Monty Python Sings “The Philosopher’s Song,” Revealing the Drinking Habits of Great European Thinkers

in Comedy, Philosophy | March 11th, 2014

Did you know, stu­dent of dead white philoso­phers, that Hei­deg­ger was a “boozy beg­gar”? Wittgen­stein a “beery swine” and Descartes a “drunk­en fart”? What about Pla­to, who, “they say, could stick it away; Half a crate of whiskey every day”? Nei­ther did I until I saw mem­bers of Mon­ty Python sing “The Philosopher’s Song,” above, from their 1982 live show at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. Eric Idle, in what looks like an Aus­tralian bush hat strung with teabags, intro­duces the num­ber, say­ing it’s “a nice intel­lec­tu­al song for those two or three of you in the audi­ence who under­stand these things.” Then Idle, joined by Michael Palin and fre­quent Python col­lab­o­ra­tor Neil Innes, launch­es into a paean to drink­ing that col­or­ful­ly calls the great philoso­phers crazed dip­so­ma­ni­acs. Well, all but John Stu­art Mill, who got “par­tic­u­lar­ly ill” from “half a pint of shandy.”

It’s all non­sense, right? Maybe so, but the Pythons were no strangers to phi­los­o­phy. Hav­ing assem­bled from the august bod­ies of Oxford and Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ties, they per­pet­u­al­ly revis­it­ed aca­d­e­m­ic themes, if only to mock them. And yet some philoso­phers take the work of Mon­ty Python very seri­ous­ly. In his Mon­ty Python and Phi­los­o­phy: Nudge, Nudge, Think Think!, Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Gary Hard­cas­tle refers to an essay called “Trac­ta­tus Come­dio-Philo­soph­i­cus,” which “wants us to know that the only dif­fer­ence between Mon­ty Python and aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy is that phi­los­o­phy isn’t fun­ny.” So there you have it. Skip the years of penury and over­work and go direct­ly to Youtube for your high­er edu­ca­tion in the clas­sics from the Pythons. Then lis­ten to Pro­fes­sor Hardcastle—in Open Court’s “Pop­u­lar Cul­ture and Phi­los­o­phy” pod­cast above—expound at length on the philo­soph­ic virtues of Cleese, Idle, Palin, Gilliam, and Jones. And final­ly, a bonus: below watch Christo­pher Hitchens sing “The Philoso­pher’s Song” from mem­o­ry in a 2009 inter­view.

The song grew out of an ear­li­er Python set­up known as “The Bruce Sketch” (below). The sketch is pret­ty dated—some moments cer­tain­ly come off as more offen­sive than per­haps deemed at the time. (Our Eng­lish read­ers will have to let us know if “pom­my bas­tard” smarts.) Four Aus­tralian phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors at the fic­ti­tious Uni­ver­si­ty of Woola­maloo, all of them named Bruce, wel­come a new mem­ber, Michael Bald­win (whom they insist on call­ing “Bruce”). The Bruces seem a nice bunch of chaps until they start in on their rules, reveal­ing a con­temp­tu­ous obses­sion with keep­ing out the “poofters.” It’s per­fect­ly in keep­ing with this assem­bly of ami­able right-wing nation­al­ists: The Bruces inform their Eng­lish col­league that he may teach “the great social­ist thinkers, pro­vid­ed he makes it clear that they were wrong,” and then they get a vis­it from a shuf­fling car­i­ca­ture of an Abo­rig­i­nal ser­vant (whom one must­n’t mis­treat, state the rules, “if there’s any­one watch­ing”). In addi­tion to big­otry, Aus­tralia, pol­i­tics and prayer, the Bruces, their new mem­ber learns, seem most­ly con­cerned with drink­ing rather than phi­los­o­phy. In my per­son­al expe­ri­ence of some aca­d­e­m­ic quar­ters, this is at least one part of the sketch that hasn’t aged at all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an: Reli­gious Satire, Polit­i­cal Satire, or Blas­phe­my?

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Oxford’s Free Course A Romp Through Ethics for Complete Beginners Will Teach You Right from Wrong

in Online Courses, Philosophy | March 4th, 2014

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Mar­i­anne Tal­bot has a num­ber of excel­lent phi­los­o­phy pod­casts online, some of which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on the site. Today, we bring you Tal­bot’s A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners (Web — iTune­sU — YouTube), which address­es one of phi­los­o­phy’s cen­tral ques­tions: what is the right way to con­duct your­self in life?

The prob­lem may, at first, seem some­what triv­ial. “Live whichev­er way you want, as long as you’re going to be a good per­son,” you might say, shrug­ging off the ques­tion. But it’s real­ly a great deal more com­pli­cat­ed than that. What does being a “good” per­son entail? Should we emu­late the actions of some­one wide­ly con­sid­ered vir­tu­ous?

Does being good mean liv­ing by absolute rules? Say, nev­er mur­der anoth­er human being? Or should we tai­lor our actions accord­ing to each sit­u­a­tion, with the aim of achiev­ing the great­est quan­ti­ty of good as our only hard-and-fast rule? If the pos­si­bil­i­ties are mak­ing your head spin, you’re not alone: philoso­phers have done their best to fig­ure out pre­cise­ly what con­sti­tutes moral rights and wrongs since the days of Socrates.

Luck­i­ly, Tal­bot is ready to guide us through the com­plex­i­ties. True to its title, A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners walks stu­dents through sev­en com­pre­hen­sive lec­tures (watch them all above) on moral thought, pro­vid­ing a neat­ly-pack­aged sur­vey of the field. Tal­bot begins by dis­cussing some pre­con­di­tions to moral rea­son­ing, and then sets out Aristotle’s con­cep­tion of right­eous liv­ing, which con­sists of act­ing in a vir­tu­ous man­ner (if you smell some­thing fishy about that state­ment, you’re on the right track). Tal­bot then pro­ceeds to guide the class through some of philosophy’s most sig­nif­i­cant eth­i­cal par­a­digms, explain­ing Immanuel Kant’s idea of the invi­o­lable cat­e­gor­i­cal imper­a­tive and the moral cal­cu­lus behind John Stu­art Mill’s util­i­tar­i­an thought.

A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners is cur­rent­ly avail­able on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford web­site in both audio and video for­mats, and also on iTune­sU and YouTube. You can find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, along­side class­es like Ancient and Medieval Phi­los­o­phy, Aris­to­tle: Ethics, and Bioethics: An Intro­duc­tion, all part of our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

 

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Oxford’s Free Course Critical Reasoning For Beginners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philosopher

in Online Courses, Philosophy | February 27th, 2014

Oxford_University,_Radcliffe_Camera,_a_Reading_room_of_Bodleian_libraryWhen I was younger, I often found myself dis­agree­ing with some­thing I’d read or heard, but could­n’t explain exact­ly why. Despite being unable to pin­point the pre­cise rea­sons, I had a strong sense that the rules of log­ic were being vio­lat­ed. After I was exposed to crit­i­cal think­ing in high school and uni­ver­si­ty, I learned to rec­og­nize prob­lem­at­ic argu­ments, whether they be a straw man, an appeal to author­i­ty, or an ad hominem attack. Faulty argu­ments are all-per­va­sive, and the men­tal bias­es that under­lie them pop up in media cov­er­age, col­lege class­es, and arm­chair the­o­riz­ing. Want to learn how to avoid them? Look no fur­ther than Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners, the top rat­ed iTune­sU col­lec­tion of lec­tures led by Oxford University’s Mar­i­anne Tal­bot.

Tal­bot builds the course from the ground up, and begins by explain­ing that argu­ments con­sist of a set of premis­es that, log­i­cal­ly linked togeth­er, lead to a con­clu­sion. She pro­ceeds to out­line the way to lay out an argu­ment log­i­cal­ly and clear­ly, and even­tu­al­ly, the basic steps involved in assess­ing its strengths and weak­ness­es. The six-part series, which was record­ed in 2009, shows no sign of wear, and Tal­bot, unlike some phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, does a ter­rif­ic job of mak­ing the con­tent digestible. If you’ve got some time on your hands, the lec­tures, which aver­age just over an hour in length, can be fin­ished in less than a week. That’s peanuts, if you con­sid­er that all our knowl­edge is built on the foun­da­tions that this course estab­lish­es. If you haven’t had the chance to be exposed to a class on crit­i­cal thought, I can’t rec­om­mend Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners with enough enthu­si­asm: there are few men­tal skills that are as under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed, and as cen­tral to our dai­ly lives, as crit­i­cal think­ing.

Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners is cur­rent­ly avail­able on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford web­site in both audio and video for­mats, and also on iTune­sU and YouTube. You can find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

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Enter the Hannah Arendt Archives & Discover Rare Audio Lectures, Manuscripts, Marginalia, Letters, Postcards & More

in Archives, Philosophy | February 27th, 2014

EichmanJerusalem

The work of Han­nah Arendt has been in the press recent­ly for two rea­sons in par­tic­u­lar: first, the 50th anniver­sary of her book Eich­mann in Jerusalem, pub­lished in 1963 from reports she filed for The New York­er on the 1961 tri­al of the arche­typ­al Nazi bureau­crat. Then there is Mar­garethe von Trotta’s 2012 biopic Han­nah Arendt, star­ring Ger­man actress Bar­bara Sukowa as the Ger­man Jew­ish philoso­pher. Recent cov­er­age of the book and the film have focused on Arendt’s rep­u­ta­tion as a philo­soph­i­cal jour­nal­ist most close­ly iden­ti­fied with the famous descrip­tive phrase “the banal­i­ty of evil,” a com­ment on Adolf Eich­mann as an exem­plar of geno­ci­dal mur­der­ers who, as the well-worn defense goes, were “just fol­low­ing orders.”

Arendt schol­ar Roger Berkowitz argues that this read­ing of Arendt’s book is a pro­found mis­read­ing. Eich­mann in Jerusalem was divi­sive, set­ting crit­ics against each oth­er in efforts to vin­di­cate or cas­ti­gate its author. The con­tro­ver­sy, how­ev­er, at the time of pub­li­ca­tion and again in the recent re-eval­u­a­tion, has the unfor­tu­nate effect of obscur­ing the breadth of Arendt’s philo­soph­i­cal think­ing apart from Eich­mann and Nazism. Those inter­est­ed in con­nect­ing with Arendt’s life, schol­ar­ship, and philo­soph­i­cal insight can find a wealth of archival mate­ri­als online from the col­lec­tions of Bard Col­lege and the Library of Con­gress. Today, we high­light sev­er­al items in those col­lec­tions that may be of inter­est, includ­ing the Library of Congress’s scanned copy of the final type­script of Eich­mann in Jerusalem.

Part 1:
Part 2 (Q&A):

First, direct­ly above, hear Arendt’s speech “Pow­er & Vio­lence.” The lec­ture re-iter­ates ideas Arendt expressed more ful­ly in a lengthy 1969 essay pub­lished by the New York Review of Books as “Reflec­tions on Vio­lence” and as a book titled On Vio­lence. In the lec­ture and the essay, Arendt ref­er­ences the work of thinkers like Friedrich Engels and, espe­cial­ly, Frantz Fanon in a crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion of the roles racism and ide­ol­o­gy play in state vio­lence.

That same year Arendt deliv­ered a series of lec­tures for a Spring semes­ter course at The New School for Social Research called “Phi­los­o­phy and Pol­i­tics: What is Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy.” This fas­ci­nat­ing inves­ti­ga­tion grap­ples not only with polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, but phi­los­o­phy in gen­er­al as a mean­ing­ful activ­i­ty. You can view the full type­scripts of her course lec­tures here.

The Library of Con­gress has also dig­i­tized much of Arendt’s cor­re­spon­dence and uploaded images of her let­ters, includ­ing some to and from such well-known fig­ures as W.H. Auden, Lionel Trilling, and Alfred Kazin (most of Arendt’s let­ters are only avail­able for view­ing onsite at the Library of Con­gress, The New School Uni­ver­si­ty, or the Uni­ver­si­ty of Old­en­burg).

Bard College’s Han­nah Arendt Col­lec­tion show­cas­es many of Arendt’s per­son­al books. We can see dig­i­tized images of her copies of—among many others—Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Leo Strauss, her friend poet Robert Low­ell, Carl Schmitt, and, of course, her one­time men­tor and lover, Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger. Each of the uploads shows the pages in which Arendt under­lined or marked key pas­sages and left mar­gin­al notes.

Benjamin-Arendt

In addi­tion to the “Arendt Mar­gin­a­lia” sec­tion, Bard hosts a gallery that includes “inscribed books, jour­nals & man­u­scripts,” “art­work & pho­tographs,” and “post­cards and oth­er cor­re­spon­dence” (such as the above post­card from Wal­ter Ben­jamin, addressed to “Han­nah Stern,” her mar­ried name at the time).

Last­ly, for an excel­lent overview of Arendt’s life and work that puts all of the above mate­ri­als in con­text, see the Library of Congress’s “Bio­graph­i­cal Note” and be sure to read “Three Essays: The Role of Expe­ri­ence in Han­nah Arendt’s Polit­i­cal Thought” by Jerome Kohn, direc­tor of the New School’s Han­nah Arendt Cen­ter. As many know, Arendt, and many oth­er Ger­man Jew­ish intel­lec­tu­als who fled the Nazis, found a home at New York’s New School for Social Research (now New School Uni­ver­si­ty). And we have the New School (and an Andrew W. Mel­lon Foun­da­tion grant) to thank for the Library of Congress’s vast, dig­i­tized col­lec­tion of Arendt’s papers, which pre­serves her lega­cy for gen­er­a­tions to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

Han­nah Arendt’s Orig­i­nal Arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil” in the New York­er Archive

The Tri­al of Adolf Eich­mann at 50

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Two Animations of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: One Narrated by Orson Welles, Another Made with Clay

in Philosophy | February 7th, 2014

The ever-flick­er­ing lights, the ever-present screen, the stu­pe­fied spec­ta­tors immune to a larg­er real­i­ty and in need of sud­den enlightenment—Plato’s alle­go­ry of the cave from Book VII of The Repub­lic is a mar­ket­ing department’s dream: it sums up an entire brand in a stock-sim­ple para­ble that almost any­one can fol­low, one that lends itself to com­pelling­ly brief visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions like those above and below. In the top video, Orson Welles nar­rates while the cam­era pans over some col­or­ful­ly styl­ized illus­tra­tions of the fable by artist Dick Oden. This pre­serves the didac­tic tone of the text, but it is a lit­tle dry. In con­trast, the award-win­ning three-dimen­sion­al ren­der­ings of the pris­on­ers and their non­stop nick­elodeon in the Clay­ma­tion Cave Alle­go­ry below offers dra­mat­ic close-ups of the chained prisoner’s faces and the hyp­not­ic move­ment of fire­light over the cave’s rock walls.

Plato’s “brand” is a doc­trine of ide­al­ism that posits a realm of ide­al forms, of which every­thing we know by our sens­es is but an infe­ri­or copy. The iron­i­cal­ly poet­ic Socrates relates the sto­ry to illus­trate “the effect of edu­ca­tion and the lack of it on our nature.”

And yet it does much more than this—Plato illus­trates an epis­te­mol­o­gy that sup­ports notions of the soul and immor­tal­i­ty, and hence his ideas sur­vived in the­ol­o­gy long after they was sup­pos­ed­ly van­quished by ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy.

Plato’s idea of rea­son as a per­fect, unchang­ing realm of which we’re only dim­ly aware is intu­itive­ly com­pelling. Most of us are at some time con­scious of how lim­it­ed our per­cep­tions tru­ly are. But just because the alle­go­ry of the cave is fair­ly easy to com­mu­ni­cate to phi­los­o­phy 101 stu­dents doesn’t mean it’s easy to adapt to the screen like the two exam­ples above. Mark Lin­sen­may­er of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life points us toward these 20 YouTube takes on Plato’s cave, “many of them,” he writes, “fright­ful­ly ama­teur­ish and some of them pre­sent­ing a warped and/or incom­pre­hen­si­ble ver­sion of the sto­ry.” I am par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by the silent film ver­sion below. As always, your com­ments on the sound­ness of these var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions are most wel­come.

Cours­es on Pla­to can be found on our list of 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er Free Online Course col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Drink­ing Par­ty, 1965 Film Adapts Plato’s Sym­po­sium to Mod­ern Times

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Famous Philoso­phers Imag­ined as Action Fig­ures: Plun­der­ous Pla­to, Dan­ger­ous Descartes & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Student Asks Noam Chomsky for Dating Advice

in Life, Philosophy | January 30th, 2014

Noam Chom­sky is a pret­ty unlike­ly celebri­ty. As a pre­em­i­nent anar­chist the­o­rist, his polit­i­cal writ­ing is full of pas­sion­ate inten­si­ty, but in his numer­ous pub­lic appear­ances, he con­forms much more to images asso­ci­at­ed with his day job as a pre­em­i­nent aca­d­e­m­ic and lin­guist. He’s very soft-spoken—I’ve nev­er heard him raise his voice above the reg­is­ter of polite cof­fee-shop conversation—and frumpy in that elder schol­ar kind of way: uncombed gray hair, an end­less sup­ply of sweaters and cor­duroy jack­ets…

So, yes, it’s amus­ing when, in the short clip above, a young Chom­sky fan asks the 85-year-old “father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics” for advice on how to talk to women. Chomsky’s non­plussed response is hon­est and heart­felt. He has noth­ing to offer in this regard, he says: “I got out of that busi­ness 70 years ago.” If it seems like Chomsky’s math is a lit­tle off—he was mar­ried in 1949—consider that he and his wife Car­ol met when they were both just five years old.

Theirs was a qui­et­ly charm­ing romance. Chom­sky, who has always pos­sessed an extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ty to keep his per­son­al, polit­i­cal, and pro­fes­sion­al lives sep­a­rate, did not speak much of their mar­riage until after Carol’s death in 2008. In the excerpt above from a Big Think inter­view short­ly after, Chom­sky tells a sto­ry of group of peas­ants in South­ern Colum­bia who plant­ed a for­est in his wife’s mem­o­ry. He’s also asked to define love. This time, he has a much more inter­est­ing response than his reply to the would-be pick up artist above: “I just know it’s—has an unbreak­able grip, but I can’t tell you what it is.  It’s just life’s emp­ty with­out it.”

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Nietzsche Dispenses Dating Advice in a Short Screwball Film, My Friend Friedrich

in Comedy, Film, Philosophy | January 27th, 2014

My Friend Friedrich opens on awk­ward, bespec­ta­cled Colum­bia stu­dent Nate hav­ing a heart to heart on the phone with his moth­er. Then, in a phi­los­o­phy class, he almost suc­ceeds in land­ing a date by lob­bing an illus­trat­ed invi­ta­tion at his love inter­est, Emma. All goes awry when a taller, more con­fi­dent, bespec­ta­cled Colum­bia stu­dent cuts him off at the knees. So far, so very New York stu­dent film, but a con­ceit arrives to dis­tin­guish this sto­ry of Ivy League dat­ing woes: the ghost of Friedrich Niet­zsche appears before Nate to guide him towards self-actu­al­iza­tion.

In what “seems to have been a senior project at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts,” accord­ing to Crit­i­cal The­o­ry (a Vimeo upload dates the film as “cir­ca 2003), My Friend Friedrich gives us the typ­i­cal under­grad­u­ate expe­ri­ence of the philosopher’s voice. Niet­zsche instructs our young friend to regard the flash­ing lights, tall build­ings, and “horse­less car­riages” of Times Square as mean­ing­less. “Nihilism cares about noth­ing” he says and urges his pupil to will him­self to pow­er. It’s not too pro­found a por­tray­al of Nietzsche—though of course it’s only played for laughs—and seems to come main­ly from a sur­face read­ing of his Will to Pow­er, an unfin­ished man­u­script pub­lished after the philosopher’s death. (His sis­ter fraud­u­lent­ly pitched a man­gled edi­tion to the Nazis as Nietzsche’s under­writ­ing of their ide­ol­o­gy, cut­ting out all of her brother’s strong remarks against anti-Semi­tism.)

One could argue, if it’s worth explain­ing the humor, that this super­fi­cial take on Niet­zsche is pre­cise­ly the point, since it’s the dif­fi­dent Nate’s slight read­ing of Will to Pow­er at the out­set that pro­duces his hal­lu­ci­na­tion-slash-vis­i­ta­tion. Niet­zsche helps Nate win an intel­lec­tu­al piss­ing con­test by quot­ing Beyond Good and Evil chap­ter and verse, then goads him into some awk­ward out­bursts and even­tu­al­ly over­stays his wel­come. The screw­ball con­clu­sion is ripped right out of Wes Ander­son.

It’s all in good fun, but if you find your­self eager for some more sub­stan­tial Niet­zsche resources, we’ve got them aplen­ty. You might begin with emi­nent Niet­zsche schol­ar and Will to Pow­er trans­la­tor Wal­ter Kaufmann’s lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre. In our list of free phi­los­o­phy cours­es you’ll find Niet­zsche cours­es by Leo Strauss, Rick Rod­er­ick, and oth­ers. Alain de Bot­ton offers an intro­duc­tion on Niet­zsche as part of his Guide to Hap­pi­ness, and BBC pro­gram Human, All Too Human presents Niet­zsche’s life in a doc­u­men­tary series that also includes Sartre and Hei­deg­ger. Many works by Niet­zsche can also be found in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tion.

And if it’s more Niet­zsche humor you’re after, see this failed attempt to explain the philoso­pher to a group of 5‑year-olds.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball”

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Does God Exist?: William Lane Craig Debates Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris & Richard Dawkins

in Philosophy, Religion | January 16th, 2014

Debates are mod­ern glad­i­a­tor contests—predicated on the blunt force of the oppo­nents’ foren­sic sta­mi­na, charis­ma, and per­son­al con­vic­tion. Speak­ers lack­ing in per­son­al­i­ty make for tedious debaters, and sub­stance seems to mat­ter lit­tle when par­ti­sans gath­er to cheer on their cham­pi­on. Rarely do rhetor­i­cal spec­ta­cles sway the faith­ful. At least in our time, they tend to seem more like com­pet­ing pep ral­lies. We’ve learned, for exam­ple, that such high pro­file events as U.S. pres­i­den­tial debates have lit­tle effect on the out­come of elec­tions. But ver­bal con­tests over who will make the best Leader of the Free World can seem mod­est next to debates between the­olo­gians and philoso­phers over the exis­tence of God. After all, we’ve heard more or less the same argu­ments for cen­turies now, and no one’s any clos­er to a “proof.” And though I’m not aware of any­one who argues thus, there is no way to dis­prove God’s exis­tence either.

Nonethe­less, with the rise of reli­gious fer­vor world­wide, and rejec­tion of the same by vocif­er­ous sec­u­lars, we’ve seen so-called “New Athe­ists” mount chal­lenge after chal­lenge to the author­i­ty and valid­i­ty of reli­gious institutions—primarily those rep­re­sent­ing the big three monotheisms. The philo­soph­i­cal­ly inclined reli­gious have their heavy­weights as well. Bio­la Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy and evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian William Lane Craig has tak­en on the man­tle of defend­er not only of his par­tic­u­lar brand of faith but of the exis­tence of God gen­er­al­ly. Craig is a skilled orator—his fans like to point out that he “wins” all of his debates, though what exact­ly that means is unclear. His crit­ics call him every­thing from “dis­hon­est” and “sleazy” to an apol­o­gist for geno­cide and reli­gious­ly moti­vat­ed pseu­do­science. What­ev­er you think of Craig, he cer­tain­ly does draw a crowd. But so do his most famous antag­o­nists. Today, we bring you two such exis­tence of God debates: at the top, see Craig debate the unflap­pable Christo­pher Hitchens on his home turf of Bio­la. And direct­ly above, he takes on Sam Har­ris at Notre Dame.

You may be won­der­ing, if you’ve fol­lowed these squab­bles at all, whether the infa­mous evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins has stepped into the ring with Craig. He has. Dawkins appeared with skep­ti­cal authors Michael Sher­mer and Matt Rid­ley in an intel­lec­tu­al wrestle­ma­nia of sorts at a Mex­i­can con­fer­ence called “Ciu­dad de las Ideas” (City of Ideas). On the oth­er side of the stage sat Craig, his col­league Doug Geivett, and rab­bi David Wolpe. You can see the event above—each speak­er gets up and steps into a lit­er­al ring, com­plete with bright red ropes, and the result is less a debate than bewil­der­ing series of meta­phys­i­cal sales pitch­es. Dawkins him­self did not con­sid­er it a debate. Though he’s made plen­ty of ene­mies among athe­ists and believ­ers alike, accused of intol­er­ance, slop­py rea­son­ing, sex­ism, and worse, Dawkins has won adher­ents for declar­ing a prin­ci­pled stand against appear­ing with Craig in a true debate for­mat, cit­ing Craig’s “dark side” as a “deplorable apol­o­gist for geno­cide.” As with all these attacks and ripostes, not to men­tion the uni­verse-sized ques­tions, you’ll sim­ply have to make up your own mind.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

The Unbe­liev­ers, A New Film Star­ring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, & Cor­mac McCarthy

Reli­gion: Free Cours­es Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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