History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

HoP 331 - Literary Criticism - Lorenzo Valla

Lorenzo Valla launches a furious attack on scholastic philosophy, favoring the resources of classical Latin.

HoP 311 - The Elements of Style - Rhetoric in Byzantium

Psellos and other experts in rhetoric explore how this art of persuasion relates to philosophy.

HoP 302 - On the Eastern Front - Philosophy in Syriac and Armenian

Eastern Christian philosophy outside of Constantinople, focusing on translation and exegesis in the languages of Syriac and Armenian.

HoP 289 - A Wing and a Prayer - Angels in Medieval Philosophy

Be surprised by how many philosophical problems arise in connection with angels (how many can dance on the head of a pin is not one of them).

HoP 283 - Jack Zupko on John Buridan

Peter speaks to Jack Zupko about John Buridan's secular and parsimonious approach to philosophy.

HoP 282 - Portrait of the Artist - John Buridan

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 277 - Trivial Pursuits - Fourteenth Century Logic

The scholastics discuss the ambiguity of terms, the nature of logical inference, and logical paradoxes, and play the game of “obligations.”

HoP 273 - What Do You Think? - Ockham on Mental Language

How the language of thought relates to spoken and written language, according to William of Ockham.