Category: Blog
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Why freedom?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: With the publication of Essays: The Philosophy Crush Podcast, my intention in releasing this book was to bring this podcast project to a conclusion. The book contains all the podcast episodes with several additional ones toward the end for your reading pleasure. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working on this podcast over the last few years,…
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Belief and temperament
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: Over a century ago, the American philosopher and psychologist William James argued in his book Pragmatism that what he called “the present dilemma in philosophy” is that philosophers may not be as objective as they have long claimed to be. The ideal of rational inquiry has long been, particularly since the enlightenment, that we must…
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Deschooling?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: Half a century ago, Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich published a little book called Deschooling Society. Illich’s principal aim in that book was to critique existing educational institutions from the elementary school to the university. His aim was clearly indicated in the title: he wants to “deschool” society—to get rid of them, and to…
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What kills a democracy?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: We make a very large mistake when we imagine that western-style democracy is destined to remain ascendant forever. Authoritarianism is the proverbial wolf at the door in every democratic society, and its constant tendency is to change forms from time to time and from place to place. It has been correctly said by…
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The banality of evil
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: The second chapter of Leo Tolstoy’s short story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” begins with the following sentence: “Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” I first read this story as a teenager and I can remember being more than a little struck by it; what…
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Judging historical figures
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: In the city where I live, a statue of John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, has been removed from its pedestal in a public park and placed in an undisclosed location for an undetermined period of time, its future unknown. The latest target of cancel culture, he has also had his name…
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How do you become a philosopher?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: It’s customary for people in my profession to answer this question in the following way: you become a philosopher by earning usually three degrees in philosophy from the best universities you can get into and for which you can afford the tuition; when you complete your Ph.D., you’re a philosopher and you have a license to “do” philosophy. This answer is a…
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Cancel culture and academic freedom
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: I can only hope that cancel culture is a trend that, like many similar phenomena, is here today and will be gone tomorrow, although I’m not about to offer a prediction about this. When a pendulum swings hard in one direction, you can almost predict it’s going to swing back again with terrific force—almost but not…
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What makes innovation possible?
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: We all value innovation, or at least we say we do. A question I seldom see answered or even asked, however, is what makes innovation possible? The question, what makes something possible, is often a philosophical one and it’s an important question to ask. In the case of most any innovation in knowledge…
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The search for meaning
PODCAST: TRANSCRIPT: One of the questions that first attracted me to philosophy when I was a teenager is the perennial problem of the meaning of life. The search for meaning drove me to read widely in academic and popular philosophy, psychology, religion, and literature, and was implicit also to a great deal of the music…
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