Podcast
Philosophize This!
Stephen West explains philosophers and their ideas in chronological order for a general audience.
These are Stoa's briefs of episodes from Philosophize This!. The episodes belong to their makers, and every brief links to the original.
Episode briefs 9
Sloterdijk on Environments, Immunity, and Changing Your Life
The host explains how Peter Sloterdijk builds on Heidegger to argue that our environments form us, and that changing a life or a civilization means building better collective immunity.
Sloterdijk: Why Humans Are the Animal That Trains
The host walks through the first half of Peter Sloterdijk's You Must Change Your Life, arguing that people are shaped by practice and training rather than by belief alone.
Sloterdijk on Modern Cynicism, Diogenes and the Weimar Warning
Steven West explains Peter Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason and contrasts modern cynicism with the lived defiance of Diogenes.
What Philosophers Argue About Lying
Steven West surveys what Nietzsche, Augustine, Kant, Arendt, Plato, Stirner, and Mandeville say about the nature and ethics of lying.
MacIntyre on Why Philosophy Is Not Optional
The host explains Alasdair MacIntyre's argument that everyone already lives by philosophical answers, and that modern universities fail to teach the judgment needed to examine them.
MacIntyre on Dependence, Virtue, and the Self-Made Myth
Steven West lays out Alasdair MacIntyre's case that human beings are dependent rational animals, not self-sufficient individuals, and what that means for virtue and society.
MacIntyre's Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry
The host walks through Alasdair MacIntyre's argument that all moral reasoning, including claims of neutrality, comes from within a tradition.
Hamlet as a Play About Nothing
The host explores Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster's reading of Hamlet as a study in paralysis, surveillance, and nihilism.
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on Honor, Violence, and Love
The host of Philosophize This! examines how Romeo and Juliet critiques honor-based violence and stages competing ideas about love's rationality and meaning.