of that trope about Stoppardian—characteristic of him is the remarkable way it deals with time. Here's a play like Arcadia, all set in the same place, all set in the same room, in the same house, and it goes from a big hustling room, late 19th-century family play, just like the beginning of The Coast of Utopia, where you begin with a big family in Russia and then it moves through the '20s and then into the terrible appalling period of the Anschluss and the Holocaust.And then it ends up after the war with an empty room. This room, is like a different kind of theater, an empty room. Three characters, none of whom you know very well, speaking in three different kinds of English, reaching across vast spaces of incomprehension, and you've had these jumps through time.And then at the very end, the original family, all of whom have been destroyed, the original family reappears on the stage. I'm sorry to tell this for anyone who hasn't seen Leopoldstadt. Because when it happens on the stage, it's an absolutely astonishing moment. As if the time has gone round and as if the play, which I think it was for him, was an act of restitution to all those people.Oliver: How often did he use his charm to get his way with actors?Lee: A lot. And not just actors. People he worked with, film people, friends, companions. Charm is such an interesting thing, isn't it? Because we shouldn't deviate, but there's always a slightly sinister aspect to the word charm as in, a magic charm. And one tends to be a bit suspicious of charm. And he knew he had charm and he was physically very magnetic and good looking and very funny and very attentive to people.But I think the charm, in his case, he did use it to get the right results, and he did use it, as he would say, “to look after my plays.” He was always, “I want to look after my plays.” And that's why he went back to rehearsal when there were revivals and so on. But he wasn't always charming. Patrick Marber, who's a friend of his and who directed Leopoldstadt, is very good on how irritable Stoppard could be sometimes in rehearsal. And I've heard that from other directors too—Jack O'Brien, who did the American productions of things like The Invention of Love.If Stoppard felt it wasn't right, he could get quite cross. So this wasn't a sort of oleaginous character at all. It's not smooth, it's not a smooth charm at all. But yes, he knew his power and he used it, and I think in a good way. I think he was a benign character actually. And one of the things that was very fascinating to me, not only when he died and there was this great outpouring of tributes, very heartfelt tributes, I thought. But also when I was working on the biography, I was going around the world trying to find people to say bad things about him, because what I didn't want to do was write a hagiography. You don't want to do that; there would be no point. And it was genuinely quite hard.And I don't know the theater world; it's not my world. I got to know it a little bit then. But I have never necessarily thought of the theater world as being utterly loving and generous about everybody else. I'm sure there are lots of rivalries and spitefulness, as there is in academic life, all the rest of it. But it was very hard to find anyone with a bad word to say about him, even people who'd come up against the steeliness that there is in him.I had an interview with Steven Spielberg about him, with whom he worked a lot, and with whom he did Empire of the Sun. And I would ask my interviewees if they could come up with two or three adjectives or an adjective that would sum him up, that would sum Stoppard up to them. And when I asked Spielberg this question, he had a little think and then he said, intransigent. I thought, great. He must be the only person who ever stood up to him.Oliver: What was his best film script? Did he write a really great film.Lee: That one. I think partly the novel, I don't know if you know the Ballard novel, the Empire of the Sun, it's a marvelous novel. And Ballard was just a magical and amazing writer, a great hero of mine. But I think what Stoppard did with that was really clever and brilliant.I know people like Brazil, the Terry Gilliam sort of surrealist way. And there's some interesting early work. Most of his film work was not one script; it was little bits that he helped with. So there's famously the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he did most of the dialogue for Harrison Ford.But there are others like the One Hundred and One Dalmatians, where I think there's one line, anonymously Stoppardian in there. One of the things about the obituaries that slightly narked me was that there, I felt there was a bit too much about the films. Truly, I don't think the film work was—he wanted it to be right and he wanted to get it right—but it wasn't as close to his heart as the theater work. And indeed the work for radio, which I thought was generally underwritten about when he died. There was some terrific work there.Oliver: Yes. And there aren't that many canonical writers who've been great on the radio.Lee: Absolutely. He did everything. He did film, he did radio. He wrote some opera librettos. He really did everything. And on top of that, there was the great work for the public good, which I think is a very important part of his legacy, his history.Oliver: How much crossover influence is there between the different bits of his career? Does the screenwriting influence the theater writing and the radio and so on? Or is he just compartmentalized and able to do a lot of different things?Lee: That's such an interesting question. I don't think I've thought about it enough. I think there are very cinematic aspects to some of the plays, like Night and Day, for instance, the play about journalism. That could easily have been a film.And perhaps Hapgood as well, although it could be a kind of John le Carré type film thriller, though it's such a set of complicated interlocking boxes that I don't know that it would work as a film. It's not one of my favorite players, I must say. I struggle a little bit with Hapgood. But, yes, I'm sure that they fed into each other. Because he was so busy, he was often doing several things at once. So he was keeping things in boxes and opening the lid of that box. But mentally things must have overlapped, I'm sure.Oliver: He once joked that rather than having read Wittgenstein from cover to cover, he had only read the covers. How true is that? Because I know some people who would say he's very clever in everything, but he's not as clever as he looks. It's obviously not true that he only read the covers.Lee: I think there was a phase, wasn't there, after the early plays when people felt that he was—it's that English phrase, isn't it—too clever by half. Which you would never hear anyone in France saying of someone that they were too clever by half. So he was this kind of jazzy intellectual who put all his ideas out there, and he was this sort of self-educated savant who hadn't been to Oxford.There was quite a lot of that about in the earlier years, I think. And a sense that he was getting away with it, to which I would countermand with the story of the writing of The Invention of Love. So what attracted him to the figure of Housman initially was not the painful, suppressed homosexual love story, but the fact that here was this person who was divided into a very pernickety, savagely critical classical editor of Latin and a romantic lyric poet. In order to work out how to turn this into a play, he probably spent about six years taking Latin lessons, reading everything he could read on the history of classical literature. Obviously reading about Housman, engaging in conversation with classical scholars about Housman's, finer points of editorial precision about certain phrases. And what he used from that was the tip of the iceberg. But the iceberg was real.He really did that work and he often used to say that it was his favorite play because he'd so much enjoyed the work that went into it. I think he took what he needed from someone like Wittgenstein. I know you don't like The Coast of Utopia very much, but if you read his background to Coast of Utopia, what went into it, and if you compare what's in the plays, those three plays, with what's in the writing about those revolutionaries, he read everything. He may have magpied it, but he's certainly knows what he's talking about. So I defend him a bit against that, I think.Oliver: Good, good. Did you see the recent production at the Hamstead Theatre of The Invention of Love?Lee: I did, yes.Oliver: What did you think?Lee: I liked it. I thought it was rather beautifully done. I liked those boats rowing around that clicked together. I thought Simon Russell Beale was extremely good, particularly very moving. And very good in Housman's vindictiveness as a critic. He is not a nice person in that sense. And his scornfulness about the women students in his class, that kind of thing. And so there was a wonderful vitriol and scorn in Russell Beale's performance.I think when you see it now, some of the Oxford context is a little bit clunky, those scenes with Jowett and Pater and so on, it's like a bit of a caricature of the context of cultural life at the time, intellectual life at the time. But I think that the trope of the old and the young Housman meeting each other and talking to each other, which I still think is very moving. I thought it worked tremendously well.Oliver: What are Tom Stoppard's poems like?Lee: You see them in Indian Ink where he invents a poet, Flora Crewe, who is a poet who was died young, turn of the century, bold feminist associated with Bloomsbury and gets picked up much later as a kind of Sylvia Plath-type, HD type heroine. And when you look at Stoppard's manuscripts in the Harry Ransom Center in the University of Austin, in Texas, there is more ink spent on writing and rewriting those poems of Flora Crewe than anything else I saw in the manuscript. He wrote them and rewrote them.Early on he wrote some Elliot—they're very like Elliot—little poems for himself. I think there are probably quite a lot of love poems out there, which I never saw because they belong to the people for whom he wrote them. So I wouldn't know about those.Oliver: How consistently did Stoppard hold to a kind of liberal individualism in his politics?Lee: He was accused of being very right wing in the 1980s really, 1970s, 1980s, when the preponderant tendency for British drama was radicalism, Royal Court, left wing, all of that. And Stoppard seemed an outlier then, because he approved of Thatcher. He was a friend of Thatcher. He didn't like the print union. It was particularly about newspapers because he'd been a newspaper man in his youth. That was his alternative university education, working in Bristol on the newspapers. He had a romance heroic feeling about the value of the journalist to uphold democracy, and he hated the pressure of the print unions to what he thought at the time was stifling that.He changed his mind. I think a lot about that. He had been very idealistic and in love with English liberal values. And I think towards the end of his life he felt that those were being eroded. He voted lots of different ways. He voted conservative, voted green. He voted lib dem. I don't if he ever voted Labour.Oliver: But even though his personal politics shifted and the way he voted shifted, there is something quite continuous from the early plays through to Rock ‘n' Roll. Is there a sort of basic foundation that doesn't change, even though the response to events and the idea about the times changes?Lee: Yes, I think that's right, and I think it can be summed up in what Henry says in The Real Thing about politics, which is a version of what's often said in his plays, which is public postures have the configuration of private derangement. So that there's a deep suspicion of political rhetoric, especially when it tends towards the final solution type, the utopian type, the sense that individual lives can be sacrificed in the interest of an ultimate rationalized greater good.And then, he's worked in the '70s for the victims of Soviet communism. His work alongside in support of Havel and Charter 77. And he wrote on those themes such as Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Professional Foul. Those are absolutely at the heart of what he felt. And they come back again when he's very modest about this and kept it quiet. But he did an enormous amount of work for the Belarus exile, Belarus Free Theater collective, people in support of those trying to work against the regime in Belarus.And then the profound, heartfelt, intense feeling of horror about what happened to people in Leopoldstadt. That's all part of the same thing. I think he's a believer in individual freedom and in democracy and has a suspicion of political rhetoric.Oliver: How much were some of his great parts written for specific actors? Because I sometimes have a feeling when I watch one of his plays now, if I'd been here when Felicity Kendal was doing this, I would be getting the whole thing, but I'm getting most of it.Lee: I'm sure that's right. And he built up a team around him: Peter Wood, the director and John Wood who's such an extraordinary Henry Carr in in in Travesties. And Michael Hordern as George the philosopher in Jumpers. And he wrote a lot for Kendal, in the process of becoming life companions.But he'd obviously been writing and thinking of her very much, for instance, in Arcadia. And also I think very much, it's very touching now to see the production of Indian Ink that's running at Hampstead Theatre in which Felicity Kendal is playing the older woman, the surviving older sister of the poet Flora Crewe, where of course the part of Flora Crewe was written for her. And there's something very touching about seeing that now. And, in fact, the first night of that production was the day of Stoppard's funeral. And Kendal couldn't be at the funeral, of course, because she was in the first night of his play. That's a very touching thing.Oliver: Why did he think the revivals came too soon?Lee: I don't really know the answer to that. I think he thought a play had to hook up a lot of oxygen and attract a lot of attention. If you were lucky while it was on, people would remember the casting and the direction of that version of it, and it would have a kind of memory. You had to be there.But people who were there would remember it and talk about it. And if you had another production very soon after that, then maybe it would diminish or take away that effect. I think he had a sort of loyalty to first productions often. What do you think about that? I'm not quite sure of the answer to that.Oliver: I don't know. To me it seems to conflict a bit with his idea that it's a living thing and he's always rewriting it in the rehearsal room. But I think probably what you say is right, and he will have got it right in a certain way through all that rehearsing. You then need to wait for a new generation of people to make it fresh again, if you like.Lee: Or not a generation even, but give it five years.Oliver: Everyone new and this theater's working differently now. We can rework it in our own way. Can we have a few questions about your broader career before we finish?Lee: Depends what they are.Oliver: Your former colleague John Carey died at a similar time to Stoppard. What do you think was his best work?Lee: John Carey's best work? Oh. I thought the biography of Golding was pretty good. And I thought he wrote a very good book on Thackery. And I thought his work on Milton was good. I wasn't so keen on The Intellectuals and the Masses. He and I used to have vociferous arguments about that because he had cast Virginia Woolf with all the modernist fascists, as it were. He'd put her in a pile with Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound and so on. And actually, Virginia Woolf was a socialist feminist. And this didn't seem to have struck him because he was so keen to expose her frightful snobbery, which is what people in England reading Woolf, especially middle class blokes, were horrified by.And she is a snob, there's no doubt about it. But she knew that and she lacerated herself for it too. And I think he ignored all the other aspects of her. So I was angry about that. But he was the kind of person you could have a really good argument with. That was one of the really great things about John.Oliver: He seems to be someone else who was amenable and charming, but also very steely.Lee: Yes, I think he probably was I think he probably was. You can see that in his memoir, I think.Oliver: What was Carmen Callil like?Lee: Oh. She was a very important person in my life. It was she who got me involved in writing pieces for Virago. And it was she who asked me to write the life of Virginia Woolf for Chatto. And she was an enormous, inspiring encourager as she was to very many people. And I loved her.But I was also, as many people were, quite daunted by her. She was temperamental, she was angry. She was passionate. She was often quite difficult. Not a word I like to use about women because there's that trope of difficult women, but she could be. And she lost her temper in a very un-English way, which was quite a sight to behold. But I think of her as one of the most creative and influential publishers of the 20th century.Oliver: Will there be a biography of her?Lee: I don't know. Yes, it's a really interesting question, and I've been asking her executors whether they have any thoughts about that. Somebody said to me, oh, who wants a biography of a publisher? But, actually, publishers are really important people often, so I hope there would be. Yes. And it would need to be someone who understood the politics of feminism and who understood about coming from Australia and who understood about the Catholic background and who understood about her passion for France. And there are a whole lot of aspects to that life. It's a rich and complex life. Yes, I hope there will be someday.Oliver: Her papers are sitting there in the British Library.Lee: They are. And in fact—you kindly mentioned this to start with—I've just finished a biography of the art historian and novelist, Anita Brookner, who won the Booker prize in 1984 for a novel called Hotel du Lac.And Carmen and Anita were great buddies, surprisingly actually, because they were very different kinds of characters. And the year before she died, Carmen, who knew I was working on Anita, showed me all her diary entries and all the letters she'd kept from Anita. And that's the kind of generous person that she was.That material is now sitting in the British Library, along with huge reams of correspondence between Carmen and many other people. And it's an exciting archive.Oliver: She seems to have had a capacity to be friends with almost anyone.Lee: Yes, I think there were people she would not have wanted to be friends with. She was very disapproving of a lot of political figures and particularly right-wing figures, and there were people she would've simply spat at if she was in the room with them. But, yes, she an enormous range of friends, and she was, as I said, she was fantastically encouraging to younger women writers.And, also, another aspect of Carmen's life, which I greatly admired and was fascinated by: In Virago she would often be resuscitating the careers of elderly women writers who had been forgotten or neglected, including Antonia White and including Rosamund Lehmann. And part of Carmen's job at Virago, as she felt, was not just to republish these people, some of whom hadn't had a book published for decades, but also to look after them. And they were all quite elderly and often quite eccentric and often quite needy. And Carmen would be there, bringing them out and looking after them and going around to see them. And really marvelous, I think.Oliver: Yes, it is. Tell me about Brian Moore.Lee: Breean, as he called himself.Oliver: Oh, I'm sorry.Lee: No, it's all right. I think Brian became a friend because in the 1980s I had a book program on Channel 4, which was called Book Four. It had a very small audience, but had a wonderful time over several years interviewing lots and lots of writers who had new books out. We didn't have a budget; it was a table and two chairs and not the kind of book program you see on the television anymore. And I got to know Brian through that and through reviewing him a bit and doing interviews with him, and my husband and I would go out and visit him and his wife Jean.And I loved the work. I thought the work was such a brilliant mixture of popular cultural forms, like the thriller and historical novel and so on. And fascinating ideas about authority and religion and how to be free, how to break free of the bonds of what he'd grown up with in Ireland, in Northern Ireland, the bombs of religious autocracy, as it were. And very surreal in some ways as well. And he was also a very charming, funny, gregarious person who could be quite wicked about other writers.And, he was a wonderfully wicked and funny companion. What breaks my heart about Brian Moore is that while he was alive, he was writing a novel maybe every other year or every three years, and people would review them and they were talked about, and I don't think they were on academic syllabuses but they were really popular. And when he died and there were no more books, it just went. You can think of other writers like that who were tremendously well known in their time. And then when there weren't any more books, just went away. You ask people, now you go out and ask people, say, “What about The Temptation of Eileen Hughes or The Doctor's Wife or Black Robe? And they'll go, “Sorry?”Oliver: If anyone listening to this wants to try one of his novels, where do you say they should start?Lee: I think I would start with The Doctor's Wife and The Temptation of Eileen Hughes. And then if one liked those, one would get a taste for him. But there's plenty to choose from.Oliver: What about Catholics?Lee: Yes. Catholics is a wonderful book. Yes. Wonderful book. Bit like Muriel Spark's The Abbess of Crewe, I think.Oliver: How important is religion to Penelope Fitzgerald's work?Lee: She would say that she felt guilty about not having put her religious beliefs more explicitly into her fiction. I'm very glad that she didn't because I think it is deeply important and she believes in miracles and saints and angels and manifestations and providence, but she doesn't spell it out.And so when at the end of The Gate of Angels, for instance, there is a kind of miracle on the last page but it's much better not to have it spelt out as a miracle, in my view. And in The Blue Flower, which is not my favorite of her books, but it's the book of the greatest genius possibly. And I think she was a genius. There is a deep interest in Novalis's romantic philosophical ideas about a spiritual life, beyond the physical life, no more doctrinally than that. And she, of course, believes in that. I think she believed, in an almost Platonic way, that this life was a kind of cave of shadows and that there was something beyond that. And there are some very mysterious moments in her books, which, if they had been explained as religious experiences, I think would've been much less forceful and much less intense.Oliver: What is your favorite of her books?Lee: Oh, The Beginning of Spring. The Beginning of Spring is set in Moscow just before the revolution. And its concerns an Englishman who runs a print and publishing works. And it's based quite a lot on some factual narratives about people in Moscow at the time. And it's about the feeling of that place and that time, but it's also about being in love with two people at the same time.And, yes, and it's about cultural clashes and cultural misunderstanding, and it is an astonishingly evocative book. And when asked about this book, interviewers would say to Penelope, oh, she must have lived in Moscow for ages to know so much about it. And sometimes she would say, “Yes, I lived there for years.” And sometimes she would say, “No, I've never been there in my life.” And the fact was she'd had a week's book tour in Moscow with her daughter. And that was the only time she ever went to Russia, but she read. So it was a wonderful example of how she would be so wicked; she would lie.Oliver: Yes.Lee: Because she couldn't be bothered to tell the truth.Oliver: But wasn't she poking fun at their silly questions?Lee: Yes. It's not such a silly question. I would've asked her that question. It is an astonishing evocation of a place.Oliver: No, I would've asked it too, but I do feel like she had this sense of it's silly to be asked questions at all. It's silly to be interviewed.Lee: I interviewed her about three times—and it was fascinating. And she would deflect. She would deflect, deflect. When you asked her about her own work, she would deflect onto someone else's work or she would tell you a story. But she also got quite irritable.So for instance, there's a poltergeist in a novel called The Bookshop. And the poltergeist is a very frightening apparition and very strong chapter in the book. And I said to her in interview, “Look, lots of people think this is just superstition. There aren't poltergeists.” And she looked at me very crossly and said they just haven't been there. They don't know what they're talking about. Absolutely factual and matter of fact about the reality of a poltergeist.Oliver: What makes Virginia Woolf's literary criticism so good?Lee: Oh, I think it's a kind of empathy actually. That she has an extraordinary ability to try and inhabit the person that she's writing about. So she doesn't write from the point of view of, as it were, a dry, historical appreciation.She's got the facts and she's read the books, but she's trying to intimately evoke what it felt like to be that writer. I don't mean by dressing it up with personal anecdotes, but just she has an extraordinary way of describing what that person's writing is like, often in images by using images and metaphors, which makes you feel you are inside the story somehow.And she loves anecdotes. She's very good at telling anecdotes, I think. And also she's not soft, but she's not harshly judgmental. I think she will try and get the juice out of anything she's writing about. Most of these literary criticism pieces were written for money and against the clock and whilst doing other things.So if you read her on Dorothy Wordsworth or Mary Wollstonecraft or Henry James, there's a wonderful sense of, you feel your knowledge has been expanded. Knowledge in the sense of knowing the person; I don't mean in the sense of hard facts.Oliver: Sure. You've finished your Anita Brookner biography and that's coming this year.Lee: September the 10th this year, here and in the States.Oliver: What will you do next?Lee: Yes. That's a very good question, though a little soon, I feel.Oliver: Is there someone whose life you always wanted to write, but didn't?Lee: No. No, there isn't. Not at the moment. Who knows?Oliver: You are open to it. You are open.Lee: Who knows what will come up.Oliver: Yes. Hermione Lee, this was a real pleasure. Thank you very much.Lee: Thank you very much. It was a treat. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk
To learn about The Freedom Project - Click here Two thinkers “arrive” right away: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austria, philosopher of language) and Epictetus (Greek Stoic, formerly enslaved). Their combined theme becomes the episode's core message: abundance and freedom don't respond to self-improvement—they respond to present-moment participation, and the language we use either keeps us in “now” or pushes us into fear-based “later.” Wittgenstein's thread focuses on how our sentences shape our reality. He points out that many spiritual and abundance struggles are reinforced by everyday grammar: “I'm not ready,” “I'm not healed,” “I must become something else.” These are described as grammatical habits that turn life into a test to pass. Abundance (money, time, health, love) doesn't show up when we “deserve it” or “fix ourselves”—it shows up when we stop managing it with fear and engage with what's here. Epictetus brings a steady, immovable energy and reframes freedom as the absence of inner argument with life. He shares the Stoic insight that suffering isn't primarily caused by circumstances, but by the internal insistence: “This shouldn't be happening.” Freedom, he says, is not growth but subtraction—not becoming more powerful, but noticing where we've been giving power away (waiting for conditions to improve, needing certainty, money, approval) and simply stopping. The conversation then turns practical around money. The guides suggest money feels uniquely “heavy” because we use it to answer a future-based question: “Will I be okay later?” Unlike health, relationships, or time (experienced in the present), money is often used as emotional insurance—asked to provide safety, which “isn't its job.” The episode offers a language-based reframe: shift from future-security sentences to present-usefulness. A key line: stop asking money to protect you from time. They also address the belief in “sources of money” (job, investments, rentals) as a limiter: the true source is you, via inspiration and participation. Scarcity is framed less as “not enough money” and more as fear of letting it move—guarding rather than participating. Finally, they connect abundance and freedom as essentially parallel states: both are results of alignment and present-moment engagement. Freedom is “living as cause, not effect,” and abundance is “having what you need when you need it to do what needs doing”—both emerge when we stop requiring conditions to be different before we allow peace.
The fourth episode in our season of live recordings from the Regent Street Cinema is about another film that explores the relationship between biography and philosophy: Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein (1993), which tells the story of an extraordinary life in a way that is both light and profound. David talks to writer and philosopher Nikhil Krishnan about Ludwig Wittengenstein's ideas of war, science, truth, freedom, sexuality, language, loyalty and communism and how they are portrayed on screen. Does the life explain the ideas or do the ideas explain the life? Next time: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind w/Beeban Kidron Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today's episode in our season of live recordings from the Regent Street Cinema looks at the biopic of a revolutionary: Margaretha von Trotta's Rosa Luxemburg (1986), which explores the deeply unstable relationship between the personal and the political. David talks to writer and philosopher Lea Ypi (Free, Indignity) about where biography ends and philosophy begins and whether revolutionary politics requires the leading of a revolutionary life. What was Rosa Luxemburg's true cause? Who or what betrayed her and her ideas? And how does her legacy live on? Out now on PPF+: a bonus episode to accompany this series in which David and film historian Harrison Whitaker discuss the greatest Christmas film of ideas: Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life, which is much more than just a seasonal tearjerker. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Next time: Wittgenstein w/Nikhil Krishnan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Onde se fala da obra coletiva, intitulada "O Poder da Argumentação", explora a relevância do debate racional na resolução de conflitos e na construção de consensos. Organizado por Guadalupe Reinoso, o livro reúne diversos académicos que analisam a argumentação sob prismas filosóficos, revisitando o legado dos sofistas e as perspetivas de pensadores como Nietzsche e Wittgenstein. Os textos abordam temas cruciais, como a função terapêutica do discurso, o impacto das metáforas na estrutura do pensamento e a gestão de desacordos profundos em contextos democráticos. Através de uma abordagem interdisciplinar, o volume defende que a palavra e a persuasão são instrumentos fundamentais para a convivência social, opondo-se ao uso da força. No fundo, a publicação procura fornecer ferramentas teóricas para enfrentar desafios contemporâneos, incluindo a pós-verdade e a polarização política.
Você já parou para pensar que se um leão pudesse falar, nós não o entenderíamos? Neste episódio de hoje apresentaremos algumas das principais ideias de Ludwig Wittgenstein, fornecendo o essencial para que você possa compreender, em linhas gerais, os principais objetivos de um dos filósofos mais importantes do século XX e a relação entre mundo e linguagem.
Wittgenstein wrote: “If a lion could talk, we would not understand it”. That is, as lions and humans are not of the same material, they could not say anything meaningful to each other. AI is not like us; the only way we can have a relationship with it is for us to become like it. We will look at how digital services are already making us machine-like; and, we explore how advanced AI-human fusions may undo our essential “humanness”.This lecture was recorded by Matt Jones on the 25rd of November 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.Matt Jones is a computer scientist at Swansea University - and a Fellow of the British Computer Society - who works alongside colleagues from many other disciplines and directly with everyday folk across the world to explore the future of digital technologies. Over the last 30-plus years, this human-centred approach has led to novel approaches for, amongst other things, mobile phone-based information searching and browsing, pedestrian navigation, voice assistants and deformable displays. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/ai-assimilationGresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/Website: https://gresham.ac.ukTwitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollegeFacebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollegeInstagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show
Brad and Paul discuss the work of Wittgenstein, Maximus, Hegel and Bulgakov as they converge on embodied synthesis in Christ and then extend the conversation to the synthesis of Scripture overcoming the contention in Job, Daniel, Maccabees, and Jonah over the split and violent or unified and peaceable image of God. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!
Dionisio González' „Wittgenstein's Cabin 10“ zeigt eine futuristische, computergenerierte Architektur im norwegischen Fjord – so realistisch, dass viele sie am liebsten sofort als Urlaubsunterkunft buchen würden. Was die Corona-Pandemie, Fußspuren und grasende Ziegen mit diesem Werk zu tun haben, erzählt der Kunstcomedian Jakob Schwerdtfeger in dieser Folge von Kunstsnack.
Continuing our discussion in Imaginative Apologetics, we discuss the view of the embodied understanding of Maximus and Hegel reflected in Wittgenstein in which the world is synthesized through embodiment and language. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!
🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En el episodio de hoy continuamos nuestro recorrido por la obra de Ludwig Wittgenstein, adentrándonos en la etapa del llamado segundo Wittgenstein. Abordaremos su retorno a la filosofía, el surgimiento de la teoría de los juegos de lenguaje y su concepción de la filosofía como terapia lingüística, destinada a disolver confusiones más que a construir sistemas. Cerramos el episodio examinando diversas críticas a esta perspectiva desde varios marcos metafísicos —como el tradicionalismo o el idealismo— que cuestionan los límites y alcances de su propuesta. Gracias por acompañarme una vez más en este viaje por la filosofía del lenguaje. Vuestra escucha y apoyo son esenciales para que este proyecto siga creciendo. 📗ÍNDICE 0. Resúmenes iniciales. VIDA 1. TESIS FUNDAMENTALES 2. REALIDAD Y LENGUAJE. >>>https://go.ivoox.com/rf/161702530 3. LA PARTE "MÍSTICA" DEL TRACTATUS. 4. LA INTERPRETACIÓN NO NEOPOSITIVISTA DEL TRACTATUS. >>> https://go.ivoox.com/rf/162287609 5. EL RETORNO A LA FILOSOFÍA. 6. LA TEORÍA DE LOS JUEGOS DE LENGUAJE. 7. LA FILOSOFÍA COMO TERAPIA LINGÜÍSTICA. 🎼Música de la época: Cuarteto para cuerdas Nº 2 de Enescu que acabó de escribir en 1951, el mismo año en el que falleció nuestro filósofo. 🎨Imagen: Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Viena, 26 de abril de 1889-Cambridge, 29 de abril de 1951), conocido como Ludwig Wittgenstein, fue un filósofo, matemático, lingüista y lógico austríaco, posteriormente nacionalizado británico. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!
🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En este episodio continuamos nuestra exploración del pensamiento de Ludwig Wittgenstein, adentrándonos en la dimensión más “mística” del Tractatus, esa zona fronteriza donde el lenguaje calla y, sin embargo, algo esencial se muestra. Examinaremos también la interpretación no neopositivista de la obra, que permite comprenderla no como un tratado científico, sino como un intento de señalar los límites del decir para dejar espacio a lo inexpresable. Cerramos el episodio con la lectura de un fragmento del Tractatus y de una carta de Wittgenstein a uno de sus editores, en la que se revelan claves íntimas de su intención filosófica. Gracias por acompañarme en esta aventura intelectual y por el apoyo que hace posible seguir profundizando juntos en estas grandes obras del pensamiento. 📗ÍNDICE 0. Resúmenes iniciales. VIDA 1. TESIS FUNDAMENTALES 2. REALIDAD Y LENGUAJE. >>>https://go.ivoox.com/rf/161702530 3. LA PARTE "MÍSTICA" DEL TRACTATUS. 4. LA INTERPRETACIÓN NO NEOPOSITIVISTA DEL TRACTATUS. 🎼Música de la época: Cuarteto para cuerdas Nº 2 de Enescu que acabó de escribir en 1951, el mismo año en el que falleció nuestro filósofo. 🎨Imagen: Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Viena, 26 de abril de 1889-Cambridge, 29 de abril de 1951), conocido como Ludwig Wittgenstein, fue un filósofo, matemático, lingüista y lógico austríaco, posteriormente nacionalizado británico. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!
This week's Ask Justin is about how to find hope, confidence and possibility in the future after a break up. Lots of advice here about break ups and moving forward reflecting on my own experiences, how we make use of feelings, critiquing the should stories, and of course the practical and experimental philosophies of Delueze and Guattari - this week ‘How do you make yourself a Body Without Organs?' Here's a recent podcast from the Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour about the BwO https://soundcloud.com/podcast-co-coopercherry/deleuze-and-guattari-how-do-you-make-yourself-a-body-without-organs Here's an online copy of A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari https://files.libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf (BwO starts on p149) This is Abolish The Family by Sophie Lewis https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2890-abolish-the-family?srsltid=AfmBOoqfP9U54Prh3ZqOwjJULgbnHG0ykElanIQQsqROQPWagCtNVHQt Here's that ACFM about Alexandra Kollontai https://novaramedia.com/2025/04/27/acfm-microdose-alexandra-kollontai-make-way-for-winged-eros/ And here's the podcast from me about Wittgenstein and Solution Focused Practice https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/wittgenstein-solutions-not-problems Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show and also buy the zines I mentioned.
******Support the channel******Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenterPayPal: paypal.me/thedissenterPayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuyPayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9lPayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpzPayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9mPayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ******Follow me on******Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoBFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. David Cooper is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. He has published across a broad range of philosophical subjects, including philosophy of language, philosophy of education, ethics, aesthetics, environmental philosophy, animal ethics, philosophy of technology, philosophy of religion, history of both Western philosophy and Asian philosophy, and modern European philosophy, especially Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. He is the author of several books, the most recent one being Pessimism, Quietism and Nature as Refuge. In this episode, we focus on Pessimism, Quietism and Nature as Refuge. We start by discussing what is misanthropy, what is pessimism, and how pessimism combines with misanthropy. We talk about the human condition, and whether it can be improved. We then get into quietism, nature as refuge, and preserving nature.--A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, VALENTIN STEINMANN, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航 豊川, TONY BARRETT, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, TED FARRIS, HUGO B., JAMES, JORDAN MANSFIELD, CHARLOTTE ALLEN, PETER STOYKO, DAVID TONNER, LEE BECK, PATRICK DALTON-HOLMES, NICK KRASNEY, AND RACHEL ZAK!A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, NICK GOLDEN, CHRISTINE GLASS, IGOR NIKIFOROVSKI, PER KRAULIS, AND JOSHUA WOOD!AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!
Dans ce numéro du magazine IDÉES, Pierre-Édouard Deldique reçoit Elise Marrou. Professeure de philosophie contemporaine et d'histoire de la philosophie moderne à l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, elle nous propose une lecture synthétique et pédagogique de l'œuvre de Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), figure centrale de la philosophie contemporaine, dans un «Que sais-je», aux PUF. Elise Marrou / Cairn info. Philosophe du langage, mathématicien, ingénieur, Wittgenstein est présenté comme un penseur à la fois rigoureux et singulier dont la trajectoire intellectuelle échappe aux classifications simplistes. «Considéré comme l'un des plus grands penseurs du XXè siècle, Wittgenstein n'a publié que deux ouvrages, le «Tractatus logico-philosophicus» et les «Recherches philosophiques» qui, chacun à leur manière, ont provoqué une révolution philosophique profonde», écrit-elle. Non, dit-elle, contrairement à ce que l'on dit souvent de lui, il n'a pas tué la philosophie Bien au contraire car, ajoute-t-elle : «Si nous prenons réellement la peine de nous immerger dans l'œuvre du philosophe viennois, nous nous trouvons confrontés à un philosophe au service des problèmes de la philosophie comme personne peut-être ne l'a été avant lui» ; Au cours de l'émission, et au fil des pages de cet ouvrage utile pour quiconque veut comprendre ce penseur, Elise Marrou insiste sur le double moment de la pensée wittgensteinienne : celle du «Tractatus logico-philosophicus», où le langage est conçu comme un miroir du monde, et celle des «Recherches philosophiques», où la signification devient affaire d'usage et de pratiques sociales. Cette évolution, loin d'être une contradiction, est interprétée comme une radicalisation du projet initial : clarifier les confusions philosophiques en examinant les formes de vie et les jeux de langage. L'auteure déconstruit les slogans souvent associés à Wittgenstein — «la signification, c'est l'usage», «ce dont on ne peut parler, il faut le taire» — pour en restituer la profondeur. Elle montre comment il nous propose une nouvelle manière de faire de la philosophie : non en construisant des systèmes, mais en dissipant les malentendus nés de l'usage du langage. «Le philosophe se remémore l'usage ordinaire des mots afin de les reconduire de leur usage métaphysique à leur usage ordinaire». L'ouvrage met en lumière l'impact de Wittgenstein dans le monde des idées. Elise Marrou souligne que des notions comme «coutume», «institution», ou «forme de vie» permettent de penser les pratiques humaines sans recourir à des abstractions métaphysiques. Cette transversalité est au centre du livre : elle montre que Wittgenstein n'est pas seulement un philosophe du langage, mais un penseur de la culture, des usages, et des formes de rationalité incarnées. Dans ce numéro d'IDÉES et dans cet ouvrage, Elise Marrou nous propose une synthèse accessible et rigoureuse. En évitant les simplifications, elle invite les auditeurs et les lecteurs à entrer dans le détail des textes, tout en fournissant les repères nécessaires pour naviguer dans une pensée réputée à juste titre difficile. Musiques diffusées pendant l'émission Philharmonique de Vienne Zimerman / Bernstein - Concerto n°2 de Brahms Philip Glass - String Quartet n°2 Company Brad Mehldau - After Bach Rondo Jazzrausch Bigband - Dancing Wittgenstein.
🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En el episodio de hoy nos acercamos a la figura de Ludwig Wittgenstein, discípulo aventajado de Bertrand Russell y una de las mentes más enigmáticas y decisivas de la filosofía contemporánea. Repasaremos su biografía y su peculiar recorrido vital, y nos centraremos en las tesis fundamentales del Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, donde se plantea la relación entre realidad, pensamiento y lenguaje y el célebre límite según el cual “de lo que no se puede hablar, es mejor callar”. Gracias por acompañarme una vez más en este viaje intelectual y por el apoyo constante que sostiene este proyecto. 📗ÍNDICE 0. Resúmenes iniciales. VIDA 1. TESIS FUNDAMENTALES 2. REALIDAD Y LENGUAJE. 🎼Música de la época: Cuarteto para cuerdas Nº 2 de Enescu que acabó de escribir en 1951, el mismo año en el que falleció nuestro filósofo. 🎨Imagen: Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Viena, 26 de abril de 1889-Cambridge, 29 de abril de 1951), conocido como Ludwig Wittgenstein, fue un filósofo, matemático, lingüista y lógico austríaco, posteriormente nacionalizado británico. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!
Dans ce numéro du magazine IDÉES, Pierre-Édouard Deldique reçoit Elise Marrou. Professeure de philosophie contemporaine et d'histoire de la philosophie moderne à l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, elle nous propose une lecture synthétique et pédagogique de l'œuvre de Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), figure centrale de la philosophie contemporaine, dans un «Que sais-je», aux PUF. Elise Marrou / Cairn info. Philosophe du langage, mathématicien, ingénieur, Wittgenstein est présenté comme un penseur à la fois rigoureux et singulier dont la trajectoire intellectuelle échappe aux classifications simplistes. «Considéré comme l'un des plus grands penseurs du XXè siècle, Wittgenstein n'a publié que deux ouvrages, le «Tractatus logico-philosophicus» et les «Recherches philosophiques» qui, chacun à leur manière, ont provoqué une révolution philosophique profonde», écrit-elle. Non, dit-elle, contrairement à ce que l'on dit souvent de lui, il n'a pas tué la philosophie Bien au contraire car, ajoute-t-elle : «Si nous prenons réellement la peine de nous immerger dans l'œuvre du philosophe viennois, nous nous trouvons confrontés à un philosophe au service des problèmes de la philosophie comme personne peut-être ne l'a été avant lui» ; Au cours de l'émission, et au fil des pages de cet ouvrage utile pour quiconque veut comprendre ce penseur, Elise Marrou insiste sur le double moment de la pensée wittgensteinienne : celle du «Tractatus logico-philosophicus», où le langage est conçu comme un miroir du monde, et celle des «Recherches philosophiques», où la signification devient affaire d'usage et de pratiques sociales. Cette évolution, loin d'être une contradiction, est interprétée comme une radicalisation du projet initial : clarifier les confusions philosophiques en examinant les formes de vie et les jeux de langage. L'auteure déconstruit les slogans souvent associés à Wittgenstein — «la signification, c'est l'usage», «ce dont on ne peut parler, il faut le taire» — pour en restituer la profondeur. Elle montre comment il nous propose une nouvelle manière de faire de la philosophie : non en construisant des systèmes, mais en dissipant les malentendus nés de l'usage du langage. «Le philosophe se remémore l'usage ordinaire des mots afin de les reconduire de leur usage métaphysique à leur usage ordinaire». L'ouvrage met en lumière l'impact de Wittgenstein dans le monde des idées. Elise Marrou souligne que des notions comme «coutume», «institution», ou «forme de vie» permettent de penser les pratiques humaines sans recourir à des abstractions métaphysiques. Cette transversalité est au centre du livre : elle montre que Wittgenstein n'est pas seulement un philosophe du langage, mais un penseur de la culture, des usages, et des formes de rationalité incarnées. Dans ce numéro d'IDÉES et dans cet ouvrage, Elise Marrou nous propose une synthèse accessible et rigoureuse. En évitant les simplifications, elle invite les auditeurs et les lecteurs à entrer dans le détail des textes, tout en fournissant les repères nécessaires pour naviguer dans une pensée réputée à juste titre difficile. Musiques diffusées pendant l'émission Philharmonique de Vienne Zimerman / Bernstein - Concerto n°2 de Brahms Philip Glass - String Quartet n°2 Company Brad Mehldau - After Bach Rondo Jazzrausch Bigband - Dancing Wittgenstein.
Eksik Olan'ın bu bölümünde Ömer Çeşit ile Alp Kozanoğlu, Avusturya edebiyatının önde gelen yazarlarından Thomas Bernhard ve onun “Wittgenstein'ın Yeğeni: Bir Dostluk” adlı kitabını ele alıyor. Kitapta, ünlü filozof Ludwig Wittgenstein'ın akrabası ve yazarın arkadaşı olan Paul üzerinden zamanlar arası bir anlatımla, hayat, ölüm ve insan ilişkileri üzerine derin bir muhasebe sunuluyor. Bernhard'ın kültür, sanat ve bilim eleştirileriyle şekillenen bu metin, izleyenlere varoluş, insan doğası ve motivasyon üzerine düşündürücü sorular yöneltiyor: - İnsan kendi varoluşunu abartarak sömürür mü? - Evrimsel geçmişimiz özgür iradeye ne kadar izin verir? - Kültür endüstrisi ve sanat dünyası nasıl vasatlaşır? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
For the final episode in this series David talks to historian Ayse Zarakol about the prospects for democracy in the age of strongman politics, from Trump to Erdogan, from Orban to Modi. Where did the strongmen come from? How unusual is this kind of politics in the broad sweep of history? Does democracy have the wherewithal to resist its pull? And if not, what happens next? The 4th film in our autumn season at the Regent Street Cinema in London is coming up on Wednesday 5th November: a screening of Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein followed by a live recording of PPF with writer and philosopher Nikhil Krishnan. Get your tickets now https://bit.ly/47bsJcN Up next: Fixing Democracy Q & A w/David Klemperer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Most think that algorithms are the modern root cause of innovations. But says not only are organizations today powered by data, they innovate through data. With several other colleagues, Marta is bringing data studies back to the forefront of information systems research. She produces workshops, a forthcoming book, and an online bibliography with seminal readings. We talk to Marta about the relationship between data and meaning, representation versus innovation, and whether we all soon live in a hyperreality created through synthetic data that lost all connection to the real-world. Episode reading list Alaimo, C., & Kallinikos, J. (2022). Organizations Decentered: Data Objects, Technology and Knowledge. Organization Science, 33(1), 19-37. Aaltonen, A., Stelmaszak, M., & Xu, D. The Data Studies Bibliography. . Chen, H., Chiang, R., & Storey, V. C. (2012). Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impacts. MIS Quarterly, 36(4), 1165-1188. Wand, Y., & Wang, R. Y. (1996). Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations. Communications of the ACM, 39(11), 86-95. Xu, D., Stelmaszak, M., & Aaltonen, A. (2025). What is Changing the Game in Data Research? Insights from the “Innovating in Data-based Reality” Professional Development Workshop. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 56(8), 194-208. Kent, W. (1978). Data and Reality. North-Holland. Hirschheim, R., Klein, H. K., & Lyytinen, K. (1995). Information Systems Development and Data Modeling: Conceptual and Philosophical Foundations. Cambridge University Press. Goodhue, D. L., Wybo, M. D., & Kirsch, L. J. (1992). The Impact of Data Integration on the Costs and Benefits of Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 16(3), 239-311. Aaltonen, A., & Stelmaszak, M. (2024). Data Innovation Lens: A New Way to Approach Data Design as Value Creation. SSRN, . Recker, J., Indulska, M., Green, P., Burton-Jones, A., & Weber, R. (2019). Information Systems as Representations: A Review of the Theory and Evidence. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 20(6), 735-786. Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. MIT Press. Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press. Harari, Y. N. (2024). Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Random House. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Basil Blackwell. Stelmaszak, M., Wagner, E., & DuPont, N. N. (2024). Recognition in Personal Data: Data Warping, Recognition Concessions, and Social Justice. MIS Quarterly, 48(4), 1611-1636. Aaltonen, A., Stelmaszak, M., & Lyytinen, K. (Eds.). (2026). Research Handbook on Digital Data: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Edward Elgar Publishing.
🎙️ Estimados oyentes y mecenas: En este episodio concluimos nuestro recorrido por el pensamiento de Bertrand Russell, una de las figuras más influyentes de la filosofía del siglo XX. Analizaremos su teoría de las descripciones, clave en el desarrollo de la lógica moderna, su debate intelectual con el segundo Wittgenstein, donde se evidencian dos visiones opuestas del lenguaje y la realidad, y finalmente, su crítica al cristianismo, reflejo de su visión de una razón libre de dogmas religiosos. Gracias por seguir acompañándome en este ciclo dedicado a la filosofía del lenguaje. Vuestro interés y apoyo hacen posible que sigamos pensando juntos. 📗ÍNDICE Introducción a la Filosofía del Lenguaje. 0. Resúmenes iniciales. 1. VIDA Y OBRAS. 2. ATOMISMO LÓGICO. >>> https://go.ivoox.com/rf/159444007 3. TEORÍA DE LAS DESCRIPCIONES. 4. CONTRA EL SEGUNDO WITTGENSTEIN Y LA FILOSOFÍA ANALÍTICA. 5. PACIFISMO Y CRÍTICA DEL CRISTIANISMO. (AUDIO DE HOY) 🎼Música de la época: Sinfonía Nº8 de Miloslav Kabeláč escrita en 1970, año del fallecimiento de nuestro filósofo. 🎨Imagen: Bertrand Arthur William Russell (Monmouthshire; 18 de mayo de 1872-Gwynedd, 2 de febrero de 1970) fue un filósofo, matemático, lógico y escritor británico, ganador del Premio Nobel de Literatura. 👍Pulsen un Me Gusta y colaboren a partir de 2,99 €/mes si se lo pueden permitir para asegurar la permanencia del programa ¡Muchas gracias a todos!
Gerade ist die zweite Staffel der Erfolgsserie Oktoberfest 1905 gestartet und wir werfen einen Blick in die historische Realität eines Volksfestes im Umbruch. Exemplarisch dafür steht die erste riesige Bierburg des legendären Wiesnwirts Georg "Schorschl" Lang mit eigener Blaskapelle und Platz für Tausende von Menschen. Doch während das Geschäft mit dem Bier boomt, kursieren auch auf den Wiesn Gerüchte über absichtlich nicht voll eingeschenkte Krüge. Wir gehen dem auf die Spur und besuchen zusätzlich völlig neue Fahrgeschäfte und die diskriminierenden "Menschenschauen", die damals Teil der Wiesn waren. Mit dabei ist auch Filmproduzent Alexis von Wittgenstein, mit dem wir darüber sprechen, was in seiner Serie Oktoberfest 1905 Fiktion ist und was Wirklichkeit.
Philosophy passage got you spiraling? In this CARS Reading Skills Workshop, Molly and Jack unpack the “Wittgenstein and Mathematics” daily passage (Sept 17) and show you exactly how to read dense, abstract prose without panicking.- How to anchor yourself on clear sentences (and ignore the “interesting nonsense” that isn't testable)- The core claim: mathematics = a kind of logic built on rules — and why that repeats (so it's the main idea)- Early vs. later Wittgenstein: from one monolithic language → many language games (each with its own rules)- How to track shifts between language, logic, and math without getting lost- When to slow down, when to move on, and how to extract the main idea fastPro tips covered:-Use contrast/qualifiers (“in fact,” “later,” “still”) to spot high-yield sentences-Treat ultra-dense lines as support, not the thesisBefore you watch:Read the Sept 17 daily passage: https://jackwestin.com/daily/mcat-practice-passages/cars-practice-passages/wittgenstein-and-mathematicsWant to learn more? Shoot us a text at 415-855-4435 or email us at podcast@jackwestin.com!
Matt Greene discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Matt Greene is an author, teacher, former screenwriter, and stay-at-home dad. His first novel, Ostrich, won a Betty Trask Award and his memoir Jew(ish) was described by Booker-shortlisted author Nadifa Mohamed as ‘wonderful' and ‘acerbically funny'. He teaches critical and creative writing in South London, where he lives with his partner and two sons. His new book is The Definitions, which is at https://evewhite.co.uk/books/the-definitions/. Purple Mountains https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/review-purple-mountains-858339/ What killed the studio sitcom https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/26/the-last-laugh-is-the-television-sitcom-really-dead A Village After Dark https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/05/21/a-village-after-dark Speech Act Theory https://www.thoughtco.com/speech-act-theory-1691986 Two Jews, Three Opinions https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/one-jew-two-opinions/ Wierzbicka vs Wittgenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wierzbicka This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm
Imagine this: You're walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You're the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the pond you remember that you're wearing your most expensive shoes. Wading into the water will ruin them—and might make you late for a meeting. Should you let the child drown? The philosopher Peter Singer published this thought experiment in 1972, arguing that allowing people in the developing world to die, when we could easily help them by giving money to charity, is as morally reprehensible as saving our shoes instead of the drowning child. Can this possibly be true? In Death in a Shallow Pond, David Edmonds tells the remarkable story of Singer and his controversial idea, tracing how it radically changed the way many think about poverty—but also how it has provoked scathing criticisms.Death in a Shallow Pond describes the experiences and world events that led Singer to make his radical case and how it moved some young philosophers to establish the Effective Altruism movement, which tries to optimize philanthropy. The book also explores the reactions of critics who argue that the Shallow Pond and Effective Altruism are unrealistic, misguided, and counterproductive, neglecting the causes of—and therefore perpetuating—poverty. Ultimately, however, Edmonds argues that the Shallow Pond retains the power to shape how we live in a world in which terrible and unnecessary suffering persists. David Edmonds is the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and popular books on philosophy, including Wittgenstein's Poker (with John Eidinow). His other books include Parfit, The Murder of Professor Schlick, and Would You Kill the Fat Man? (all Princeton). A Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Uehiro Oxford Institute and a former BBC radio journalist, Edmonds hosts, with Nigel Warburton, the Philosophy Bites podcast, which has been downloaded nearly 50 million times. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Imagine this: You're walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You're the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the pond you remember that you're wearing your most expensive shoes. Wading into the water will ruin them—and might make you late for a meeting. Should you let the child drown? The philosopher Peter Singer published this thought experiment in 1972, arguing that allowing people in the developing world to die, when we could easily help them by giving money to charity, is as morally reprehensible as saving our shoes instead of the drowning child. Can this possibly be true? In Death in a Shallow Pond, David Edmonds tells the remarkable story of Singer and his controversial idea, tracing how it radically changed the way many think about poverty—but also how it has provoked scathing criticisms.Death in a Shallow Pond describes the experiences and world events that led Singer to make his radical case and how it moved some young philosophers to establish the Effective Altruism movement, which tries to optimize philanthropy. The book also explores the reactions of critics who argue that the Shallow Pond and Effective Altruism are unrealistic, misguided, and counterproductive, neglecting the causes of—and therefore perpetuating—poverty. Ultimately, however, Edmonds argues that the Shallow Pond retains the power to shape how we live in a world in which terrible and unnecessary suffering persists. David Edmonds is the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and popular books on philosophy, including Wittgenstein's Poker (with John Eidinow). His other books include Parfit, The Murder of Professor Schlick, and Would You Kill the Fat Man? (all Princeton). A Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Uehiro Oxford Institute and a former BBC radio journalist, Edmonds hosts, with Nigel Warburton, the Philosophy Bites podcast, which has been downloaded nearly 50 million times. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
Imagine this: You're walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You're the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the pond you remember that you're wearing your most expensive shoes. Wading into the water will ruin them—and might make you late for a meeting. Should you let the child drown? The philosopher Peter Singer published this thought experiment in 1972, arguing that allowing people in the developing world to die, when we could easily help them by giving money to charity, is as morally reprehensible as saving our shoes instead of the drowning child. Can this possibly be true? In Death in a Shallow Pond, David Edmonds tells the remarkable story of Singer and his controversial idea, tracing how it radically changed the way many think about poverty—but also how it has provoked scathing criticisms.Death in a Shallow Pond describes the experiences and world events that led Singer to make his radical case and how it moved some young philosophers to establish the Effective Altruism movement, which tries to optimize philanthropy. The book also explores the reactions of critics who argue that the Shallow Pond and Effective Altruism are unrealistic, misguided, and counterproductive, neglecting the causes of—and therefore perpetuating—poverty. Ultimately, however, Edmonds argues that the Shallow Pond retains the power to shape how we live in a world in which terrible and unnecessary suffering persists. David Edmonds is the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and popular books on philosophy, including Wittgenstein's Poker (with John Eidinow). His other books include Parfit, The Murder of Professor Schlick, and Would You Kill the Fat Man? (all Princeton). A Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Uehiro Oxford Institute and a former BBC radio journalist, Edmonds hosts, with Nigel Warburton, the Philosophy Bites podcast, which has been downloaded nearly 50 million times. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
Imagine this: You're walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You're the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the pond you remember that you're wearing your most expensive shoes. Wading into the water will ruin them—and might make you late for a meeting. Should you let the child drown? The philosopher Peter Singer published this thought experiment in 1972, arguing that allowing people in the developing world to die, when we could easily help them by giving money to charity, is as morally reprehensible as saving our shoes instead of the drowning child. Can this possibly be true? In Death in a Shallow Pond, David Edmonds tells the remarkable story of Singer and his controversial idea, tracing how it radically changed the way many think about poverty—but also how it has provoked scathing criticisms.Death in a Shallow Pond describes the experiences and world events that led Singer to make his radical case and how it moved some young philosophers to establish the Effective Altruism movement, which tries to optimize philanthropy. The book also explores the reactions of critics who argue that the Shallow Pond and Effective Altruism are unrealistic, misguided, and counterproductive, neglecting the causes of—and therefore perpetuating—poverty. Ultimately, however, Edmonds argues that the Shallow Pond retains the power to shape how we live in a world in which terrible and unnecessary suffering persists. David Edmonds is the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and popular books on philosophy, including Wittgenstein's Poker (with John Eidinow). His other books include Parfit, The Murder of Professor Schlick, and Would You Kill the Fat Man? (all Princeton). A Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Uehiro Oxford Institute and a former BBC radio journalist, Edmonds hosts, with Nigel Warburton, the Philosophy Bites podcast, which has been downloaded nearly 50 million times. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy
Imagine this: You're walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You're the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the pond you remember that you're wearing your most expensive shoes. Wading into the water will ruin them—and might make you late for a meeting. Should you let the child drown? The philosopher Peter Singer published this thought experiment in 1972, arguing that allowing people in the developing world to die, when we could easily help them by giving money to charity, is as morally reprehensible as saving our shoes instead of the drowning child. Can this possibly be true? In Death in a Shallow Pond, David Edmonds tells the remarkable story of Singer and his controversial idea, tracing how it radically changed the way many think about poverty—but also how it has provoked scathing criticisms.Death in a Shallow Pond describes the experiences and world events that led Singer to make his radical case and how it moved some young philosophers to establish the Effective Altruism movement, which tries to optimize philanthropy. The book also explores the reactions of critics who argue that the Shallow Pond and Effective Altruism are unrealistic, misguided, and counterproductive, neglecting the causes of—and therefore perpetuating—poverty. Ultimately, however, Edmonds argues that the Shallow Pond retains the power to shape how we live in a world in which terrible and unnecessary suffering persists. David Edmonds is the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and popular books on philosophy, including Wittgenstein's Poker (with John Eidinow). His other books include Parfit, The Murder of Professor Schlick, and Would You Kill the Fat Man? (all Princeton). A Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Uehiro Oxford Institute and a former BBC radio journalist, Edmonds hosts, with Nigel Warburton, the Philosophy Bites podcast, which has been downloaded nearly 50 million times. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Episode 112: It's not fun to be in a YMC, eh? Apply to join us as a co-host! https://astrosoundbites.com/recruiting-2025 In today's episode, Cormac, Shashank and Lucia come together to crack open the craziness inside Young Massive (Stellar) Clusters - some of the most exciting neighbourhoods in our Universe. They're a very hot topic at the moment, and not just because of their intense radiation - they host the majority of massive stars, and ancient YMCs might be the ancestors of the globular clusters that orbit our own Milky Way today. Shashank shares a recipe for cooking up YMCs through a computational collision, and Lucia takes a peek at YMCs emerging from their dust-embedded embryonic environs. We round off with a casual discussion of whether simulationists are taking Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus a bit too literally and chat about our favourite star clusters. Astrobites: https://astrobites.org/2025/07/23/ymc_formation/ https://astrobites.org/2025/07/09/gmc-dispersal/
I vårt mest kodknäckande avsnitt hittills går vi – på vår arbetsgivare Eric Sjöblads begäran – igenom … Alan Turing? Ja, det blev så. Per är den som sätter på sig matematikerhatten den här gången och går igenom mannen, myten, legenden och hur löjligt jävla viktig han var för den allierade krigsinsatsen under andra världskriget. Mattis roll är den här gången att inte känna igen matematiska principer och försöka komma ihåg fun facts om Wittgenstein.Stort tack till Eric! Det här är hans personliga expressavsnitt.Vill du också ha ett personligt expressavsnitt? Bli då vår patreon på tier Gustav II Adolfs livvaktsstyrka. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What if the ideas that linger in the back of your mind — the ones you can't quite explain — are the ones you most need to pay attention to?Episode SummaryIn this episode, I explore that question with Dr Nuno Reis, a former physicist and investment banker turned thinker and guide in uncovering what he calls rare dots — those unique, pre-verbal insights that feel deeply resonant but don't yet fit into our existing models of the world.Our conversation begins with Nuno's unusual career path, from string theory and theoretical physics into financial modelling and risk management, before moving into transparency roles in finance. From there, we trace the thread of his enduring curiosity: how crises drive paradigm shifts, why models are useful but limited, and what happens when we acknowledge that not everything fits into neat rational frameworks.Nuno then introduces the concept of rare dots and explains how he's harnessing AI in a novel, deeply human way: not to replace thought, but to help us surface the preverbal ideas that shape our uniqueness. Together, we explore how rare dots can guide creativity, meaning, and innovation in our work and lives — and why paying attention to the things that don't quite make sense may be the most sensible thing we can do.Guest BiographyDr Nuno Reis describes himself as a physicist turned banker turned explorer of human thinking. After completing a PhD in theoretical physics with a focus on string theory, he transitioned into investment banking at UBS and later into financial engineering and transparency initiatives at Bloomberg.Over 18 years in finance, he applied scientific methods to risk modelling, hedging, and complex derivatives, all while maintaining a deep curiosity about the limits of logic and models.Today, Nuno is the creator of the Rare Dots framework, which helps individuals and organisations uncover the pre-verbal insights that drive creativity and meaning. He combines philosophy, history of thought, and cutting-edge uses of AI to build environments where people can explore their deepest intuitions.Through workshops, cohorts, and his own practice, he guides others in turning those rare dots into pathways for innovation, purpose, and contribution.AI-Generated Timestamped Summary[00:00:00] Introduction and framing of rare dots as preverbal insights[00:01:00] Nuno's background: from physics to banking and financial modelling[00:06:00] Applying scientific methods to markets and the 2008 crisis[00:12:00] Replication crisis and paradigm shifts in science[00:18:00] Early story of curiosity and existential questions[00:21:00] Introduction of rare dots as deeply resonant insights[00:26:00] How resonance and intuition shape meaning[00:30:00] Creating environments to surface rare dots[00:35:00] History of thinking vs history of ideas[00:40:00] Using AI as a tool for rare dots and Wittgenstein's ladder[00:46:00] How AI can surface pre-verbal thinking[00:52:00] AI as a prompt for deeper human thinking[00:56:00] Rare dots exploration as an infinite game[01:02:00] Rare dots as a guide for careers and human valueLinksNuno on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nuno-reis/Nuno's Substack - https://nunobreis.substack.com/
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement — the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Professor Ben Nathans — is perhaps the sharpest, richest, and funniest account of the Soviet dissident movement ever written. Today, we'll interview Nathans alongside the legendary Ian Johnson, whose recent book Sparks explores the Chinese dissident ecosystem. We discuss… The central enigma of the Soviet dissident movement — their boldness in the face of hopeless odds, How cybernetics, Wittgenstein, and one absent-minded professor shaped the intellectual backbone of post-Stalinist dissent, Why the Soviet Union was such fertile ground for dark humor, and why humor played a vital role for Soviet resistance movements, How the architect of Stalin's show trials laid the groundwork for, ironically, a more professional legal system known as “socialist legality,” Similarities and differences between post-Stalinist and post-Maoist systems in dealing with opposition, Plus: Why Brezhnev read The Baltimore Sun, how onion-skin paper became a tool of rebellion, and why China's leaders study the Soviet collapse more seriously than anyone else. Today's episode is sponsored by Alaya Tea, cofounded by ChinaTalk listener Smita Satiani. Alaya Tea ships Indian teas straight from the source, and their products are 100% plastic-free. My favorite is their Assam black tea, which I've been using to make a fantastic milk tea. Go to alayatea.co and use the code CHINATALKTEA for free shipping. Outro music: Владимир Высоцкий - Охота на волков (YouTube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement — the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Professor Ben Nathans — is perhaps the sharpest, richest, and funniest account of the Soviet dissident movement ever written. Today, we'll interview Nathans alongside the legendary Ian Johnson, whose recent book Sparks explores the Chinese dissident ecosystem. We discuss… The central enigma of the Soviet dissident movement — their boldness in the face of hopeless odds, How cybernetics, Wittgenstein, and one absent-minded professor shaped the intellectual backbone of post-Stalinist dissent, Why the Soviet Union was such fertile ground for dark humor, and why humor played a vital role for Soviet resistance movements, How the architect of Stalin's show trials laid the groundwork for, ironically, a more professional legal system known as “socialist legality,” Similarities and differences between post-Stalinist and post-Maoist systems in dealing with opposition, Plus: Why Brezhnev read The Baltimore Sun, how onion-skin paper became a tool of rebellion, and why China's leaders study the Soviet collapse more seriously than anyone else. Today's episode is sponsored by Alaya Tea, cofounded by ChinaTalk listener Smita Satiani. Alaya Tea ships Indian teas straight from the source, and their products are 100% plastic-free. My favorite is their Assam black tea, which I've been using to make a fantastic milk tea. Go to alayatea.co and use the code CHINATALKTEA for free shipping. Outro music: Владимир Высоцкий - Охота на волков (YouTube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
durée : 00:59:08 - Avec philosophie - par : Géraldine Mosna-Savoye, Antoine Ravon - En 1970, Iris Murdoch publie "La souveraineté du Bien", ouvrage marqué par ses lectures de Platon, de Wittgenstein ou encore de Simone Weil. Comment la conception du Bien d'Iris Murdoch nous donne-t-elle les clés afin de nous rendre (moralement) meilleurs ? - réalisation : Nicolas Berger - invités : Emmanuel Halais Philosophe français
durée : 00:59:44 - Avec philosophie - par : Géraldine Mosna-Savoye, Antoine Ravon - L'itinéraire philosophique d'Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) est marqué par les enseignements de Wittgenstein sur le langage, ainsi que par l'existentialisme sartrien. Comment découvrir la vérité si le langage peut mentir ? Peut-on percer le mystère de la vie humaine, en dépit de son opacité ? - réalisation : Nicolas Berger - invités : Frédéric Worms Philosophe, directeur de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure de Pari
Concluding our treatment of The Sources of Normativity. We give Korsgaard's tweaks to Kant, including her distinction between the categorical imperative and the moral law. We then explain her reference to Wittgenstein's private language argument in her argument that reason-giving, and hence morality, can't be merely self-referential. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion, including a supporter-exclusive Nightcap comparing Korsgaard to Foot. Sponsors: Visit functionhealth.com/PEL to get the data you need to take action for your health. Get a $1/month e-commerce trial at shopify.com/pel. Learn about Mark's online political philosophy class at partiallyexaminedlife.com/class.
Guy Stagg is an award-winning British writer interested in travel, religion, mental health and the places where they meet. In 2013 he walked from Canterbury to Jerusalem. His first book, The Crossway (Picador, 2018), was an account of this journey. It was a BBC Book of the Week and shortlisted for several prizes. His second, The World Within (Simon and Schuster, 2025), looks at the role of retreat in creative lives.Stagg's site: https://www.guystagg.co.uk/Book link: https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-World-Within/Guy-Stagg/9781398533509---Become part of the Hermitix community:Hermitix Twitter - / hermitixpodcast Hermitix Discord - / discord Support Hermitix:Hermitix Subscription - https://hermitix.net/subscribe/ Patreon - www.patreon.com/hermitix Donations: - https://www.paypal.me/hermitixpodHermitix Merchandise - http://teespring.com/stores/hermitix-2Bitcoin Donation Address: 3LAGEKBXEuE2pgc4oubExGTWtrKPuXDDLKEthereum Donation Address: 0xfd2bbe86d6070004b9Cbf682aB2F25170046A996
Send us a textIn this engaging conversation with Dr. Genia Schönbaumsfeld, we explore the radical philosophical journey of Ludwig Wittgenstein—from the tightly structured propositions of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to the later insights of Philosophical Investigations. Dr. Schönbaumsfeld unpacks the deep shifts in Wittgenstein's view of language, logic, and meaning, and how these changes shaped the development of analytic philosophy. Whether you're a student of philosophy, a fan of Wittgenstein, or simply curious about how language shapes thought, this video offers an accessible yet rigorous overview of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.Support the show--------------------------If you would want to support the channel and what I am doing, please follow me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/christianityforall Where else to find Josh Yen: Philosophy YT: https://bit.ly/philforallEducation: https://bit.ly/joshyenBuisness: https://bit.ly/logoseduMy Website: https://joshuajwyen.com/
Up now on Patreon (3hr20h)3 months in the making, we get into a century of Dropping Out, DIY, and the conditions of self-preservation featuring mathematician Alexander Groethendieck, artist Lee Lozano, Cormac McCarthy, Shelly Duvall, and Sarah Records. As public life become further cauterized some will declout, some join the Santa Fe institute, and some refuse to speak to other woman for 27 years. Time to find out why Groethendieck's reasons for leaving the mathematics community, abstract financial systems and their influence on human creativity, ‘healthy disillusionment', the hollowing out of Pax Americana, Applied Quantum Mechanics, Cindy Lee album, reason's obscure other, ‘comparing yourself to old stories', Kazemir Malevich: Suprematism, from Shakespeare's Othello, King Leer, Macbeth, Industry Plant Aktion, refusing the art-world, semiotic superficially, ‘High-Energy Scattering', Dictator to Oneself, Wim Wender's “Perfect Days”, the infamous Shelly Duvall Dr. Phil episode, Alex Bienstock, what people learn from Wittgenstein, Bristol's Sarah Records and the politics of C86 jangle pop, micro-science and more.
In 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of radical artists to break free from the cultural establishment of Vienna and found a movement that became known as the Vienna Secession. In the vibrant atmosphere of coffee houses, Freudian psychoanalysis and the music of Wagner and Mahler, the Secession sought to bring together fine art and music with applied arts such as architecture and design. The movement was characterized by Klimt's stylised paintings, richly decorated with gold leaf, and the art nouveau buildings that began to appear in the city, most notably the Secession Building, which housed influential exhibitions of avant-garde art and was a prototype of the modern art gallery. The Secessionists themselves were pioneers in their philosophy and way of life, aiming to immerse audiences in unified artistic experiences that brought together visual arts, design, and architecture. With:Mark Berry, Professor of Music and Intellectual History at Royal Holloway, University of LondonLeslie Topp, Professor Emerita in History of Architecture at Birkbeck, University of LondonAndDiane Silverthorne, art historian and 'Vienna 1900' scholarProducer: Eliane GlaserReading list:Mark Berry, Arnold Schoenberg: Critical Lives (Reaktion Books, 2018)Gemma Blackshaw, Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 (National Gallery Company, 2013)Elizabeth Clegg, Art, Design and Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1920 (Yale University Press, 2006)Richard Cockett, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World (Yale University Press, 2023)Stephen Downes, Gustav Mahler (Reaktion Books, 2025)Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (Oxford University Press, 1979)Tag Gronberg, Vienna: City of Modernity, 1890-1914 (Peter Lang, 2007)Allan S. Janik and Hans Veigl, Wittgenstein in Vienna: A Biographical Excursion Through the City and its History (Springer/Wien, 1998)Jill Lloyd and Christian Witt-Dörring (eds.), Vienna 1900: Style and Identity (Hirmer Verlag, 2011)William J. McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (Yale University Press, 1974)Tobias Natter and Christoph Grunenberg (eds.), Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life (Tate, 2008)Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Vintage, 1979)Elana Shapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture and Design in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Brandeis University Press, 2016)Diane V Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds and Megan Brandow-Faller, Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902-1911 (Letterform Archive, 2023)Edward Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture & Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (Yale University Press, 1989)Leslie Topp, Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2004)Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and Their Contemporaries (4th ed., Phaidon, 2015)Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.), Vienna 1900: Birth of Modernism (Walther & Franz König, 2019)Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.), Masterpieces from the Leopold Museum (Walther & Franz König)Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography (University of Nebraska Press, 1964)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio ProductionSpanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.
Today we talk about the late work of Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations. We talk about the meaning of words. Augustine's theory. Forms of life. Rules and practices. Grammar. Geometry. Family resemblance. And the role of a philosopher on the other side of accepting this view of language. Hope you love it. :) Sponsors: ZocDoc: https://www.ZocDoc.com/PHILO Quince: https://www.QUINCE.com/pt Better Help: https://www.BetterHelp.com/PHILTHIS Thank you so much for listening! Could never do this without your help. Website: https://www.philosophizethis.org/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/philosophizethis Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philosophizethispodcast X: https://twitter.com/iamstephenwest Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/philosophizethisshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In the first of a three-part series on Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), Let Us Think About It delves into the concept of contingency. Host Ryder Richards guides listeners through Rorty's radical argument that language, selfhood, and liberal communities are not grounded in universal truths but are crafted through historical chance, like tools in a dynamic toolkit. Drawing on Chapter 1, Ryder explores how language, far from mirroring reality, builds truths through evolving vocabularies, with examples like the French Revolution and Donald Davidson's “passing theories.” Chapter 2 reveals the self as a contingent construction, sculpted through redescriptions, as seen in Freud and Proust. Chapter 3 examines liberal societies as experimental creations, sustained by imaginative solidarity rather than fixed foundations, referencing Isaiah Berlin and Judith Shklar. While admiring Rorty's vivid metaphors and provocative ideas, Ryder critiques his potentially reductive view, questioning whether freedom alone can ensure moral progress. Packed with direct quotes and punchy insights, this episode sets the stage for upcoming discussions on irony and solidarity. Tune in to rethink how we create our world with the tools of language!
The journey in search of the destinationDoes life have a purpose? Is that what gives life meaning? Or is it the journey that matters the most?Join our four speakers - Nietzschean philosopher Babette Babich, clinical psychologist Frank Tallis, existentialist philosopher Jonathan Webber, and linguist philosopher Sandra Laugier - as they explore the different facets of this question. Setting ourselves goals in life seems both inevitable and necessary for the good life, yet achieving them might render living life meaningless. The balance between having a sense of purpose and experiencing things as they come is a hard one to set.Do you think life must have a purpose? Email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode!To witness such topics discussed live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
18Forty is celebrating its fifth year LIVE in NYC on June 9. Reserve your seats today!In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, David Bashevkin moderates a dialogue between Aryeh Englander—the ex-Orthodox Jew known as “Philo Judeas,” who is a moderator of the ambitious Frum/OTD Dialogue Facebook group—and Daniel Hagler, a frum surgeon and a moderator of the Facebook group Respectfully Debating Judaism. Together, we talk about seeking meaning, uncovering religious truths, and making the most of the precious gift we call “life.” In this episode we discuss: How do we know if Judaism is “real” and true? How is a religious commitment like a romantic one? Which is more important: Judaism being true or Judaism being useful?Tune in to hear a conversation about the ways in which we chase truth and determine how we ought to live our lives. Interview begins at 19:29.Follow-up Hagler interview begins at 1:19:04. References:18Forty Podcast: “Philo Judaeus: Is There a Room for Dialogue?”Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages by Hyam MaccobyReality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy by David J. ChalmersTzidkat HaTzadik 4118Forty Podcast: “Rav Moshe Weinberger: Can Mysticism Become a Community?”“Worlds Together” in MishpachaJewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein by Hilary PutnamNo Country for Old Men (2007)Slate Star CodexEruvin 13bHow Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought by Leora Batnitzky18Forty Podcast: “Malka Simkovich: The Mystery of the Jewish People”A Letter in the Scroll: Understanding Our Jewish Identity and Exploring the Legacy of the World's Oldest Religion by Rabbi Jonathan SacksNotes from Underground by Fyodor DostoevskyKiddushin 30aLeviticus 10:16For more 18Forty:NEWSLETTER: 18forty.org/joinCALL: (212) 582-1840EMAIL: info@18forty.orgWEBSITE: 18forty.orgIG: @18fortyX: @18_fortyWhatsApp: join hereBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/18forty-podcast--4344730/support.
durée : 00:03:35 - Le Pourquoi du comment : philo - par : Frédéric Worms - Qu'est-ce que l'intériorité ? Comment s'exprime-t-elle ? Est-ce un mythe ? Et si elle était moins une réalité cachée qu'une manière de nous raconter ? Contestée par Wittgenstein et Sartre, la notion d'intériorité résiste pourtant aux critiques. - réalisation : Rafik Zénine
In this season-opening episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, Rick Lee and Leigh Johnson welcome new co-host Talia Mae Bettcher, a leading voice in trans philosophy and feminist theory, to dive into the deceptively simple but persistently perplexing question: What is philosophy?This wide-ranging conversation explores whether philosophy is defined by its methods (argument, critique, concept creation), its outcomes (or lack thereof), or the scenes and communities in which it takes place. Along the way, the hosts discuss credentialism in academia, gatekeeping in the discipline, and how philosophy might survive outside the university.Drawing on thinkers like Graham Priest, Gilles Deleuze, Wittgenstein, Richard Rorty, Kristie Dotson, and Pierre Hadot, the trio refuse to close the question. Instead, they ask: Can philosophy remain meaningful in a world that demands clear outcomes and fixed definitions? Is staying with the question itself the real task?Whether you're a seasoned philosopher or new to the field, this episode invites you into an ongoing, unfinished conversation—over drinks, at the bar, where the real philosophy happens.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/what-is-philosophy-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!Follow us on Blue Sky @hotelbarpodcast.bsky.social, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★