Conversations in Philosophy - Details, episodes & analysis

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Conversations in Philosophy

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

Arts

Education

Frequency: 1 episode/26d. Total Eps: 14

Jonathan Rée and James Wood challenge a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of philosophy and literature, as they consider how style, narrative, and the expression of ideas play through philosophical writers including Kierkegaard, Mill, Nietzsche, Woolf, Beauvoir and Camus. James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for The New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self. Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English. Non-subscribers will only hear extracts from these episodes. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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'To the Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf

Episode 14

Monday, December 8, 2025 • Duration 18:13

In 1908, Virginia Woolf wrote that she hoped to revolutionise the novel and ‘capture multitudes of things at present fugitive’. ‘To the Lighthouse’ (1927) marks perhaps her fullest realisation of the novel as philosophical enterprise, and not simply because one of its central characters is engaged with the problem of ‘subject and object and the nature of reality’. In the final episode of their series, Jonathan and James consider different ways of reading Woolf’s great novel: as a satirical portrait of her father through Mr Ramsay, as a study of creative expression through Lily Briscoe, or as a mystical, Platonic quest in which form and style respond to philosophical propositions, and the truth of human experience is to be found in movement, conversation and laughter. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Read more in the LRB: Jacqueline Rose: Where's Woolf? https://lrb.me/cipep13woolf1 Virgina Woolf: The Symbol https://lrb.me/cipep13woolf2 John Bayley: Superchild https://lrb.me/cipep13woolf3

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'The Sovereignty of Good' by Iris Murdoch

Episode 13

Monday, November 10, 2025 • Duration 13:10

Imagine a woman setting herself the task of liking her son’s choice of wife. At first she finds her daughter-in-law unbearable, but through the effort of seeing her clearly and justly she comes to accept and even appreciate the younger woman. For Iris Murdoch this is an example of moral labour, the struggle to achieve virtue that is understood intuitively by all of us. In her 1970 book The Sovereignty of Good, a collection of three lectures, Murdoch rejects the unambitious, ‘milk and water’ ethics of her fellow English moralists at Oxford in favour of a Platonic system in which morality has the same objectivity as mathematics. In this episode Jonathan and James discuss Murdoch’s lifelong philosophical project to establish what the rational unity of morality might be like without God. They consider her ideas of ‘unselfing’ and of goodness as a replacement for God, and what she got wrong about Sartre’s distinction between authenticity and sincerity. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Alexander Nehamas: John Bayley's 'Iris': https://lrb.me/cipep12murdoch1 James Wood: Existentialists and Mystics: https://lrb.me/cipep12murdoch2 Rosemary Hill on Iris Murdoch: https://lrb.me/cipep12murdoch3 Audiobooks from the LRB Including Jonathan Rée's 'Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre': https://lrb.me/audiobookscip

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'The Fall' by Albert Camus

Episode 12

Monday, October 13, 2025 • Duration 15:04

Never trust anyone who tries to be ethically pure. This is the message of Albert Camus’s short novel La Chute (The Fall), in which a retired French lawyer tells a stranger in a bar in Amsterdam about a series of incidents that led to a profound personal crisis. The self-described ‘judge-penitent’ had once thought himself to be morally irreproachable, but an encounter with a woman on a bridge and a mysterious laugh left him tormented by a sense of hypocrisy. In this episode, Jonathan and James follow Camus’s slippery hero as he tries and fails to undergo a moral revolution, and look at the ways in which the novel’s lightness of style allows for twisted inversions of conventional morality. They also consider the similarities between Camus’s novels and those of Simone de Beauvoir, and his fractious relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Jeremy Harding: Algeria's Camus: ⁠https://lrb.me/cip11camus1⁠ Jacqueline Rose: 'The Plague': ⁠https://lrb.me/cip11camus3⁠ Adam Shatz: Camus in the New World: ⁠https://lrb.me/cip11camus2⁠ Audiobooks from the LRB Including Jonathan Rée's 'Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre': ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookscip⁠

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'The Ethics of Ambiguity' by Simone de Beauvoir

Episode 11

Monday, September 15, 2025 • Duration 14:59

At the heart of human existence is a tragic ambiguity: the fact that we experience ourselves both as subject and object, internal and external, at the same time, and can never fully inhabit either state. In her 1947 book, Simone de Beauvoir addresses the ethical implications of this uncertainty and the ‘agonising evidence of freedom’ it presents, along with the opportunity it creates for continual self-definition. In this episode Jonathan and James discuss these arguments and Beauvoir’s warnings against trying to evade the responsibilities imposed upon us by this ambiguity. They also look at the ways in which Beauvoir developed these ideas in The Second Sex and her novels, and her remarkable readings of George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Read more in the LRB: Joanna Biggs: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/cipbeauvoir1⁠⁠ Toril Moi: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/cipbeauvoir2⁠⁠ Elaine Showalter: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/cipbeauvoir3⁠⁠ Audiobooks from the LRB Including Jonathan Rée's 'Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre': ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookscip⁠

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'Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions' by Jean-Paul Sartre

Episode 10

Sunday, August 17, 2025 • Duration 15:22

What is an emotion? In his 'Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions' (1939), Sartre picks up what William James, Martin Heidegger and others had written about this question to suggest what he believed to be a new thought on human emotion and its relation to consciousness. For Sartre, the emotions are not external forces acting upon consciousness but an action of consciousness as it tries to rearrange the world to suit itself, or as he puts it at the end of his book: a sudden fall of consciousness into magic. In this episode Jonathan and James discuss why Sartre’s rejection of the idea of the subconscious is not as much a departure from Freud’s theories as he thought they were, and the ways in which his attempt to establish a ‘phenomenological psychology’ manifested in other works, including Nausea, Being and Nothingness and The Words. Note: Readers should use the translation by Philip Mairet. The earlier one by Bernard Frechtman, as Jonathan explains in the episode, contains numerous (often amusing) errors. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Jonathan Rée on 'Being and Nothingness': ⁠https://lrb.me/cipsartre1⁠ Sissela Bok on Sartre's life: ⁠https://lrb.me/cipsartre2⁠ Edwards Said's encounter with Sartre: ⁠https://lrb.me/cipsartre3⁠ Audiobooks from the LRB Including Jonathan Rée's 'Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre': https://lrb.me/audiobookscip

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'The Thing' by Martin Heidegger

Episode 9

Sunday, July 20, 2025 • Duration 15:31

What does it mean for a jug to be a jug? Or for any thing to be called a ‘thing’? In his 1950 lecture ‘Das Ding’, Heidegger attempts to cajole his audience away from their everyday way of seeing the world as consisting of objects that can be represented objectively, and into the kind of thinking that ‘responds and recalls’. For Heidegger, the world we experience is one of dynamic movement between revelation and concealment, where the essential nature of a thing lies in its ‘thinging’, and the ‘jug’s jug character consists in the poured gift of the jug’s pouring out’. In this episode Jonathan and James work through Heidegger’s ideas about both ‘things’ and time, and consider the purpose of his poetic style. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Richard Rorty: Heidegger's Worlds ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n03/richard-rorty/diary⁠⁠ J.P. Stern: Heil Heidegger ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v11/n08/j.p.-stern/heil-heidegger⁠⁠ James Miller: Arendt and Heidegger ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n20/james-miller/thinking-without-a-banister LRB AUDIOBOOKS Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookscip⁠⁠

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'The Will to Believe' by William James

Episode 8

Sunday, June 22, 2025 • Duration 17:29

Most of what we believe we believe on faith, even those beliefs we hold to be based on scientific fact. This assertion lies at the heart of William James’s essay ‘The Will to Believe’, originally delivered as a lecture and intended not so much as a defence of religion as an attack on anti-religion. James’s target was the ‘rugged and manly school of science’ and the kind of atheism ‘that goes around thumping its chest offering its biceps to be felt’. In this episode Jonathan Rée and James Wood look at the intellectual environment William James was working in, and against, in the second half of the 19th century, and its parallels in the ‘new atheism’ of today. They also discuss the extraordinary upbringing William (and his novelist brother Henry) received and the advice he offered to anyone contemplating suicide in his essay ‘Is life worth living?’ Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Read more in the LRB: Helen Thaventhiran: William James's Prescriptions https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n20/helen-thaventhiran/no-dose-for-it-at-the-chemist Michael Wood: William James and modernism https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n18/michael-wood/understanding-forwards Richard Poirier: Williams James's pragmatism https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n19/richard-poirier/copying-the-coyote LRB AUDIOBOOKS Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookscip⁠⁠⁠

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'Schopenhauer as Educator' by Friedrich Nietzsche

Episode 7

Sunday, May 25, 2025 • Duration 29:41

For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer’s genius lay not in his ideas but in his heroic indifference, a thinker whose value to the world is as a liberator rather than a teacher, who shows us what philosophy is really for: to forget what we already know. ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ was written in 1874, when Nietzsche was 30, and was published in a collection with three other essays – on Wagner, David Strauss and the use of history – that has come to be titled Untimely Meditations. In this episode Jonathan and James consider the essays together and their powerful attack on the ethos of the age, railing against the greed and power of the state, fake art, overweening science, the triviality of universities and, perhaps above all, the deification of success. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Read more in the LRB: David Hoy on Nietzsche's life: ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n01/david-hoy/different-stories⁠⁠ J.P. Stern on 'Unmodern Observations' (or 'Untimely Meditations'): ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n16/j.p.-stern/impatience⁠⁠ Jenny Diski on Elisabeth Nietzsche: ⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n18/jenny-diski/it-wasn-t-him-it-was-her⁠⁠ LRB AUDIOBOOKS Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookscip⁠⁠

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'My Station and Its Duties' by F.H. Bradley

Episode 6

Sunday, April 27, 2025 • Duration 14:44

T.S. Eliot claimed that he learned his prose style from reading F.H. Bradley, and the poet wrote his PhD on the English philosopher at Harvard. Bradley’s life was remarkably unremarkable, as he spent his entire career as a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, where his only obligation was not to get married. Yet in over fifty years of slow, meticulous writing he articulated a series of unusual and arresting ideas that attacked Kantian and utilitarian notions of duty and morality. In this episode, Jonathan and James look at Bradley’s polemic against John Stuart Mill, ‘My Station and Its Duties’, and other essays in Ethical Studies, which challenge the idea of morality as a product of calm reasoning arrived at by mature, rational minds. For Bradley, morality is a characteristic of communities, determined by people’s differing needs at various stages in their lives, and the universal need for self-realisation can only be achieved through those communities. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Read more in the LRB: Frank Kermode on Eliot and Bradley: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n17/frank-kermode/feast-of-st-thomas LRB AUDIOBOOKS Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookscip⁠⁠

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'Autobiography' by John Stuart Mill

Episode 5

Sunday, March 30, 2025 • Duration 14:13

Mill’s 'Autobiography' was considered too shocking to publish while he was alive. Behind his musings on many of the philosophical and political preoccupations of his time lie the confessions of a deeply repressed man who knows that he’s deeply repressed, coming to terms with the uncompromising educational experiment his father subjected him to as a child – described by Isaiah Berlin as ‘an appalling success’. In this episode Jonathan and James discuss Mill’s startlingly honest account of this experience and the breakdown that ensued in his 20s, and the boldness of his life and thought from his views on socialism and the rights of women to his unwavering devotion to his wife, Harriet Taylor, the co-author of 'On Liberty' and other works. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Sissela Bok on Mill's 'Autobiography': ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n06/sissela-bok/his-father-s-children⁠ Alasdair MacIntyre: Mill's Forgotten Victory ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n20/alasdair-macintyre/john-stuart-mill-s-forgotten-victory⁠ Panbkaj Mishra: Bland Fanatics ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n23/pankaj-mishra/bland-fanatics⁠ Next Episode F.H. Bradley's 'My Station and Its Duties' can be found online here: ⁠https://archive.org/details/ethicalstudies0000brad/page/160/mode/2up⁠ LRB AUDIOBOOKS Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookscip⁠⁠

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Conversations in Philosophy - Details, episodes & analysis

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Conversations in Philosophy - Details, episodes & analysis

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