The History of Philosophy … Without Any Gaps

in Philosophy | August 31st, 2011

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 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)

Blade Runner is a “Waste of Time”: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

in Film, Sci Fi | August 31st, 2011

It’s per­haps hard to imag­ine now, but Rid­ley Scot­t’s clas­sic sci-fi film, Blade Run­ner, saw some hard days when it was first released in 1982. Pre­view screen­ings went bad­ly. Crowds flocked instead to see Steven Spielberg’s block­buster, ET. The film lost mon­ey. And crit­ics gave the film mixed reviews.

Case in point, Siskel & Ebert’s review on nation­al tele­vi­sion. Roger finds some redeem­ing qual­i­ties — the spe­cial effects. Siskel calls it a “waste of time.” One thumb up grudg­ing­ly; anoth­er firm­ly down. A decid­ed­ly mixed review.

Siskel died, of course, in 1999. If you’re won­der­ing if Ebert ever changed his posi­tion, you can find this reap­praisal writ­ten in 2007, on the 25th anniver­sary of the film’s release.

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:

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

What is a Blade Run­ner? How Rid­ley Scott’s Movie Has Ori­gins in William S. Bur­roughs’ Novel­la, Blade Run­ner: A Movie

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: Uncut & Restored

in Film | August 31st, 2011

2010 saw the release of a restored ver­sion of Metrop­o­lis, the clas­sic Ger­man expres­sion­ist, sci-fi film direct­ed by Fritz Lang. The restora­tion start­ed two years ear­li­er, in 2008, when a long sought-after copy of the 1927 film was found in the archives of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, and it con­tained 30 min­utes of pre­vi­ous­ly unseen footage. (Get the back­sto­ry here.) Ger­man experts got to work and ful­ly restored the extend­ed but degrad­ed copy. Then came the big unveil­ing. In Feb­ru­ary 2010, the new Metrop­o­lis was screened at The Berlin Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and ARTE pre­sent­ed a live broad­cast. The trail­er for the film appears above; and the film, as pre­sent­ed by ARTE, now lives on YouTube.

Old­er ver­sions of Metrop­o­lis — the ones you know so well — are list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 420 Free Movies Online. Scroll to the bot­tom of the page and look under “Silent Films.”

P.S. A rock opera ver­sion of Metrop­o­lis will be com­ing to a the­ater near you. More on that here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­lene Dietrich’s Tem­pera­men­tal Screen Test for The Blue Angel (1929)

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Jerry’s Map: An Amazing Half Century Act of Imagination

in Art | August 30th, 2011

Way back in 1963, Jer­ry Gret­zinger began mak­ing a map of his imag­i­nary world. And now, almost 50 years lat­er, the Map weaves togeth­er more than 2,000 pan­els, and cov­ers more than 1,600 square feet of sur­face area (see pho­to here).

What start­ed as a sim­ple doo­dle took on an amaz­ing life of its own. Jer­ry tells the rest of this sto­ry in this short video shot by Greg Whit­more.

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep, day in, day out.

Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Talks Writing @Google

in Books, Google, Literature, Writing | August 30th, 2011

Ear­li­er this month Jen­nifer Egan, the new­ly-mint­ed Pulitzer Prize win­ner, paid a vis­it to Google to talk about A Vis­it from the Goon Squad, her exper­i­men­tal nov­el that won the Pulitzer, among many oth­er awards. That’s the osten­si­ble focus. But the con­ver­sa­tion moves quick­ly into oth­er areas that will inter­est writ­ers and read­ers alike — how Egan first devel­ops ideas for her nov­els, why she writes her first drafts in illeg­i­ble hand­writ­ing on legal pads, why she wrote a chap­ter of her new nov­el in Pow­er­Point (with­out ever hav­ing used the soft­ware before), what her nov­el has in com­mon with The Who’s Quadrophe­nia (I’m hooked), and how tech­nol­o­gy might change the nov­el as we know it.

The Egan video went live yes­ter­day, and runs about 54 min­utes. Oth­er videos appear­ing in the Authors@Google series fea­ture con­ver­sa­tions with Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, Michael Pol­lan, Slavoj Zizek and Junot Diaz. H/T @webacion

Restoration and 18th Century Poetry: From Dryden to Wordsworth (Free Course)

in | August 29th, 2011

1) Intro­duc­tion: Poet­ic form and the resource­ful­ness it requires. Poet­ry about the real world, from pol­i­tics to sex. For exam­ple: Rochester and Wal­pole: Audio

2) Dry­den on Old­ham and Old­ham on Sodom. Dry­den’s scat­ol­ogy: Audio

3) Dry­den: Absa­lom and Achi­tophel. Anti­thet­i­cal style and hero­ic cou­plet: Audio

4) Dry­den: Absa­lom and Achi­tophel. Dry­den’s skep­ti­cism about per­fectibil­i­ty: Audio

5) Dry­den: Reli­gio Laici and poets’ claims to polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal exper­tise: Audio

6) Dry­den: Con­clu­sion of dis­cus­sion of both Absa­lom and Achi­tophel and Reli­gio Laici: Audio

7) Dry­den’s Sub­tle­ty: Audio

8) Dry­den’s con­clu­sions: his late masques and essays; his prose and his digres­sive­ness: Audio

9) Rochester vs. Dry­den; Rochester’s skill and range: Audio

10) Rochester.  Def­i­nite­ly NSFW, but with con­sid­er­able psy­cho­log­i­cal acu­ity: Audio

11) Swift. Also NSFW. Swift’s scat­ol­ogy: Audio

12) Swift on him­self and on Stel­la and on his con­tem­po­raries: Audio

13) Pope. Intro­duc­tion and Essay on Crit­i­cism: Audio

14) Pope. Essay on Crit­i­cism, Eloisa to Abelard, Rape of the Lock: Audio

15) Pope and how poet­ry becomes top­i­cal.  Arbuth­not, Rape of the Lock: Audio

16) Pope’s Satires and To the Mem­o­ry of an Unfor­tu­nate Lady: Audio

17) Last Class on Pope: Dun­ci­ad: Audio

18) Doc­tor John­son as poet. His Pro­to-Roman­ti­cism: Audio

19) Thom­son and Collins as Pro­to-Roman­tics: Audio

20) Young, Gray, and the advent of Roman­ti­cism: Audio

21) Christo­pher Smart: Prayer and Praise: Audio

22) Gold­smith and Cow­per: Audio

23) Bar­bauld and Bail­lie: Audio

24) Burns, Blake, and per­spec­tives on inno­cence: Audio

25) Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798: Audio

26) Last class, return to Pope’s Essay on Man, and ret­ro­spec­tive on course: Audio

The Western Canon: From Homer to Milton (Free Course)

in | August 29th, 2011

Taught by William Flesch at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty, this course offers a sur­vey of some of the great­est and most influ­en­tial works on West­ern lit­er­a­ture, phi­los­o­phy and cul­ture, from Homer through Mil­ton.  Part of the through line is that every writer cov­ered in the course wrote in a con­text inher­it­ed from the ear­li­er ones, so we look at affil­i­a­tions between them all. The course used the Lat­ti­more trans­la­tions of the Ili­ad and the Odyssey, and the Hol­lan­der trans­la­tions of Dante.  For the oth­er works, any trans­la­tion or edi­tion is fine.

1. Intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture on the leg­endary and the real Homer as treat­ed by Dante and Mil­ton: Audio

2. Home­r­ic sim­i­le in The Ili­ad: Audio

3. Ili­ad, main­ly Book 6: Audio

4. Ili­ad: Hek­tor fright­ens Astyanax; Achilleus plays the lyre: Audio

5. Ili­ad: Achilleus, Patrok­los, Hek­tor, Pri­am, and the laws of hos­pi­tal­i­ty: Audio

6. The Odyssey: Funer­al games and gift-giv­ing  (a bit trun­cat­ed due to glitch): Audio

7. Odyssey: Gifr-giv­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty: Audio

8. Odyssey: The Use of oral for­mu­lae: Audio

9. Odyssey: Why Odysseus is “no man”: Audio

10. Odyssey: Con­clu­sion, includ­ing reunion and two great­est sim­i­les in the poem: Audio

11. Pla­to, Socrates, Zeno, Forms: Audio

12. Pla­to: The Cave and the argu­ment against poet­ry: Audio

13. Aristo­phanes’s Clouds: his Socrates vs. Pla­to’s: Audio

14. Ovid: and his influ­ence on Mil­ton: Audio

15. Ovid and Vir­gil and their rela­tion to Homer: Audio

16. Vir­gil’s sub­lim­i­ty: Audio

17. Vir­gil’s Home­r­ic reca­pit­u­la­tions. Doc­tor John­son’s stric­tures: Audio

18. Dante: Intro­duc­tion. Terza Rima. Dan­te’s Vir­gil. Topog­ra­phy of Hell: Audio

19. Dante: Infer­no. Love, jus­tice, desire: Audio

20. Dante: Infer­no and Pur­ga­to­rio: topo­graph­ic order­ing of sins in both, from least bad to worst: Audio

21. Dante: Pur­ga­to­rio.  Con­tra­pas­so and allo­path­ic pun­ish­ment in Pur­ga­to­ry vs. home­o­path­ic pun­ish­ment in hell: Audio

22.  Dante: Pur­ga­to­rio and Par­adiso: Love and grav­i­ty; the idea of theod­i­cy: Audio

23: Dante: Par­adiso, the Uni­verse, and every­thing: Audio

24. Mil­ton: Par­adiso and Par­adise Lost: Audio

25. Mil­ton: Par­adise Lost and its antecedents in our read­ing: Audio

26. Mil­ton: Free­dom of con­science and guilt in Par­adise Lost: Audio

27. Mil­ton: Par­adise Lost and con­clu­sion of the course: par­al­lels between all worlds; angel­ic sex; love and Adam’s self-sac­ri­fice for Eve and hers for him: Audio

Free Course: A Survey of Shakespeare’s Plays

in | August 29th, 2011

This is a course on Shake­speare’s career, giv­en at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty in the spring of 2010, by William Flesch.  It cov­ers sev­er­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive plays from all four gen­res: com­e­dy, tragedy, his­to­ry, and romance. We con­sid­er both the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences among those gen­res, and how his more and more rad­i­cal exper­i­men­ta­tions in genre reflect his devel­op­ing thought, about the­ater, about time, about life, over the course of his career. In terms of texts, any com­plete Shake­speare will suf­fice, includ­ing this free ver­sion online from MIT. The Nor­ton Shake­speare, edit­ed by Stephen Green­blatt, is also rec­om­mend­ed.

1. Intro­duc­tion on Shake­speare’s think­ing about time, espe­cial­ly in Son­net 73, and then Richard II: Audio

2. Richard II, part 2: Audio

3. Richard II, part 3: Audio

4. Richard II, con­clud­ed; Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream: Audio

5. Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream con­clud­ed: Audio

6. Mer­chant of Venice: Audio

7. Ham­let, part 1: The idea of revenge: Audio

8. Ham­let, part 2: Intro­spec­tion vs. dra­ma: Audio

9. Ham­let, con­clud­ed: The cir­cum­stances of revenge and moral luck: Audio

10.  King Lear, part 1: Audio

11. King Lear, part 2: Audio

12. King Lear, con­clud­ed: Audio

13. Mac­beth, part 1: Audio

14. Mac­beth, con­clud­ed: Audio

15.  Antony and Cleopa­tra, part 1: Audio

16.  Antony and Cleopa­tra, part 2:  Audio

17.  Antony and Cleopa­tra, part 3: Antony: Audio

18.  Antony and Cleopa­tra, con­clud­ed: Audio

19: The Win­ter’s Tale, part 1: Things Dying: Audio

20.  The Win­ter’s Tale,  and the course, con­clud­ed: Things New Born Audio

Download Free Courses from Famous Philosophers: From Bertrand Russell to Michel Foucault

in Philosophy | August 29th, 2011

You can down­load hun­dreds of Free Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. (Per­haps you already knew that.) And that includes cours­es by some of the biggest minds teach­ing in phi­los­o­phy. (Is that old news too? Or some wel­comed good news?) So we’re start­ing the week by giv­ing you a run­down of some notable men­tions.

John Sear­le began teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at UC-Berke­ley in 1959, and first did impor­tant work on “speech act” the­o­ry. Lat­er he turned to con­scious­ness and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, out of which came his famous “Chi­nese room” thought exper­i­ment. You can find a nice trio of class­es online.

• Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage — iTunes
• Phi­los­o­phy of Mind — iTunes
• Phi­los­o­phy of Soci­ety — iTunes

Wal­ter Kauf­mann spent 33 years teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton. And more than any­one else, Kauf­mann intro­duced Nietzsche’s phi­los­o­phy to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world and made it pos­si­ble to take Niet­zsche seri­ous­ly as a thinker. Here he deliv­ers three lec­tures on exis­ten­tial­ists.

• Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre — Web Site

Leo Strauss land­ed at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go in 1949, where he spent decades teach­ing and writ­ing on polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, espe­cial­ly the polit­i­cal thought of the Ancients. His intel­lec­tu­al lega­cy is con­tro­ver­sial, but his cours­es valu­able.

• Hegel: The Phi­los­o­phy of His­to­ry - Web Site
• Kant — Web Site
• Niet­zsche, Beyond Good and Evil - Web Site

Find many more Strauss cours­es here.

Bertrand Rus­sell was one of the most impor­tant British philoso­phers of the last cen­tu­ry — a logi­cian, essay­ist and social crit­ic best known for his work in math­e­mat­i­cal log­ic and ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy. When it comes to this lec­ture series, start with the bot­tom lec­ture first and then work your way up.

• Author­i­ty & the Indi­vid­ual: Six BBC Lec­tures — Web Site

Michel Fou­cault taught his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy at the Col­lège de France and pub­lished influ­en­tial writ­ings on pow­er, knowl­edge, and dis­course.

• Six Lec­tures on Truth & Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty pre­sent­ed on the UC Berke­ley cam­pus (Eng­lish) - YouTube

Find more Fou­cault audio here and here.

Hubert Drey­fus has taught many pop­u­lar exis­ten­tial­ism and phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy cours­es also at UC Berke­ley, some of which laid the foun­da­tion for his new book, All Things Shin­ing: Read­ing the West­ern Clas­sics to Find Mean­ing in a Sec­u­lar Age.

• Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film — iTunes
• Hei­deg­ger — iTunes
• Heidegger’s Being & Time — iTunes

Michael Sandel has taught polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy at Har­vard since 1980. His course on jus­tice (below) has been tak­en by more than 15,000 stu­dents, mak­ing it the most pop­u­lar under­grad­u­ate course at Har­vard. This ver­sion aired on PBS and the web.

• Jus­tice: A Jour­ney in Moral Rea­son­ing - YouTube — Web Site

For all 75 phi­los­o­phy cours­es, please see the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our list of 575 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Har­vard Clas­sics: A Free Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy & Unbe­lief

The Exis­ten­tial Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vad­er

Miss USA 2011: Should Schools Teach Evolution? … or Math?

in Random, Religion, Science | August 26th, 2011

“Should evo­lu­tion be taught in schools?” That was the ques­tion actu­al­ly put to par­tic­i­pants in the Miss USA pageant held this past June.

In response, MacKen­zie Fegan and her friends had some fun with the whole line of think­ing, shoot­ing their own mock video in reply. Enjoy, and do know that we heart Miss Ver­mont…

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

50 Famous Sci­en­tists & Aca­d­e­mics Speak About God: Part II

Do Physi­cists Believe in God

Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism