Hildegard von Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen was a 12th century abbess, polymath, and composer whose work spanned visionary theology, philosophy, cosmology, medicine, botany, and music. Her extraordinary intellectual accomplishments belie her humble claim to be “just a woman”. Josh and Ray explore her life and thought with Christina Van Dyke from Columbia University, author of A Hidden Wisdom: Medieval Contemplatives on Self-Knowledge, Reason, Love, Persons, and Immortality.

Nísia Floresta

Nísia Floresta was a 19th-century writer and translator known as “the Brazilian Mary Wollstonecraft.” She published the first book on women’s rights in South America and argued for indigenous rights during the post-colonial period in Brazil. Josh and Ray explore her lifeand thought with Nastassja Pugliese from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, author of Nísia Floresta (Elements on Women in the History of Philosophy).

Im Yunjidang

Im Yunjidang was the first Confucian philosopher to argue for women’s equality in matters of morality and to claim that women, just like men, can be sages. She also argued that it isn't just what you do that matters morally—it's also how you decide. Josh and Ray explore her life and thought with Hwa Yeong Wang from Georgetown University

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft is often labeled as a “liberal feminist” because of her concern for women’s rights and conceptions of freedom. But that label narrows her work, which was broadly critical of all social inequalities that distort human relations. Josh and Ray explore her lifeand thought with Sylvana Tomaselli from the University of Cambridge, author of Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics.

Mary Astell

Mary Astell had radical views about marriage, which she said was a type of “slavery,” and she advocated for women’s education. But she was also politically illiberal and believed that women who married should accept political subordination to their husbands. Josh and Ray explore her life and thought with Allauren Forbes from McMaster University.

Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish was a writer of poetry, philosophy, polemics, histories, plays, and utopian fiction. She employed many different genres as a way to overcome access barriers for women and build an audience for her subversive philosophical ideas. Josh and Ray explore her life and thought with Karen Detlefsen from the University of Pennsylvania, co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy.

Elisabeth of Bohemia

Elisabeth of Bohemia is best known for her correspondence with rationalist Enlightenment philosopher René Descartes. She articulated a devastating critique of Cartesian Dualism, in particular its theory of how mind and body possibly interact. Josh and Ray explore her life and thought with Lisa Shapiro from McGill University, co-editor of Early Modern Philosophy: An Anthology.

Extended Summer Reading Conversations

Summer Reading List 2023

What books should thoughtful people read this summer? Josh and Ray talk to the authors and editors of new and recent books as they compile their annual Summer Reading List: Michael Schur, creator of TV's The Good Place and author of How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question Lori Gruen, Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University and co-editor of The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism Gabriella Safran, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University and author of Recording Russia: Trying to...

The Gender Box(es)

What Is Gender?

Gender is a controversial topic these days, but people can't seem to agree about what gender is. Is it an inner identity, a biological fact, or an oppressive system? Should we respect it or resist it? Should it even be a thing? Josh and guest-host Blakey Vermeule question gender with regular co-host Ray Briggs, co-author of What Even Is Gender?

Art as Climate Action

Can Art Save Us?

The world is facing an unprecedented environmental crisis, and we urgently need good ways to address it. Courageous politicians would help, of course, as might scientific innovations. But how much of the problem is a failure of imagination? Could the arts help us see our way out of the problem? How can literature, painting, and movies redraw the landscape in our minds? Josh and Ray imagine a conversation with Harriet Hawkins, Professor of Human Geography and Co-Director of the Centre for GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway, University of London.

This Blog Post Is False

True Contradictions

If you want to tell the truth, you shouldn’t contradict yourself—that’s just common sense. A suspect who was home on the night of the crime can’t have been elsewhere, and whatever the weapon, we can rule out the hypothesis that it was both a candlestick and not a candlestick. But there are philosophers who claim we shouldn’t overgeneralize based on murder mysteries: some contradictions are true. Could a badly written law make the dastardly deed both legal and illegal? Do mathematical paradoxes create weird things that both do and don’t exist? If we embrace contradictions, will we still be...

The Power of Prediction

You’re standing at the top of a mountain, surveying the vast landscape below. The information your senses take in flows to your brain, which processes it to create a representation of the scene. Or does it? What if instead of directly perceiving the world around us, the brain is more like a prediction machine that hallucinates a picture of the world? If that were the case, could we still rely on the so-called “evidence of our senses”? Would it be possible to avoid unpleasant sensory experiences, like hunger or pain, by simply changing our expectations? How can we harness the power of...

The Brain as Prediction Machine

Derek Parfit and Your Future Self

The works of Derek Parfit (1942-2017) have had a profound influence on how philosophers understand rational decision-making, ethics, and personal identity. At the heart of Parfit's thinking are questions about how you should relate to your future self, and whether you should treat your future self any differently than other future people. So why does Parfit argue that it's wrong to place a special value on your own survival? What would it take to value others in the way that you value yourself? And how might we harness Parfit's insights to make the world a better place? Josh and Ray's...

Parfit and the Selves That Matter

Olfactory Philosophy