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Podcast

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

By Peter Adamson

Peter Adamson works through the history of philosophy in order, one short episode at a time.

These are Stoa's briefs of episodes from History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. The episodes belong to their makers, and every brief links to the original.

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Episode briefs 11

  • St. Paul's Letters and Their Debt to Stoic Philosophy

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 41 min

    Troels Engberg-Pedersen talks with Peter Adamson about how deeply Stoic philosophy shaped St. Paul's theology and language.

  • Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Roots of Political Thought

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 44 min

    Peter Adamson and Melissa Lane discuss how the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides shaped early political philosophy and set the stage for Plato.

  • Sappho on Eros, Beauty, and the Socratic Connection

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 50 min

    Peter Adamson talks with Marguerite Johnson about Sappho's fragmentary poetry and its ties to early Greek philosophy.

  • Quietism: Guyon, Fénelon, and the Debate over Pure Love

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 19 min

    Peter Adamson traces the 17th century French Quietist movement through Jeanne Guyon and François Fénelon and the controversy their idea of disinterested love for God provoked.

  • Racine's Tragedies and the Failure of Stoic Self-Mastery

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 17 min

    Peter Adamson explores how Jean Racine's tragedies stage the defeat of reason by passion, against the backdrop of Jansenism and a critique of Stoic and Cartesian optimism.

  • Molière's Comedies and the Philosophy of Hypocrisy

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 18 min

    Peter Adamson explores how Molière's comedies, especially Tartuffe and The Misanthrope, dramatize the French moralists' concerns with hypocrisy and sincerity.

  • Descartes, Plants, and the Meaning of the French Garden

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 21 min

    Peter Adamson traces how mechanist philosophy reshaped early modern botany and how it shows up in the geometry and politics of gardens like Versailles.

  • French Scholasticism's Long Encounter with Descartes

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 21 min

    Peter Adamson traces how French scholastic philosophers debated, absorbed, and resisted Cartesianism and the new science from the 16th through 18th centuries.

  • Arnauld vs Malebranche on Ideas and Vision in God

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 19 min

    Peter Adamson examines the dispute between Malebranche and Arnauld over whether ideas are representations seen in God or direct acts of the mind.

  • Occasionalism: Why Only God Truly Causes Anything

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 32 min

    Stephen Nadler talks with Peter Adamson about occasionalism, the 17th century view that God alone is a true cause, and its roots in Cartesian metaphysics rather than the mind-body problem.

  • Malebranche's Occasionalism: God as the Only True Cause

    History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps 21 min

    Peter Adamson explains Nicolas Malebranche's argument that God alone truly causes anything, with bodies and minds serving only as occasions for divine action.