The History of Philosophy … Without Any Gaps

in Philosophy | August 31st, 2011 8 Comments

On Mon­day, we told you where you can down­load Free Cours­es from Top Philoso­phers (Fou­cault, Sear­le, Rus­sell and the rest). As the day went along, our list grew thanks to read­er sug­ges­tions, and we also dis­cov­ered anoth­er promis­ing resource — a pod­cast called “The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps,” cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son, Pro­fes­sor of Ancient and Medieval Phi­los­o­phy at King’s Col­lege Lon­don:

Begin­ning with the ear­li­est ancient thinkers, the series will look at the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers (even­tu­al­ly cov­er­ing in detail such giants as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Avi­cen­na, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant) as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.

That’s what Adam­son promis­es, and he does­n’t dis­ap­point. Over the past 34 months, Adam­son has pro­duced 136 episodes, each about 20 min­utes long, cov­er­ing the Pre­So­crat­ics (Pythago­ras, Zeno, Par­menides, etc) and then Socrates, Pla­to and Aris­to­tle. That’s rough­ly 45 hours of audio, and there’s no telling how many more hours of audio will bring us to the mod­ern peri­od. The more, the bet­ter, we say.

You can access all episodes via these links: iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site. Or find oth­er free phi­los­o­phy cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon. If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 247 Pod­casts (With More to Come)


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Comments (8)
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  • mlcohen says:
    August 31, 2011 at 3:26 pm

    I’ve been lis­ten­ing to this pod­cast from the begin­ning. The con­tent, pro­duc­tion, pac­ing, and spac­ing are exem­plary. I only hope that I live long enough to enjoy all the episodes (I’m cur­rent­ly 53).

    Reply
  • Jimbob says:
    August 31, 2011 at 5:11 pm

    …or that Pro­fes­sor Adam­son lives long enough to com­plete his mam­moth project!

    Reply
  • John says:
    September 1, 2011 at 1:28 pm

    These are great pod­casts. I have lis­tened to sev­er­al avail­able from iTunes, and these rank as the most clear and effec­tive.

    Reply
  • emjay says:
    November 13, 2011 at 1:32 am

    Very inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion. Though the title (orig­i­nal) could have been bet­ter. “The His­to­ry of West­ern Phi­los­o­phy” is appar­ent­ly more hon­est com­pared to the rather mis­lead­ing and nar­row choice made here.

    Reply
  • Jake says:
    November 29, 2011 at 9:40 am

    I believe he will be at least doing mid­dle east­ern phi­los­o­phy, hav­ing writ­ten books specif­i­cal­ly on the top­ic.

    I know he is plan­ning on going all the way to Kant but I can’t find men­tion of whether he will move past that.

    Reply
  • cynthia davidson says:
    December 18, 2011 at 7:20 pm

    Hope he’ll do a seg­ment on women philoso­phers!!
    Thanks for these offer­ings & keep them com­ing. This world is sore­ly in need of more wis­dom.

    Reply
  • charlotte steinzig says:
    October 6, 2015 at 9:49 am

    Now 2015, Pro­fes­sor Adam­son has moved into and through Islam­ic phi­los­o­phy (his spe­cial­ized area) as well as some medieval Jew­ish and sev­er­al on medieval women philoso­phers, and has now begun a branch into Indi­an philos­phy. This is an amaz­ing, brisk, well done series.

    Reply
  • Armeen taha says:
    September 12, 2016 at 3:45 am

    I have list­ed to peters audios on his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy in east­ern ‚i real­ly inter­est­ed in now i hope this to be the same.But with respect peter pay atten­tion to indive­d­u­als rather than philo­soph­i­cal thoughts through­out his depict­ed his­to­ry.

    Reply

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