Episode #034 ... Spinoza pt. 2 - Force of Nat...

Today we talk about Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five. How war stories can distort the reality of war, how trauma can fracture our experience of time and identity, and why Billy Pilgrim becomes attracted to the strange philosophy of the Tralfamadorians. Hope you love it. : ...  Show more

Today we talk more about Peter Sloterdijk’s book You Must Change Your Life. We talk about Heidegger, the subject-object view of the world, how environments form us, symbolic immunity, modern cynicism, vertical tension, base camps, civilizations as collective immune systems, and w ...  Show more

Spinoza is one of the most controversial and debated philosophers in the last few centuries. This episode attempts to give a very general overview of his perspective on God as well as some ways that it can be interpreted.

Sources/Suggested Reading:

Continuing on the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), ch. 1–11. We go more into natural laws vs. ordinances; does it make sense to say that God makes rules for people? Also, how does Spinoza deal with alleged miracles given that natural laws are absolute regularities? Continue ...  Show more

In this episode we finally get around to talking about Spinoza. It turns out normativity is kind of complicated when you think everything is strictly determined and there’s no such thing as contingency! We discuss the relationship between affect and power, the inherently socia ...

Discussing Spinoza's the Ethics, Books II through V.