Frequently Asked Questions

1. Will the podcast be covering non-Western (Indian or Chinese) philosophy?

Why, yes! Starting in September 2015, I launched a series of episodes on philosophy in India, written together with expert Jonardon Ganeri. These are appearing in alternating weeks with episodes on European philosophy. All episodes of course appear here on the website. Note that the Indian philosophy episodes appear on a second RSS feed (http://hopwag2.podbean.com/feed/) so that the narratives don’t get jumbled together – this means that you need to subscribe to that feed separately. My further ambition is to cover the other philosophical traditions of Asia (especially Chinese) and also African philosophy and the philosophy of the African diaspora, but of course India will take a while so you'll have to be patient if you are waiting for me to get to that!

2. Can written versions of the scripts be made available?

Why, yes! In fact they are appearing as a series of books with Oxford University Press – see the link at the top of this page. In part to avoid undermining the book series, I am not making scripts available informally so you will have to wait for the books to appear. I would also prefer it if people would refrain from typing up transcripts and circulating them, for the same reason.  

Previous and planned publication dates of this book series are as follows: 

“Classical Philosophy,” taking the story up to Aristotle: 2014

“Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds”: summer 2015

“Philosophy in the Islamic World”: 2016

“Medieval Philosophy”: 2017-18

“Byzantine and Renaissance Philosophy”: 2018-19

The intention would also be for the scripts on Indian philosophy (see above) to appear as a book in the series, co-authored with Jonardon Ganeri.

3. What does the slogan “without any gaps” mean?

Basically it means that I cover minor figures as well as major ones, and try to tell a continuous story. I also take it to mean paying attention to material that is arguably not “philosophical,” but is at least of importance to the history of philosophy, such as natural science, theology and mysticism, as well as a fair amount of plain old historical context. On the blog I put up a series of “rules” for doing the history of philosophy, spelling out this methodology and its motivations at greater length. Two important consequences of the approach are that I am covering women in the history of philosophy as much as possible, and looking at non-Western cultures (apart from the aforementioned series on India, Islamic philosophy has already been dealt with in immense detail).

4. What is that music you’re using to introduce and end each episode?

The music changes from one historical period to another. The links and sources of the various clips are posted here: http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/links

5. Would you recommend any other podcasts?

Why, yes! That same links page includes a number of suggestions.

6. Can we follow you on Twitter and Facebook?

No one has ever asked me this, actually, but just in case: why, yes! Here:

https://twitter.com/HistPhilosophy

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-History-Of-Philosophy-With-No-Gaps/16...

7. How far will you keep going with this series?

No idea. I originally thought that I might stop with Kant, but nowadays I tend to think that the ambition should be to go into the twentieth century. In any case I have no immediate plans to stop, though it may be that once I get past medieval philosophy into terrain I know less well, I will put up episodes less frequently. (Since the alternating schedule with Indian philosophy will mean I am only putting up episodes on European philosophy once each fortnight, I may just stay on that schedule to give myself time to do the necessary research for writing scripts.)

8. Will you please add an episode on that thing you missed, that was really important and you should have covered it before?

No, sorry. I don’t want to move backwards and cover things out of chronological order. The books do give me a chance to add material to close unintentional gaps though, so if you get your suggestion in before it is too late I might be persuaded to add a chapter to the published version.

9. Will the books include all the episodes or only a selection?

All and only the scripted episodes – plus any chapters I decide to add for the book version. The books don’t include the interviews, for various reasons; the main one is that that would put a lot of pressure on the interview guests. And it’s hard enough to persuade them sometimes as it is!

10. Is it ok for listeners to post the .mp3 files elsewhere, like on YouTube?

Go for it – the more people hear them the better, and I am not trying to make money off them or anything. It would be nice though if you included a link to this website.

11. I’ve listened to all the podcasts, is there anything else you’ve done I can find on the internet?

Ok, no one has ever asked me this either. But just in case, you can find me as a guest on several episodes of the following podcast series: Philosophy Bites, Elucidations, and the Philosopher’s Zone. I also appeared as a guest on the following topics with In Our Time from BBC Radio 4: Averroes, Avicenna, Maimonides, al-Ghazali, Heraclitus, the Greek-Arabic translation movement.

I also filmed a few short videos you can find on YouTube, called “History of Philosophy’s Greatest Hits.”

12. When will you get to [name of favorite modern philosopher]?

I don’t have a detailed list of projected episodes beyond the coming year or so, but it will probably be at least 2018 before I get to early modern philosophy and more likely 2019.

13. When you (finally) get there, will you cover [name of favorite modern philosopher]?

Almost certainly! (No gaps.) But if you’re worried I won’t, by all means make suggestions. I keep notes on listener requests for periods I haven’t reached yet.

14. What's with all the theology? I thought this was a philosophy podcast!

I discuss this issue at length in a blog post. The basic answer though is that even if you don't care about religion or theology as such, you have to take it seriously if you want to do the history of philosophy. This is because so many philosophers throughout history have done philosophy in a theological context; it is also because theological discussions turn out to have philosophical implications that can be "exported" from their original, theological context. Good examples from the medieval era (which is the most theological of all periods of philosophy) include Abelard's account of sameness and difference, which was developed within the context of explaining the Trinity, epistemological discussions inspired by the problem of how we can know God, the revolutions in modality devised by Avicenna and Scotus in order to explain the sense in which God is necessary and how He can act freely, and the views on substances that emerged in the context of discussing the Eucharist and Incarnation.