Conceptual Foundations of International Policy - Columbia University

Conceptual Foundations of International Politics is an old (2007) political science lecture series from Columbia University. It has been reported on already by Dara from DIY Scholar and Baxter Wood. The feed of the course is no longer avaialable under iTunes as reported by Dara, but Saeed Ahmed found an old feed that is still available. Thanks to this, I could also check the series out.

By now I have progressed through to the fifth lecture in the series and I agree with my friends that it is an excellent course. As a matter of fact, all of you who pick up geopolitics oriented lectures from the UChannel podcast frequently, will be supplied with a very useful background to these.

It has been pointed out by Baxter that some fo the lectures are worth seeing because of the visuals. I found a youtube group that apparently, though not obviously ordered, contains video registration of this course.

Introduction to Psychology - Open Yale

Among the wide variety of university lecture series I (try to) follow on podcast are also series from Yale. In the past I have reported about Game Theory, Ancient Greek History and The Hebrew Bible and now I have taken up another one in selected offerings: Introduction to Psychology by Paul Bloom (feed). Note that in the past these courses were not available in feeds. For more information check Open Yale Course Feeds and Huffduffer feed for Yale course on Hebrew Bible by Christina Hayes.

Bloom's series kicks off in a fantastic fashion and even while I have only proceeded onto the fourth lecture, I can already recommend the course heartily. Bloom is a very engaging lecturer who makes his field accessible, interesting and compelling at the same time. Frequently he is even outright entertaining. So far this is clarifying and fun at the same time.

I'd like to pick out the second lecture in which he elegantly takes on the common sense notion that we are a duality of body and mind, or brain and soul if you wish. He jumps ahead to the modern state of affairs where we have learned so much in neuro-science that we have begun to understand how fundamentally physical we are, even our psychological processes. Just as noteworthy is his third lecture in which Bloom picks up Freud, gives a quick entry into his thought and then manages to finish, before the hour is past, to explain why Freud is widely condemned as being unscientific and yet what of his theories continue to influence the field of psychology. This second lecture can be seen on video on YouTube and on Open Culture.

More Open Yale:
Devising your own podcast feed (with The Hebrew Bible),
Open Yale Course feeds - Game Theory and Greek Classics,
The Hebrew Bible - Open Yale,
Introduction to ancient Greek history,
Game Theory.

Geburtstag - Volkis Stimme

A year ago Volkis Stimme, the German comedy podcast began. The podcast consists of weekly episodes with mock-news items, based on the actual news. It is a funny, sometimes witty, sometimes silly show that cheers me up every Sunday morning when I have to get back to work.

If you subscribe now to Volkis Stimme's feed you will be treated with the Sondersendung that is supposed to be released today, to celebrate one year of the podcast. Apart from the congratulations of friendly podcasters and its audience, I am sure there will be the regular mockery of especially German actualities. With Volkis knack for voice impersonations, we may even have a guest on the show - Angela Merkel perhaps? Or will Reiner Calmund come and take his revenge?

Subscribe and find out. And as one of the faithful listeners, I also wish Volkis Stimme a happy Geburtstag.

More:
Quick recommendation,
Angela Merkel (Angie) in Volkis Stimme,
Volkis Stimme - German podcast review.

Nietzsche on Morality - Elucidations

The new philosophy podcast Elucidations (feed) comes to us from the University of Chicago. The third episode is about Nietzsche's view on morality. And so, today, our theme seems to be morality as the previous review was also about morality, at Philosophy Bites, Morality without God.

Guest on Elucidations is Brian Leiter (audio), who makes quite the effort to explain Nietzsche and clarify the various meanings morality in this context receives. In Nietzsche, next to a morality in the pejorative sense, which Nietzsche opposes, there is also some elate morality, that is different and not negative in Nietzsche's view. And so, it is important to get the pejorative morality clear. In Leiter's view, Nietzsche was very much against Utilitarianism and against the morality in Kant.

After the interview, I am not sure whether Leiter's interpretation of Nietzsche would be agreed upon by most authoritative readings of his work and I am far from being able to assess that, but Leiter does seem to emphasize that this interpretation is especially his. No matter what, Nietzsche's importance, so it seems to me, remains that he attacks the assumption of self-evidence in morality and forces us to think even the most obvious moral truisms through.

More Elucidations:
Plato on poetry,
Elucidations - philosophy podcast review.

Morality without God - Philosophy Bites

Tarrou in Camus' 'La Peste' declares he attempts to be a saint without God and this line exalted and inspired me when I was about 22 years old and read the novel for the second or third time. It made me susceptible and appreciative of a morality that was independent of the religious traditions and revelations or a supernatural a priori prescription. It makes the quest for ethics more demanding and a profoundly humanist effort.

So when Philosophy Bites spoke with Walter Sinott-Armstrong under the title Morality without God, I knew I was going to like the podcast and find myself on familiar ground. That turned out as a bit of a deception after all. No matter how appreciative I am of his views, not even I felt convinced by what he was saying. It seems to me he took Morality without God on from the wrong angle.

I'd like to point back to Tarrou and emphasize the 'attempt' bit - morality is first and foremost a quest. And here I'd like to make a side-note to say that over the years I have come to see it is no less a quest for the believers as it is for the non-believers, but the gain in the argument from extracting morality from any given set of rules is to take it away from useless points about consequentialism versus a priori good and the lousy attempt by Sinott-Armstrong to stick morality in the realm of common sense. (Does this mean religious tradition is not common sense?) Common sense, as it comes to us through the ages is historically and socially so obviously influenced by the religious traditions, that this tells us nothing. And whether religions were shaped by common sense, or common sense by religions, lies inextricably hidden in the mists of our history.

If you want to make a secular point, I'd say it should have been that what Tarrou meant to say: trying to be ethical is hard as it is, but trying it without god, that is without any revelation and without any social network and set of custom values such as religion, makes it a more sincere, existential quest. Tougher and truer.

More Philosophy Bites:
Pascal's Pensées,
Fourth Revolution,
Michael Sandel on what cannot be sold,
Aristotle's Ethics,
Sartre.

W. F. De Gaay Fortman - Het Marathon Interview

Dezer dagen besteed ik veel aandacht aan VPRO's Het Marathon Interview. Dit is niet alleen doordat de feed vernieuwd is en doordat ik daarbuiten een manier heb gevonden om de niet in de feed voorkomende interviews via Huffduffer als feed af te leveren. De belangrijkste reden blijft toch altijd dat Het Marathon Interview een van de meest uitdagende radio programma's uit de historie is en bij uitstek geschikt om via podcast te beluisteren.

De vernieuwde feed van de VPRO brengt in hoog tempo de interviews uit 1986 - deze week al vier. Daaronder zijn gesprekken met Molly Geertsema en Hugo Claus waar ik niet geweldig warm voor liep en een gesprek met Diepenhorst dat ik momenteel een tweede kans geef. Waar ik destijds (toen de oude feed hem bracht) wel veel plezier aan heb beleefd was de aflevering met De Gaay Fortman, waarover ik eerder het volgende schreef:

Het valt meteen op dat de interviewer John Jansen van Galen de eminentie tutoyeert, terwijl De Gaay er juist een punt van maakt dat men tegenwoordig (let wel, het is 1986) te informeel is. Hij heeft het over de voornamencultuur en zet zich er nadrukkelijk tegen af. Hij slaagt erin om dat op een respectabele manier te doen. Er spreekt geen overdadige hang naar vormelijkheid uit, maar een behoefte aan zakelijkheid. En het scheiden van zakelijk en prive.

Hoe zit het dan met Jansen van Galen? In het tweede uur wordt uitgelegd dat de twee heren elkaar al geruime tijd kennen en dat De Gaay het 'tutoyement' gevraagd heeft. Kortom, de oude Gaay, hoewel hem het conservatisme niet ontzegd kan worden, laat zich ook van zijn vooruitstrevende kant zien. Het resultaat is van een waardigheid die mij wel kan bekoren.

Meer Marathon Interviews:
Freek de Jonge,
Het Marathon Interview - vernieuwde VPRO podcast,
Karel van het Reve,
Jan Montyn,
Arthur Japin, Johannes van Dam.

Marathon Interviews via mijn Huffduffer:
Arie Kleywegt,
Herman Bianchi.