The Reeds Podcast

Damon and Francisco attempt to awaken the podcast from its dogmatic slumber by discussing a classic essay by philosopher Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty". The essay is one of the most influential in recent political philosophy, and his conceptions of positive and negative liberty frame much of the discourse in the field. We discuss how this distinction leads to Berlin's defense of liberalism, whether his value pluralism leads to relativism, and debate if he's too harsh on positive liberty. 

We continue our discussion of modernity and what to do about it with another book from a St. John's tutor: the late Lise van Boxel's Warspeak: Nietzsche's Victory over Nihilism.  We are also lucky enough to be joined by her colleague, friend, and fellow tutor at St. John's, Michael Grenke. Besides working with her very closely on the book, including writing the introduction, he has translated some of Nietzsche's works. 

The book is a close reading of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, a polemic against the slave morality which Nietzsche diagnoses as the cause of modern nihilism. The group begins by discussing various aspects of the moral-theological prejudice, a central idea in Van Boxel's reading of Nietzsche. We also spend some time discussing how this sets up what is promised in the subtitle of the book: the victory over nihilism.

Damon, Francisco, and Peter take the opportunity to reflect on the intellectual roots of their alma mater, St. John's College, by discussing Jacob Klein's essay, "Modern Rationalism." Jacob Klein was the dean of St. John's, and this episode comes in between having two tutors of the college as guests on the podcast (Close Reed #15 and #17), both of which episodes are related to the problems posed by modernity and how to respond to them. 

Klein takes a unique approach to the problem, through the history of mathematics. For him, the conditions of modernity are fundamentally created by the premises of modern mathematical physics and the conceptual shifts we had to make in order to create such a science. He traces this to the origin of the algebraic method developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, claiming that the shift from thinking about numbers as related to definite, concrete multitudes ('4' means '::'), to numbers as any possible multitudes you please ('a' means 'any number'), is a novel and radical break. This break is distinguished from the Greek or medieval mathematics by its greater separation from concrete reality. This separation was made possible because of the mind-body dualism created by Descartes (who is also one of the originators of modern algebra), creating the conceptual possibility for the world to be known through pure ideas alone, in complete separation from the environment (also known as rationalism). Klein then connects this development with the conditions of today, specifically the rise of capitalism and a highly ordered world, thus diagnosing our time as 'modern rationalism'. In this episode, we primarily try to clarify and map out these connections. 

Now with fancy new intro music (credits go to the guest, and to Dionysus for the inspiration)!

Damon is joined once again by Zihan Mei of The Reeds to talk about Euripides' classic tragedy, The Bacchae. Dionysus has arrived in Thebes intent on punishing the inhabitants, specifically the king Pentheus and his family, for not recognizing his divinity. He drives the women of Thebes into ecstatic frenzy, and they leave the city to enact Dionysian rituals in the mountains. Understandably upset with this, Pentheus antagonizes the disguised Dionysus, and gets his brutal comeuppance by the end. 

Mei wrote his senior thesis at St. John's on this play, and so he and Damon begin by discussing what it was about this text that he found intriguing. Topics include the paradoxical nature of Dionysus, why Pentheus fails to recognize the god, Nietzsche's take on Euripides, and more.  

We're joined once again by Bert Loan, professor of economics and dialogue-based pedagogy at Universidad Francisco Marroquin. This time, Francisco and Damon talk with Bert about the nature of cities, their unique allure, and how they are prime examples of emergence and complex systems. If you hate the concrete jungle, this is the episode to change your mind!

Three out of four Reeds members discuss Nietzsche's essay on the use and abuse of history. Nietzsche begins by claiming that history studied in and for itself, as objectively as possible, is a dangerous and corrosive enterprise. History ought to 'serve life', to direct cultures, and to be an individual's guide to action. We discuss the three types of history he outlines which serve life (monumental, antiquarian, critical), and the ways in which Nietzsche claims that the objective-scientific history of his day (and ours as well) has weakened modern man's personality, leading to cultural and personal degradation. We also spend some time at the end trying to figure out what Nietzsche means by truth. 

Francisco is joined by Bert Loan, an economist from GMU and longtime professor of economics and dialogue-based pedagogy at Universidad Francisco Marroquin. Francisco and Bert talk about the intricacies of dialogue, Polanyi, Oakeshott, Plato, and what it means to belong to a culture.

Continuing our niche episode series on early modern responses to dualism by obscure thinkers... Anton Wilhelm Amo was an African philosopher (from what is now Ghana) in the early 18th century. He was brought to Germany as a child-slave for some dukes, who ended up treating him as a member of the family. He was allowed to cultivate his love of learning, and so he studied widely, including the fields of medicine, politics, and astronomy in addition to philosophy. Thus he was the first African not only to attend a European university, but to become a professor as well. 

We read his doctoral dissertation "On the Impassivity of the Human Mind," where he provides a potential improvement to the dualistic framework by incorporating some Aristotelian concepts into Cartesian thought, particularly through the notions of hylomorphism and different types of souls. He accepts the dualistic categories of mind and body, but holds that it is the body that senses things rather than the mind. Further, the body is not just a machine the way Descartes thought, but a living being, possessed of a sensitive soul (as Aristotle would put it). Thus life, or a capacity to sense, becomes a third category of being in addition to mind and matter.   

This episode is not for everybody, as it assumes some prior knowledge in the history of philosophy, and we don't spend a lot of time explaining it. This lets us engage with Amo's ideas more, rather than rehashing a bunch of old stuff to only spend a little time on them (and it's also a convenient excuse for our lack of clarity).