HoP 366 - The Men Who Saw Tomorrow - Renaissance Magic and Astrology
February 14th, 2021
Ficino, Pico, Cardano, and other Renaissance thinkers debate whether astrology and magic are legitimate sciences with a foundation in natural philosophy.
HoP 352 - The Teacher of Our Actions - Renaissance Historiography
June 28th, 2020
Bruni, Poggio, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini explore political ideas and historical method in works on Roman and Italian history.
HoP 350 - The Sentence - Machiavelli on Republicanism
May 31st, 2020
Peter celebrates reaching 350 episodes by explaining a single sentence in Machiavelli's "Discourses."
HoP 348 - The Sweet Restraints of Liberty - Republicanism and Civic Humanism
May 3rd, 2020
Did “civic humanism” really make republicanism a newly dominant political theory in the Italian Renaissance?
HoP 345 - What a Piece of Work is Man - Manetti and Pico on Human Nature
March 22nd, 2020
Pico della Mirandola and Giannozzo Manetti praise humans as the centerpiece of the created world. But what about the other animals?
HoP 334 - Chance Encounters - Reviving Hellenistic philosophy
October 20th, 2019
The rediscovery of Epicurus, Lucretius, and Sextus Empiricus spreads challenging ideas about chance, atomism, and skepticism.
HoP 331 - Literary Criticism - Lorenzo Valla
September 8th, 2019
Lorenzo Valla launches a furious attack on scholastic philosophy, favoring the resources of classical Latin.
HoP 329 - Greeks Bearing Gifts - Byzantine Scholars in Italy
July 14th, 2019
Bessarion and George Trapenzuntius, rival scholars from the Greek east who helped inspire the Italian Renaissance.
HoP 325 - Platonic Love - Gemistos Plethon
May 19th, 2019
Was Gemistos Plethon, the last great thinker of the Byzantine tradition, a secret pagan or just a Christian with an unusual enthusiasm for Platonism?
HoP 292 - Say it With Poetry - Chaucer and Langland
December 31st, 2017
Philosophical themes in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and “Troilus and Criseyde,” as well as Langland’s “Piers Plowman.”
HoP 287 - Down to the Ground - Meister Eckhart
October 22nd, 2017
The scholastic and mystic Meister Eckhart sets out his daring speculations about God and humankind in both Latin and German.
HoP 282 - Portrait of the Artist - John Buridan
July 16th, 2017
The hipster’s choice for favorite scholastic, John Buridan, sets out a nominalist theory of knowledge and language, and explains the workings of free will.
HoP 276 - Back to the Future - Foreknowledge and Predestination
April 23rd, 2017
Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine ask how we can be free if God knows and chooses the things we will do in the future.
HoP 271 - Do As You’re Told - Ockham on Ethics and Political Philosophy
February 12th, 2017
William of Ockham on freedom of action and freedom of thought.
HoP 266 - Tom Pink on the Will
December 4th, 2016
A conversation with Tom Pink about medieval theories of freedom and action.
HoP 262 - On Command - Scotus on Ethics
October 9th, 2016
Scotus argues that morality is a matter of freely choosing to follow God’s freely issued commands.
HoP 261 - To Will or Not to Will - Scotus on Freedom
September 25th, 2016
Scotus develops a novel theory of free will and, along the way, rethinks the notions of necessity and possibility.
HoP 257 - Martin Pickave on Henry of Ghent and Freedom
July 3rd, 2016
An interview with Martin Pickavé on voluntarism in Henry of Ghent.
