Peter Adamson

Portrait of Michel de Montaigne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne#/media/File:Portrait_of_Michel_de_Montaigne,_circa_unknown.jpg

Title page from the first edition of Montaigne's Essais, 1588 Heribert Tenschert Booksellers https://www.heribert-tenschert.com/inventory-printed-books-1/montaigne-essais-first-edition-1588

"The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold...The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor causes a war betwixt princes."

A timely quotation from Michel de Montaigne, born #OnThisDay in 1533.

#philosophy #essays
#philsky #booksky

Just recorded two episodes tonight: on the French garden (scientific experiments at the Jardin du Roi and the Cartesian philosophy and political ideology shaping formal gardens like the one at Versailles) and on La Rochefoucauld and other "moralists." These will be episodes 493 and 494.

“According to Ubuntu philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without ‘ena’, or selfhood, and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time.” aeon.co/ideas/descar... #person #identity #philsky #PhilosophySky

Last weekend I enjoyed recording two episodes for @bufordrat.bsky.social's excellent Elucidations podcast (elucidations.vercel.app). One episode was on ideas from my book, Evolution and the Machinery of Chance (press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...). #evosky, #hpbio.

Oh true, that would have been better. I take comfort in the fact that if occasionalism is true, it wasn't me who did it (or in this case, didn't do it).

THE IHISTORY OF PHILISPOHY WITHOUT ANY GAPS QR code linking to the podcast QR code linking to the kindle book series (probably Amazon UK ) Kindle book series description: Classical Philosophy is the first of a series of books in which Peter Adamson aims ultimately to present a complete history of philosophy, more thoroughly but also more enjoyably than ever before. In short, lively chapters, based on the popular History of Philosophy podcast, he offers an accessible, humorous, and detailed look at the emergence of philosophy with the Presocratics, the probing questions of Socrates, and the first full flowering of philosophy with the dialogues of Plato and the treatises of Aristotle. The story is told 'without any gaps', discussing not only such major figures but also less commonly discussed topics like the Hippocratic Corpus, the Platonic Academy, and the role of women in ancient philosophy. Within the thought of Plato and Aristotle, the reader will find in-depth introductions to major works, such as the Republic and the Nicomachean Ethics, which are treated in detail that is unusual in an introduction to ancient philosophy. Adamson looks at fascinating but less frequently read Platonic dialogues like the Charmides and Cratylus, and Aristotle's ideas in zoology and poetics. This full coverage allows him to tackle ancient discussions in all areas of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, ethics and politics. Attention is also given to the historical and literary context of classical philosophy, with exploration of how early Greek cosmology responded to the poets Homer and Hesiod, how Socrates was presented by the comic playwright Aristophanes and the historian Xenophon, and how events in Greek history may have influenced Plato's thought. This is a new kind of history which will bring philosophy to life for all readers, including those coming to the subject for the first time.

Here's a couple of QR codes I created for fans of the podcast/book series.

I thought it might seem a bit weird if I asked young female students to give me their phone numbers so I could share philosophy with them. Instead, they can just take a picture of these QR codes.

For example, it formed the basis of the logic curriculum in University of Glasgow when Francis Hutcheson was a student there, albeit "amended by the writings of John Locke and Jean Leclerc".

www.irishphilosophy.com/2016/08/08/h...

Painting of the Port Royal Monastery

On today's new episode we tackle the Port-Royal Logic, the most influential philosophy textbook of early modern Europe, which combines ideas from Descartes with scholasticism:

www.historyofphilosophy.net/port-royal-l...

#logic #podcast #philsky #philosophy #podcast #earlymodern #hopwag

New open access translation of Porphyry, "Letter to Anebo" and "On Oracles":

cswr.hds.harvard.edu/4t/porphyry-...

"Agentic Advances and Annoying Slop: What’s Next for Generative AI?", article by Karen Emslie, and for which I was one of the people interviewed:
cacm.acm.org/news/agentic... #aiethics

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

Well, not *brown* horse.

Oxford University Press is currently offering a 30% discount on my anthology (and the other titles in the excellent Oxford New Histories of Philosophy series)! Quite a good deal. Just use the discount code AUFLY30 when ordering through the OUP website. #philsky #academicsky

No I don't think so: his general tone is witty but clear-eyed and sincere analysis of the faults of human nature, either because he was an outright cynic or because he was trying to show the need for divine grace, depending which interpreter you ask. (I think it's the latter, personally.)

Just reading La Rochefoucauld‘s Maxims for the podcast, which is full of gems, like this one:

“We all have enough strength to bear the troubles of other people.“

We have some reading suggestions here:

www.historyofphilosophy.net/rastafari-re...

Painting of a butterfly

www.historyofphilosophy.net/zhuangzi-death

Time for a new #HoPWaG episode! Today we tackle the many passages in the Daoist classic, the Zhuangzi, that deal with death - including the famous "dreaming you are a butterfly" passage.

#daoism #zhuangzi #philsky #philosophy #podcasts

Does Kumārila accept I-cognition as a kind of perception? Kumārila is an extremely systematic thinker. Thus, if there is a seeming contradiction in Kumārila’s thought, it is likely the case that the contradiction is only a seeming one and that it can be solv...

Does Kumārila accept I-cognition as a kind of perception? If not, how else do we know the self as an "I"?
#Philosophy #philsky #SanskritPhilosophy

elisafreschi.com/2026/02/15/d...

@histphilosophy.bsky.social has two episodes ( 47 & 48) on Frederick Douglass in the history of Africana philosophy series

My co-authored article with Jonathan Egid on the controversy over the authorship of the Ḥatäta Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob – a brilliant philosophical autobiography set in seventeenth-century Ethiopia – is finally out (advanced access) in the Journal of the History of Ideas (@jhideas.bsky.social)! 🧵
#philsky

Fraser, Chris. Zhuāngzǐ: Ways of Wandering the Way. Oxford University Press, 2024. Pp. 224. $90.00 (cloth). | Ethics: Vol 136, No 2

David B. Wong reviews Chris Fraser’s “Zhuāngzǐ: Ways of Wandering the Way” for ETHICS at doi.org/10.1086/738313 #philsky #PolTheory #legalphil #moralphil #moralphilosophy #legalphilosophy

#PhilosophyJobs (within an ERC project on women philosophers in the Enlightenment)

Thanks glad you enjoyed it!

"After Conry’s death, disciples of Cornelius Jansen reprinted De statu parvulorum as an appendix to Jansen’s Augustinus."

Florence Conroy (Flaithrí Ó Maoilchonaire) founded the Irish College at Louvain in 1607. Like Jansen, he was heavily influenced by Augustine, but was considered orthodox.

I'm not sure that a majority of philosophers would be able to explain what Jansenism was!

Portrait of Antoine Arnauld

Today's new #HoPWaG episode:

www.historyofphilosophy.net/arnauld-jansenism

Antoine Arnauld combines Cartesian philosophy with Jansenism, one of the most controversial religious movements of the 17th century.

#philosophy #philsky #podcast #christianity #descartes #arnauld

Coming up tomorrow on the new podcast episode of #HoPWaG, we look at Arnauld and Jansenism, and why this intense religious movement is associated with Cartesianism.

Ha! I hope so. It would help to be spry and healthy until I'm 90 years old, then I might manage it.

Coming up in Munich: we launch the Munich Center for Transformative Technologies and Societal Change this Friday, February 6, at 5 pm! Ending the week with hope & energy for the coming years. Come along if you can - registration & programme: transform-cluster.de/transform-la... #philsci #sts #hps