Professor Kozlowski produces an odd, unfocused lecture for an odd, unfocused topic.

Professor Kozlowski goes over the syllabus for the online Summer '24 session of Love and Friendship.

Professor Kozlowski concludes his discussion of Dostoevsky's Demons and his series on Russian Nihilism.

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/ or contact him directly at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com.

Professor Kozlowski continues his deep read of the Iliad by walking through the preparations and duel of Books 3-4, stressing the chaotic nature of conflict and war in the Iliad, and the how this contributes to the Greek view of fate, justice, and the gods.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski begins his deep read of the Iliad by examining the themes and characters of Books 1 and 2.  Highlights include toxic masculinity between Achilles and Agamemnon, marital squabbling between Zeus and Hera, and a really long list of ships that everybody hates to read, but may have been a highlight of the poem in Homer's day.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski takes a deep dive into the style and structure of the Iliad - he examines multiple translations to discuss the priorities and pitfalls of each, summarizes some of the eccentricities of the Greek language, and discusses key features of Homeric epics, including dactylic hexameter, enjambment, epic simile, and other fancy poetry stuff.  He also butchers reading Greek a few times, so there's that.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski tries to contextualize the Iliad of Homer by reading through the Trojan War narrative in the Library of Apollodorus.  Along the way, he presents the timeline of fifteen-hundred years between the (supposed) events of the Trojan War and the digested version found in Apollodorus, and he discusses the major gods, goddesses, characters and events in the mythic tradition surrounding the Trojan War.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski kicks off a new semester (well in advance) and a new class: Troy and the Trojan War.  In this class, he'll look at the Iliad, Homer, and the legacy of the Trojan War - in its own time, and through history.  But first, he discusses the class expectations and parameters in painstaking detail.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski will NOT be recording his ethics class this summer, alas - but offers this one-off episode about the current state of discourse about abortion.  In it he'll discuss some important writings on the issue, assumptions made by both pro-life and pro-choice advocates, and the political expediency of polarizing voters (along with its potentially-disastrous long-term consequences for both voters and politicians).

Coming soon: "Troy and the Trojan War" - get your copies of Lombardo's Iliad while you can!

If you want to rage-spam Professor Kozlowski for his despicable views, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski examines and analyzes each of the major characters and themes of the Epic of Gilgamesh, specifically as it is presented and recorded in the Akkadian "standard version" attributed to Sin-Leqi-Unninni.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski discusses the history of the Gilgamesh story, from fragmentary Sumerian myths to fragmentary Akkadian epic.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski deviates from his usual curriculum to entertain his wife's lecture request: Today we are discussing Diana Gabaldon's Outlander - its role in the history of the novel, and the women-targeted romance-novel especially, as well as its anomalous value as a work of rich, good women's romance literature in a world dominated by unhealthy attitudes toward romance and female sexuality.  If that sounds boring to you, then you are exactly who I hope to reach.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor  Kozlowski concludes his series on The Brothers Karamazov and looks forward at the future of his Internet-based endeavors.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Time to party with the Demons.

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/ or contact him directly at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com.

Professor Kozlowski discusses the first half of the conclusion to The Brothers Karamazov, examining the climactic trial, its significance to the various characters and witnesses, and how we ought to understand Dostoevsky's criticism of the Russian legal system in the 19th Century.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski examines the many questions surrounding Ivan's interviews with Smerdykov and the Devil, and concludes that it's all just a dream.  Calm down, y'all.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Dostoevsky (and Professor Kozlowski) once again turns his attention to Brother Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov - but where is he?  Three months have transpired and it seems that Alyosha keeps missing him, though his effects are felt everywhere that he goes.  What is going on with Brother Ivan?

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski looks at this sudden and seemingly-inexplicable tangent in Dostoevsky's storytelling: a diversion from the main story and characters to consider an otherwise unmet character, only partially-related to the secondary plot of the novel, three months after the (unjust?) arrest of Dmitri Karamazov.  Why does Dostoevsky make these choices, and why does our plot now rest on a thirteen- (two weeks from fourteen!)-year-old kid?

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski looks at the investigation and interrogation of Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov through three interpretive lenses: that of the popular detective novel or police procedural, the social/psychological novel, and the thematic lens discussed in prior lectures.  The result is another layered, nuanced set of chapters in a complex novel, but we must be sure to resist the temptation to over-simplify its role here.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor  Kozlowski discusses the latter half of Mitya's chapter, including his confrontation with (and generosity toward) the two poles, his success with Grushenka, and his remorse about killing (?) Grigory - just in time for his arrest and questioning in the next section.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski confronts Dostoevsky's Russian Nationalism in the light of Putin's war on Ukraine, as well as the whole of Dostoevsky's legacy - good and bad - in the hopes of justifying the celebration of a Russian writer despite current Russian aggression (perhaps unsuccessfully).  He also discusses Mitya's frantic efforts to extricate himself from his dire circumstances, even to the point of murder(?).

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski discusses the funeral of Elder Zosima, and what Dostoevsky reveals about the nature of Christian hypocrisy, as well as tracking the development of Alyosha Karamazov through despair, rebellion, and redemption.  For next week, we break Book Eight ("Mitya") in half - Chapters 1-5 for next week; Chapters 6-8 for the week after.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

"The Grand Inquisitor" may be the most-discussed passage from The Brothers Karamazov, but the Life, Talks, and Homilies of Father Zosima is almost certainly the thematic center of the whole book, unsexy though it may be.  Today Professor Kozlowski talks about that unsexiness, and the unsexiness of Christian theology altogether, along with how Zosima's (and Dostoevsky's) teachings in this book manage to be boring, straightforward, and profound - all at the same time.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

At last, it's the moment we've all been waiting for: Professor Kozlowski discusses Rebellion and The Grand Inquisitor - Ivan's long speech to Alyosha about philosophy, freedom, suffering, and proto-existentialism.  Pack a lunch; this is going to be a long one.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Finally we get to see Pyotr Stepanovich bustle about and put his dubious plans into motion. Today Professor Kozlowski contrasts the careers and adventures of Pyotr Stepanovich and Stavrogin, examines the literary origins of each, and considers the censored "At Tikhon's" chapter as it reflects on our understanding of these characters.

Professor Kozlowski turns his attention to the villains and victims of Dostoevsky's characters in The Brothers Karamazov: Fyodor Karamaov at his most terrible, Katerina Ivanovna at her most manipulative, and the "castle" of Captain Snegirov as they desperately cling to some fragmentary sense of pride.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski discusses Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as it returns to Dostoevsky's comfort zone: Alyosha bustling about, bumping into other characters and listening to their problems.  Today we'll finally be introduced to the nihilistic Smerdyakov, get a better glimpse of Dmitri's personal struggles, and watch fights break out between father and son, rival lovers, and in the comments section.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski discusses Dostoevsky's over-ambitious first look at the Family Karamazov as they hide their insecurities with erudition (or stupidity), create several public scandals, threaten murder, and homewreck a monastery.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski is sick, and couldn't go to class for his typical first-day-syllabus discussion.  So it ended up here instead.  New Brothers Karamazov lecture to come soon, but first I've got to pay my bills... *shrug*

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski discusses Dostoevsky's shamelessly expository first book of The Brothers Karamazov, including the "muddle-headed" and dissipated father Fyodor, hapless Dmitri, capable Ivan, and Alyosha - who may very well be Dostoevsky's most successful attempt at making a convincing heroic protagonist.  Next week we'll tackle Book Two: "An Inappropriate Gathering" and see how these characters interact with one another.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski embarks on a new semester-long project: reading through Dostoevsky's mammoth, messy magnum opus: The Brothers Karamazov.  We'll be reading the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation on a week-to-week basis, starting with "Book One: A Nice Little Family" next week.  I encourage you to follow along in your own reading, as it is convenient for you.

Since this project is online-only, I've decided to set up a Patreon account for my Internet presence, which you can find at: https://www.patreon.com/ProfessorKozlowski - if you like this project, or any of my other Internet undertakings, please consider contributing, so I can spend more of my time working on these sorts of endeavors.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski closes out his Love and Friendship class with some discussion of Foucault, but mostly by thinking out loud about the past, present, and future of his podcast, his workload, and where his Internet Presence is likely to go, now that he doesn't have the pandemic to both spur his activity and boost his viewership.  Here's hoping for some Dostoevsky in the spring!

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski well oversteps his expertise and discusses the ideas presented in early texts on Queer Theory, namely Michel Foucault's "Friendship as a Way of Life" and "Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity", as well as "The Ethics of Sexual Shame" - the first chapter of Michael Warner's The Trouble With Normal.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski continues his discussion of Love in the 20th Century by examining the four waves of feminism and touching on several important texts written by feminist authors on the subject of Love: namely Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex, Annette Baier's "Unsafe Loves", and Virgina Held's The Ethics of Care.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski wanders off the beaten path of philosophical canon to discuss the attitudes on Love and Friendship most important to him personally: the account of love in G. K. Chesterton's Manalive, and the account of friendship in C. S. Lewis' The Four Loves.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski continues his discussion of Dostoevsky's Demons by deeply examining the newly-revealed characters of Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin and Pyotor Stepanovich through their interactions with many of the other radicals and townfolk.

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/ or contact him directly at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com.

Professor Kozlowski discusses Freud today.  What could go wrong?

CW: sex/sexuality, incest, rape, heteronormativity, childhood trauma, mental illness, coprophilia, love as a purely physical process, scientific objectivity, the gradual deterioration of Professor Kozlowski's mental well-being

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski takes on some of the most divisive and dangerous thinkers in the history of the canon - along with some explanation of 19th-century obsessions like Social Darwinism, rampant Naturalism, and their often-racist conclusions.  We cautiously walk through some of Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's philosophy, hemmed in by dangers and unwarranted assumptions (there is a lot of swearing), then cool off with the refreshing rationality of Kierkegaard's Works of Love.  Did we mention the swearing?

CW: Racism, eugenics, mental illness, and irresponsible rationalization

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski guides us carefully through Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Wertherism, and the tangled, radical philosophy of Romanticism as we embark on our study of nineteenth-century philosophy.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski pits Rousseau's dubious pedagogical advice against the clear-sighted feminism of Mary Wollstonecroft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in this last examination of love in The Enlightenment.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Continuing through history, Professor Kozlowski discusses excerpts of Spinoza's Ethics, briefly recounts the intellectual history leading up to The Enlightenment (including its greatest accomplishments and most egregious shortcomings), and concludes by examining Kant's lecture "On Friendship", in which Kant approaches the tradition of Cicero and Montaigne with his characteristic keen incisiveness.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski discusses the rapidly-changing world of Modern Europe, from the Renaissance to the Protestant Reformation to the Scientific Revolution, in order to contextualize and understand the writings of Montaigne, Francis Bacon, and John Milton.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski takes a break from philosophy proper to discuss the Love of the poets and artists of the late medieval and early modern era, focusing primarily on the romance of Dante and Beatrice as it is depicted in The Divine Comedy.  He specifically emphasizes how Dante is uniting the transcendent, holy love tradition in Medieval philosophy (evident in writers like Aquinas) and the courtly love tradition, to produce a new synthesis that will be the foundation of modern attitudes toward love for centuries to come.  So begins our discussion of Modern Philosophy.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski goes for a (relatively) brief walk through the woolly area of Thomist philosophy: examining how Aquinas distinguishes between concupiscent and friendly love and how friendly love is, for Aquinas, one and the same with the Christian notion of "charity" - or transcendent, Godly love.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski commits a hat-trick of irresponsible academic conjecture by (1) wading deep into a contentious discussion that (2) he is woefully under-informed about, and (3) which involves a cultural/religious heritage he does not belong to.  But seriously, how the heck can anyone miss the connection between Islamic teaching about love (ca. 11th-12th century) and the Courtly Love tradition (esp. regarding Arthurian Romance)?  Better to bring it up badly than perpetuate the cultural blindness endemic to discussion of the Islamicate World's accomplishments, I guess.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski largely abandons today's reading from Augustine's Confessions in order to embark on a brief history of the early Christian church, tracking its evolution from a guerrilla religion fleeing from Roman authorities, through its acceptance as the state religion of Rome, growing through schism, and the rise of the papacy, monasticism, and religious reform.  Where does Christianity end and secular power begin?  How much of developing Christianity is indebted to stoicism, Neo-Platonism, or other cultural forces?  Who the heck knows?

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski continues his discussion of Dostoevsky's Demons with an examination of many of the minor characters introduced so far, and how their relationships are revealed, piecemeal, through careful details and subtle interactions.

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/ or contact him directly at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com.

It's time to talk about Christianity, and how it radically changed Western Culture's understanding of Love.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski muses on the subject of how philosophy texts become "important" to the canon, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire - as a subject of philosophical study, and also (when forced) what Cicero actually has to say about friendship.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski crosses the Rubicon to discuss the rise of the Roman Empire, its widespread (and politically-motivated?) embrace of stoicism, and how that informs Roman attitudes on hero-worship and suspicion against Love.  Today we're reading Theano's "Letter on Marriage and Fidelity", selections from Ovid's The Art of Love, Lucretius' argument against love from On the Nature of Things, and the first third of Cicero's De Amicitia.

If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com

To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/