Episode 89, Dostoevsky's Notes from Undergrou...

The supreme being of classical theism is unlimited in power, knowledge, and goodness – a being distinct from the world, who creates it out of nothing and governs it from beyond. On this picture, we are not identical with God. God's consciousness is not our consciousness – and our ...  Show more

The supreme being of classical theism is unlimited in power, knowledge, and goodness – a being distinct from the world, who creates it out of nothing and governs it from beyond. On this picture, we are not identical with God. God's consciousness is not our consciousness – and our ...  Show more

Today we talk about the philosophical themes of one of Dostoevsky's most famous books: Notes From Underground. We talk about contemplative inertia, the "stone wall" of rationality, utopian socialism, the tension between love and freedom in the modern world, self-loathing as a def ...  Show more

In this extended extract from their series 'Conversations in Philosophy', part of the LRB's Close Readings podcast, Jonathan Rée and James Wood look at one of Friedrich Nietzsche's early essays, 'Schopenhauer as Educator'. For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer’s genius lay not in his ideas ...  Show more

Aboveground, Manhattan’s Riverside Park provides open space for the densely populated Upper West Side. Beneath its surface run railroad tunnels, disused for decades, where over the years unhoused people have taken shelter. The sociologist Terry Williams ventured into the tunnel r ...  Show more

Feelings of burnout and boredom have become prevalent in modern life. To understand the roots of and solutions to these issues, we can turn to both ancient philosophers and contemporary thinkers. Among the latter is Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, whose thought-provo ...