Nine Recent Appearances

It's about time for another roundup of my recent appearances on radio shows, podcasts, and video channels. The last list I made was back in April, and nine new ones have aired since then.  There are a few others either scheduled for recording, or already recorded and waiting to be released.

I get fairly regular requests to talk about a variety of topics because of my philosophy-focused YouTube channel, my business ReasonIO, and my work as editor of Stoicism Today.  If you'd like to invite me for a television, radio, video, or podcast appearance - or even for a live, in-person event, feel free to contact me.

With no further ado, here are the nine new appearances:

Six Podcast Lectures on Plato's Apology

After getting the Sadler's Lectures podcast up and running earlier this month - thanks to my supporters (want to become one on Patreon - click here!) - I have finished converting the first sequence of videos, and have started on the second.

The first philosopher fans, supporters, and subscribers wanted lectures on was Plato, so I've created six downloadable lectures in mp3 format on the text so many people begin with - Plato's Apology.  We're now working on converting lectures on the Crito, and will then do the Euthyphro and the Phaedo. (And when I say "we," it's not the royal usage - I'm including my son, Matthew, who is now assisting me with editing)

The videos these were drawn from were shot years back, before I started using a lapel mike and voice recorder, so we had to do a lot to boost the sound quality to the level you'll hear.  But of course, it's not perfect podcasting that people go to my Sadler's Lectures for - it's high quality content, faithful to the texts and thinkers, helping readers and listeners learn!

At any rate, here are those six episodes

• Socrates' Divine Mission - Plato's Apology
• Socrates' Older Accusers - Plato's Apology
• Socrates' Defense Against Charges of Corruption - Plato's Apology
• Socrates' Defense Against Charges Of Impiety - Plato's Apology
• The Gadfly Analogy - Plato's Apology
• Why Socrates Does Not Fear Death - Plato's Apology

As a reference, you might want to get The Last Days of Socrates, which includes the Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, and Phaedo. 

The six episodes come to just over 90 minutes total, so if you've got a long drive or commute, or want to listen to them at the gym, or while you're doing something else, you can easily download them from my channel and start learning!  If iTunes /Apple Podcasts or Google Play is more your speed, you can find my channel there as well.

Eight New Interviews and Appearances

Since the last time I posted about guest appearances and interviews, back in February, I've kept fairly busy on that front.  Because of my focused YouTube channel, my business ReasonIO, and my work as editor of Stoicism Today, I get requests to talk about a variety of topics coming in pretty regularly.

This time around, I can say that I've done something new - at least new for me - with my first television appearance on our local NBC station.  I've also continued to make appearances on radio shows, podcasts, and video interviews.

Here are my most recent appearances:

Interview on TMJ-4 News “Ask The Expert”: a television interview hosted by Charles Benson and Shannon Sims, discussing what philosophy is, how it applies to our daily lives, the uses of critical thinking, and the recent Milwaukee SOPHIA event – you can watch here

Interview on KJZZ’s "The Show": an Arizona Public Radio interview hosted by Steve Goldstein, discussing what modern Stoicism is, its roots in ancient Stoic philosophy, some general concepts and practices, and why so many people are interested in Stoicism at present – you can listen here

Guest Appearance on Riverwest Radio's "Image For Hire": a full hour as a guest on the Skrauss' radio show, discussing topics ranging from speculative fiction, Philip Dick, Michael Moorcock, philosophy as experiential and experimental, Stoicism, Roman history and politics, Seneca, Cicero, and the internet - you can listen here

Interview on My Own Worst Enemy podcast: hosted by Danny Whittaker, two full hours discussing what resources and perspectives philosophy contributes to understanding and managing anger, whether anger can be productive, how anger can get directed inward, and different ways anger manifests itself - you can listen here

Interview on Stoic Solutions podcast: hosted by Justin Vacula, discussing what "in accordance with nature" means within classic and contemporary Stoicism.  This leads us into all sorts of other topics connected with Stoicism as well - you can watch or listen here

Guest Appearance on Creative on Purpose: hosted by Scott Perry, a roundtable discussion on Stoicism, the music business, critical thinking, and whether creativity is a virtue or not featuring myself and Scott Tarulli – you can watch or listen here

Interview on the Axiological Atheist Channel: hosted by Damien AtHope, discussion of the nature of practical philosophy, what is required to make philosophical concepts understandable and applicable for general audiences, and how philosophy can help us to clarify our values – you can watch or listen here

Interview on Benjamin A Boyce's Channel:  hosted by Benjamin Boyce, a discussion ranging over the current state of academia, American politics, practical philosophy, prospects for philosophy in the public sphere, and bits of my backstory - you can watch or listen here

Trump's Inaugural Address - A Philosophical Examination

Like most Americans this election cycle, I closely followed the long campaigns and contests, participating in a number of discussions and observing many more, and voting in our state primary and the national election.  It has been without a doubt the most interesting election cycle of my lifetime, given how many issues were brought to the fore, the situation of cultural, economic, and political crisis and conflicts we remain mired in, and the alternatives offered to us in the form of candidates.  Although one can arguably claim that both main political parties do largely represent a political establishment, a cadre and class of wide-reaching scope and power, both of those alternately ruling elites faced stiff challenges from outsiders, one of whom lost (Bernie Sanders), and the other which won and then went on to upset expectations and secure the presidency by winning the electoral college (Donald Trump).

When I read that Trump planned for his Inaugural Address, delivered last Friday, to be a "'philosophical document' rather than a description of policy plans - in the words of his press secretary, Sean Spicer, I was intrigued.  What would such a deliberately "philosophical" speech look like?  Would it measure up at all to any of the senses that can be assigned that ambiguous term?  And then, I watched the speech - which I argue is indeed a philosophical one - read and reread the transcript, reflected upon its points and rhetoric, and decided to engage in some public discussion - as a philosopher - bearing upon now-President Trump's address.

So Now, Anger Is What The Good Guys Feel

There's so much to say about this recent American election - and so much that is actually being said -that, other than some short discussions and posts in social media (and a dinner-party discussion), I've been keeping a low profile, watching matters unfold, reflecting, and occasionally posting some of the better bits of analysis.  There's something almost like a communicative paralysis induced by the paradox of choice in the aftermath of this contest.  With so much that could be said, and so many things other are saying one might give a thoughtful response to, how do you pick?  Any choice you make, you leave something else out.

One of my hard-left colleagues recently posted an interesting piece from Truthout - Henry Giroux's essay, The Authoritarian Politics of Resentment in Trump's America.  And after reading it over several times, I now know precisely what to start with, at least on my account (I really don't need to think or speak on anyone else's quite frankly).  I'll give the sound-bite, the elevator pitch, or the thesis (depending on which favored term you're inclined towards) right up front.

In his essay, Giroux makes a mistaken distinction in a careless way.  He sets the anger of the left, the working people, the poor, struggling, and oppressed against the resentment of the right, the duped working people, the racists, the . . .  well, why not just call them the deplorables. Resentment is bad, while anger is good in his view.  And we can identify the good people and the bad along precisely those lines - with the added feature that Trump exploited the resentment of the bad.  As someone who researches, writes and speaks about, and deals with clients struggling with anger, this sort of narrative - and the underlying theory Giroux appeals to - strikes me as irresponsible.

Aristotle on Three Parts of the Polity

In our polarized, nominally democratic, political processes, there are a number of things that often get lost.  In my view, Aristotle sets his finger right on one of these, in a distinction he makes at a number of places in his works, most explicitly in the Politics.  One can analyze contemporary politics in terms of an ongoing, argumentative clash between the interests of those who possess wealth, on the one side, and the many, who tend to be poor but also free, on the other.  This certainly does capture part of the political dynamic.

Aristotle even goes so far as to say that the wealthy, powerful, and few have some legitimacy to their claims and arguments they make.  And likewise, he says, so do the many, the free, those who are not wealthy.  And, yet more importantly, as they press their own positions, they inevitably go further than they ought to, mistaking what highly qualified justice their side possesses for justice itself, and thereby engaging in some measure injustice, if their side wins.  What's left out of the picture is what both of those sides also try to claim for themselves - virtue, that is moral goodness, excellence of character.  Virtue itself puts forth claims, and they don't coincide with those of either set of interests, any party that claims to represent them.  And without the virtuous - who would feel almost equally ill at ease in either of our major political parties here in the United States - the political community ends up becoming impoverished in important ways.

There's much more to be written about this topic, as I'll do once our election is over, the votes are counted, and we move on as a divided nation to our next particular set of political battles. . . .

Free Resources on Plato's Symposium

Back in the month of August, I taught a 4-week online course for the Global Center for Advanced Studies on Plato's Symposium -- a very enjoyable class, involving excellent student discussions!

When it comes to designing online classes, I'm a bit on the over-achiever side.  For every 2-hour videoconference class session, I produce a 25-40 slide presentation.  I also create video content, lesson pages, and handouts on the material we're studying.  Ok. . . so more than a bit . . . But my obsession is your gain, since I'm posting some of those resources here, free of charge, open-access.

A New Series of Talks: "Reconsidering. . . "

I've been involved in so much philosophy-related activity of various sorts lately, that I've not had the time to write here about quite a bit of it, which might lend a mistaken impression of precisely the opposite -- that nothing has been going on! 

Last night, at the Kingston Library, we held the second of a new series of monthly community discussions -- the "Reconsidering . . ." series, this one called "Reconsidering Charlie Hebdo:  Free Speech, Violence and Offense in Context".  So, that means that it has been a month since the first session. "Reconsidering Ferguson:  Racial Politics in Context."

A New Class: Philosophical World Views and Values

This marks my fourth year teaching classes in Philosophy and Religious Studies for Marist College.  The last three years have involved a mix of face-to-face and online classes -- this current academic year, however, I decided to switch entirely to teaching online for Marist.  There's a whole story behind that decision, which perhaps I'll tell in a later post -- suffice it to say that one of the main reasons was to afford me greater flexibility and more time to devote to doing more innovative work in Philosophy -- bringing it into practice, and putting it before a broader public.

In early December, I start teaching a new 10-week online course -- World Views and Values.  It's essentially a variation on Intro to Philosophy, but it's one which transfer students have traditionally taken in place of Intro (which has since been renamed "Philosophical Perspectives"!), and it bears a different course description: 

This course will help students to ask basic questions about the ultimate meaning of life, to take a comprehensive and holistic world view, and to articulate a coherent values system. The basic methodology for teaching the course is comparative and socioanalytic. 

So really, a lot of leeway there for doing what one would like with the course.  I decided to put a lot of thought into designing precisely the sort of course I think might be most useful and interesting for the students -- and enjoyable for me to put together and teach.

Aristotle on Anger, Justice, and Injustice

Last weekend, I attended the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy conference, chaired two sessions, met a number of scholars as interested and enthusiastic about the thought of antiquity as I am, and gave the paper which I'd long ago proposed, "Aristotle on Anger, Justice, and Injustice."  Or rather, I presented the paper in a summary form -- I was assigned to a panel of four speakers, and each of us got about 20 minutes to set out the main lines of our research.

It wasn't a venue particularly conducive to recording the session in my typical manner -- a flipcam which could capture video of the talk.  But I did manage to record my portion of the talk, and the relevant Q&A on my iPhone, and then (after clawing my frustrated way up the learning curve any former PC user has with Apple's products!) turned the edited recording into a podcast, which you can hear here, if this topic particularly interests you

Ethics of Sterilization for Drug Addicts

An issue which ought by its very nature to provoke controversy of all sorts -- reproduction and childbirth by drug addicts -- has come to the fore again, centered around an organization, Project Prevention (PrPr, just so as not to confuse them with Planned Parenthood, often abbreviated as PP) whose main activity involves paying drug and alcohol addicts to get sterilized or to use long-term birth-control.  There's much more to be said about the purposes of the organization, as well as the moral issues involved, the deeper problems raised, and the ethical status not only of Project Prevention but also of their supporters and critics -- all of which I'll explore in some detail below. 

First, though, it's worth mentioning a few useful and specific sources -- given that this controversy has not often risen to the level of headline news or talking-heard-worthy burning issue of the hour.  New York Daily News, BBC News, and Time Health, among others have recent, well-balanced pieces about the organization, its mission, and its critics.  The Guardian ran a longer, somewhat more in-depth article nearly a year back, and Practical Ethics published a short blog post raising a few additional issues and proposing Britain's NHS do what PrPr does.  Africa Is a Country has an interesting though clearly anti-PrPr discussion of the expansion of the organization to Kenya, and its mission to include HIV. A Care2 piece also discusses Haiti and South Africa.  In 2006, the Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment levied a number of charges of being unethical against Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK), the earlier version of PrPr.   Open Society Foundations held a panel discussion a little over a year ago, specifically on the ethics of Project Prevention, its aims, and its activities.  So, all that said, what should we think about this?

Six Dimensions to Anger in Aristotle

A week ago, I gave a talk at Marist College (slides, handouts, and video), opening the cover, rifling through the pages, almost reading a few passages -- so to speak -- from a not-yet-existent book I'm in process of writing.  It still lacks a title or an introduction.  The organization of chapters, even their ordering, shifts occasionally, attaining new configurations as the research, reflection and writing continue.   But, the subject matter remains a constant -- Anger, and Aristotle's understanding of it.  I've long been fascinated by this topic -- anger in general, but also in Aristotle's works, where that emotion, or set of affective responses, or virtue and vices, or . . .  you see how complex it already shows itself to be just when trying to categorize it . . . where anger plays an important role but never gets a full systematic treatment.

Back when I was regularly contributing a set of posts on anger here -- straying rather eclectically through pieces on Epictetus, John Cassian, Anselm of Canterbury, and Martin Luther King -- I devoted two to Aristotle (one and two) in which I praised his complex, attentive, nuanced approach to anger.  Without being very explicit about this, Aristotle clearly distinguished between anger as understood from different vantage points.  At the time I wrote those posts, my view was that there were three main dimensions to the Aristotelian treatment of anger.  Now, after much reconsideration -- and this is what my talk was about -- I actually now think that there are six distinct dimensions of analysis contained in Aristotle's texts -- main books concerning anger comprising a surprisingly large list: Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Rhetoric, Politics, and the De Anima, with yet others contributing interesting reflections upon the topic as well.

Happy Birthday, Thomas Hobbes

Today, as I fortunately learned from The Cult of Genius - in the midst of my day busied by projects, meetings, curriculum considerations, and student emails, as I prepared mentally (I'll finish the last physical and paperwork preparations after this) for a presentation on Plato I'll drive four hours in the morning to deliver - that the great English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, would be 423 years old today.  Hobbes indisputably occupies the rank of one of the fathers of early modern philosophy, political philosophy especially.

For me, more personally, he is like a strange somewhat unsavory, intense, but eminently well-spoken, attractive . . . . acquaintance? Friend?  Perhaps. . .  interlocutor. . . disputant . . . dialogue partner?  I have what a colleague once described a "quasi-pornographic fascination" with Hobbes, his thought, his writings even his very turns of phrase.  You know some wrong resides and lurks in allowing the eyes to linger too long over their contours, but you find yourself at times unable to tear away, and then you feel palpably, with the force of desire, the urge to look back, to peek, which then turns yet again into full perusal.  His works and his thought exert a magnetic effect upon my own, which through contact or even just recollection I discover taking on the boldness, the starkness, and the grimness of his own.  There is a side of me darkly drawn to what one commentator, Louis Roux, so rightly signaled, calling Hobbes preeminently late modern:

Hobbes is present among us: his fiery gaze, his dark and loveless world, his universe of war, of death, of commands and prohibitions, his mechanistic and soulless law, everything is there.

Should Everyone Get to Vote?

One of my philosophical colleagues, Kevin Timpe, posted a link to a paper and got an interesting (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) discussion going on Facebook.  The paper is Jason Brennan's "The Right to a Competent Electorate," coming out soon in in International Philosophical Quarterly.   Brennan argues what is guaranteed to be a controversial position, that "the practice of unrestricted, universal suffrage is unjust," and proposes replacing democracy with an "epistocracy" (i.e. a rule by the knowledgeable and competent).

Both the implications and elements of the argument itself are bound to not only raise objections, but actually set people off, push the buttons triggering anger, ire, indignation.  And, that, I think, will be reflective of the very problematic of democracy and voting that the paper touches on, but does not resolve, because those sorts of responses will occur -- even sometimes on the part of educated, well-informed, intellectually virtuous (or at least not vicious) citizens to whom such arguments and proposals would restrict voting or full political participation, for reasons I'll discuss below.


The passage that started the fairly brief Facebook conversation, which got me thinking more about an issue that has been relegated to the back of my mind for some time, runs:

People who exercise power over me—including other voters—should have to do so in a competent and morally reasonable way. Otherwise, as a matter of justice, they ought to be excluded from holding political power, including the power to vote

This is What Democracy Looks Like?

In my home state of Wisconsin (where, unfortunately, I haven't lived for years), protests have been going on for some time now, long enough for a great deal of interesting and exasperating, sage and foolish, things to be said.  There's been enough time for dramas to play themselves out -- or at least their first acts -- time enough for loads of "new" information -- typically information nobody had paid attention to until it became polemical bargaining chips -- to come to light, for the "nation" to take notice and chime in  -- typically in very onesided, evidence-ignoring, partisan ways, even time enough for some protesters in Egypt to mistake what is going on in Madison for anything remotely resembling the revolution working itself out in the Muslim Mideast, and time enough for the protesters in America to seize on the comparison as one more rhetorical tool.

I didn't have a dog in this particular fight, not being a Wisconsin taxpayer, not having voted for or against the current democratically elected Wisconsin political regime, not having a child in Wisconsin schools -- and neither did the majority of my academic friends and colleagues who almost immediately upon hearing a few (far too few) points of the case, immediately sided with the teachers union and against the governor, willing to conflate all sorts of issues with each other, pass on misinformation mixed in with genuine information, take stands that quite understandably feel good but may not be all that well supported when one thinks matters through -- and call what is taking place "democracy".  But, now it has catapulted onto the national stage, impressed itself upon the national consciousness, provided to great a temptation for politician and pundit not to all to hastily weigh in with their opinions, their spin, their takes.  The Wisconsin issue has become a rallying point, and a precedent to imitate, for Left and Right.  So now it's everybody's issue, fair game, and I do feel not only permitted, but in some sense required to make a few points that in my view are being overlooked

Arab States, Revolution, and the Viability of Democracy

The protests against Mubarak's regime, at first pitting protesters against police, the army in the midst but on the side, then giving way to clashes between looters and citizens protecting museums, churches and mosques, followed by bloody confrontations between pro-Mubarak and anti-Mubarak crowds, then peaceful gatherings again. . .  and next week who knows what -- this is one of those situations where the West, composed of societies long governed by liberal-democratic (in the broad sense), largely secular, principally civilian regimes, becomes conflicted over who to support, what outcome they would like to see and to promote in Egypt -- and indeed in the broader revolution ongoing in the Arab world -- this round of a revolution whose rallying cry is Democracy, or at least democratic elections, starting in Tunisia, then taking roots in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Algeria.

The protests call for and aim at change of regime, and the protesters have good cause.  One devil's bargains western governments entered into or inherited from previous administrations has been maintaining or at least turning a relatively blind eye to autocratic and repressive regimes throughout the Arab world.  Why?  A host of different reasons, trade-offs, decisions, precedents.  There's already enough bloggers weighing in daily about the many aspects of the unfolding Egyptian situation -- and its broader implications -- aspects including its backdated history, so I don't intend to delve into that in detail, except where that history impinges on a question I think many in the West would like to ask, but are afraid to vocalize, perhaps for fear of its implications, perhaps worried whether it might not sound racist:  Can Arab states realistically move towards functioning, sutainable democracies?

How to Look at Anger: Aristotle's Example

Among the many philosophers, theologians, and psychologists who discuss anger, Aristotle exemplifies a particularly well-worked out and fruitful approach to that ubiquitous human phenomenon.  Three overarching features of his account are worth pointing out both as essential to it and as reasons for its enduring strength and value.

The first of these, which I will only note but not explore in depth here, is that Aristotle notices that, as an emotion, anger possesses a certain uniqueness.  His teacher, Plato points out something related, even perhaps analogous in distinguishing a thumotic portion of the soul (in which anger presumably exercises its sway), a part concerned with honor and more amenable to the guidance of rationality, from a lower, baser, merely desirous or appetitive part of the soul.  But Aristotle goes further.  Anger has its residence and rule in the intersection of desire and (partial) rationality, involving conceptions of justice and self-worth violated by another.  Anger, as an emotion and as its characteristic response, is inextricably bound up with our moral manifolds.  Other emotions involve moral notions and values as well, even those of justice and injustice, but none are quite so closely connected with them as is anger.  Nor are any other emotions in Aristotle's treatment so closely aligned with rationality (logos) that he can compare anger to a hasty servant who, listening to only half the instructions, reasons to an erroneous conclusion.

Kant at the book club

Tonight at the Cumberland county library Great Books club, Kant's short, dense but readable essay Towards Perpetual Peace was on the docket.  I showed up a few minutes after everyone else had arrived, having walked the five blocks in a cool drizzle that hopefully heralds the end of summer here in Fayetteville.  The old members greeted and the moderator greeted me as I came in, happy I was back after having been AWOL since June, traveling up north.  Someone said:  "we were hoping you'd show up," a reflection both of the fact that we were talking about a philosopher this time, and of the cordiality of the group.

All the seats around the table were occupied; there were a few new faces, and for the first time, I was not the youngest member.  At one end, next to the moderator, a thin, young white man whose close copped hair and mannerisms betrayed him as having strayed in from Ft. Bragg (now that I think back, perhaps he resembles me at his age, in the Army, 20 years ago, an array of commonplaces, allusions to an idiosyncratically perused  literature, half-worked out thoughts at my disposal, searching for something, not sure what, not sure where, not sure with whom. . . ) At the other end, two black women, one older, collected, smiling, the other, a social worker younger than me but closer to me in age.  I disentangled a chair from the stack, and she slid her seat over slightly so I could between her and Jacquie (a regular, French, who I later asked for a word I couldn't recall:  tremblement de terre)

I am always very interested whenever our selection is a philosopher to see what the book club makes of him or her. It's a quid pro quo.  They are happy to get my explanations, context, occasional judgments, mentions of connections, since for better or for worse, I'm a philosopher -- or at the least have studied them and teach them.  I don't think they need me much, actually, and I'm paying close attention each time to what they have to say, how they construe the passages, what they respond to, what makes sense to them, resonates with them, what else it calls to their minds.

So far, in the sessions I've been able to attend we have read selections by Simone de Beauvoir (from The Second Sex) and Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish), and the whole of Machiavelli's The Prince.  So, Kant, and this essay in particular, actually fit in quite well.