In this episode, I talk with Tom Davies, Seymour Reader in Ancient History and Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, about how understanding Indian philosophy in relationship with the rest of the ancient world helps us reflect on what philosophy is, as a human activity, in different cultural contexts.

Note: This is the final episode of the regular season, concluding the series of interviews with philosophers who taught Philosophy and Political Thought at Yale-NUS. Not every philosopher participated, but interviews with all those who did are now available as episodes one through ten.

April 11, 2026: This is a revised version of the original podcast. The episode now includes spoken credit for Kevin MacLeod’s music, “Brittle Rille,” which I use for the show.

Further Resources

Tom Davies on Academia.edu: https://yale-nus.academia.edu/TomHerculesDavies

Ancient Egyptian Philosophy at Philosophy Now: https://philosophynow.org/issues/128/Does_Western_Philosophy_Have_Egyptian_Roots

Hannah Arendt: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/

Music Credits:

“Brittle Rille,” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/