Critical Concepts – Details, episodes & analysis

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Critical Concepts

The Sane Society

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/14d. Total Eps: 6

To slightly alter a quote from Karl Marx: "We are therefore in a position to sum up the credo of our podcast in a single word: the self-clarification (critical philosophy) of the struggles and wishes of the age." To achieve this, we asked leading experts in the field of social and economic philosophy to break down the core concepts of their research.

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🇫🇷 France - philosophy
26/08/2026
#90
🇺🇸 USA - philosophy
25/08/2026
#99
🇫🇷 France - philosophy
25/08/2026
#72
🇬🇧 Great Britain - philosophy
23/08/2026
#97
🇩🇪 Germany - philosophy
16/08/2026
#77
🇩🇪 Germany - philosophy
15/08/2026
#36
🇩🇪 Germany - philosophy
14/08/2026
#64
🇩🇪 Germany - philosophy
21/07/2026
#72
🇩🇪 Germany - philosophy
20/07/2026
#36
🇩🇪 Germany - philosophy
19/07/2026
#49

Spotify

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http://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/
1 share
https://philosophy.mit.edu/haslanger/
1 share
https://sorenmau.com/
1 share

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Score global : 48%

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#1 Why Do We Have Prisons? with Tommie Shelby

Season 1 · Episode 1

Friday, May 29, 2026 • Duration 15:24

Prisons are a central institution of modern society, yet their legitimacy is rarely questioned. Many people assume they prevent crime and justly punish wrongdoing. But what if these assumptions are mistaken?

Today’s guest, Tommie Shelby, is the Lee Simpkins Family Professor of Arts and Sciences and the Caldwell Titcomb Professor in the ⁠Department of African and African American Studies ⁠and the ⁠Department of Philosophy⁠ at Harvard University. He argues that prisons fail to deliver what we expect from them and challenges the very idea that they are justified.

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#2 Why Do We Reproduce Social Structures? with Sally Haslanger

Season 1 · Episode 2

Friday, June 12, 2026 • Duration 44:02

When we are born into a particular society, we quickly learn its norms and practices. As we internalize these patterns, we also begin to reproduce them in our everyday actions. Through this repetition, it becomes tempting to see these social arrangements as natural or inevitable.

Today’s guest, MIT-professor Sally Haslanger, challenges this assumption. In her work, she examines the many ways in which social subjects participate in reproducing the very structures that shape them, and why these patterns can be so difficult to break. At the same time, she argues that understanding how social structures are reproduced can also reveal how they might be transformed.

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#3 What is Alienation? with Rahel Jaeggi

Season 1 · Episode 3

Friday, June 26, 2026 • Duration 28:00

The concept of alienation has a long tradition. Karl Marx famously introduced the concept during the rise of industrial capitalism to criticize the working conditions of industrial workers. Yet some might argue that alienation belongs to the 19th century and has little relevance for understanding contemporary society.

Today’s guest, ⁠Rahel Jaeggi⁠, disagrees and believes that the idea of alienation is more relevant than ever before. In her book of the same name, she revitalizes the concept and calls it “a relation of relationlessness,” in which social subjects are not capable of appropriating the social relations within which they live. Thats not it though. Jaeggi believes that to understand the new rise of fascist and authoritarian parties and leaders in Europe and the United States understanding alienation is crucial.

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#4 What is Phantom Possession? with Eva von Redecker

Season 1 · Episode 4

Friday, July 10, 2026 • Duration 20:54

Across the world, authoritarian and fascist movements are gaining popularity. These movements often claim that external forces are trying to take away something they must defend against a specific enemy. Within these narratives, a particular notion of ownership emerges. Today’s guest, Eva von Redecker, calls this form of ownership “phantom possession.” She argues that to understand authoritarian and fascist movements, we need to understand this concept.

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#6 The Illusion of Free Markets with Bernard Harcourt

Season 1 · Episode 6

Friday, August 7, 2026 • Duration 27:40

For most people, the existence of markets appears natural. We buy our food through markets, we rent the places we live in through markets, and our work takes place within a labor market. It is often assumed that markets are a sphere of freedom, where different participants come together and exchange goods in ways that benefit everyone involved.

But according to today’s guest, Bernard E. Harcourt, this idea of a harmonious and self-regulating market sphere is actually a myth. Harcourt further argues that what we often think of as unregulated market freedom in fact depends on extensive forms of regulation, policing, and coercion outside the market itself.

In today’s episode, Harcourt traces the long history of this idea of market freedom and shows how what appears natural today was in fact constructed over centuries.

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# 5 What is Economic Power? with Søren Mau

Season 1 · Episode 5

Friday, July 24, 2026 • Duration 29:32

Despite extreme levels of inequality, poverty, and ecological destruction, capitalism remains the dominant form of organizing social life. Not only that, it seems that each of us is in some way involved in its continuation. We constantly reproduce the world we live in. Through our everyday activities and interactions we keep the existing social order going. But why? And why does it seem so difficult to simply step out of it?

Marxist philosopher Søren Mau argues that the answer lies in what he calls “economic power.” When we think of power, we usually imagine forms of domination that involve coercion, violence, or ideological influence. In much of social theory, these appear in institutionalized forms through which social order is maintained and reproduced. Against this background, Mau suggests that power can also operate independently of individual intentions. It can be embedded in the ways social life is organized and operates through the relations and conditions that shape our everyday actions in the first place.

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Critical Concepts – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

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Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

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Apple Podcasts

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Critical Concepts – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other7

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other7

Apple Podcasts

Spotify