Ep. 4 - Boethius and the Consolation of Philosophy

Ralston College presents a lecture by University of Cambridge Professor Douglas Hedley on the influential and mysterious pre-Socratic philosopher Pythagoras. Given in the very cave in Samos in which Pythagoras taught, this brief lecture touches on the philosopher’s influence on the Western tradition and the importance of the cave as an imaginative motif. Professor Hedley explores this recurring symbol as a place of birth and rebirth, of contemplation and illumination, and of tremendous inspiration to later figures such as Plato and many early Christian thinkers.

The lecture took place during the first term of Ralston College's inaugural MA in the Humanities in autumn of 2022.

Authors, Ideas, and Works Mentioned in this Episode

Eusebius
Werner Jaeger
Ralph Cudworth
Kabbalah
Pythagoras
The Lyceum
Lloyd P. Gerson
St Ambrose
Johannes Reuchlin
St Augustine
Metempsychosis
Orphism
Empedocles
Plato’s Cave
Socrates
Mithraism
Cave of the Apocalypse in Patmos
Parmenides
Aristotle
Pindar
Immanuel Kant
Gottlob Frege

Links of Possible Interest

Douglas Hedley’s Cambridge Profile
https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory/douglas-hedley 

Living Forms of the Imagination
https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0567032957/breviaryinfo-21

Dr Stephen Blackwood 
https://www.stephenjblackwood.com

Dr James Bryson 
https://www.ralston.ac/people/james-bryson

Ralston College (including newsletter)
https://ralston.ac   

Ralston College Short Courses 
https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-short-courses

Ralston College presents a lecture by Marie Kawthar Daouda on the infamous French poet, Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire published one collection of poems in his lifetime, 'Les Fleurs du mal,' which was met by outrage and led to a scandalous lawsuit because of some poems’ graphic content. The problem with Baudelaire was not so much that he was writing about sex, drunkenness, and violence; it was that he wrote about ugly things—at times horrible things—while using the classical perfection of the French verse, and merged the longing for a lost ideal with the modernity of Haussmanian Paris. As such, Baudelaire's art is not about gruesome indecency, but about acknowledging horror as a non-negotiable part both of the human condition and of the creation of the self. Dr Daouda’s lecture focuses on two particular sonnets, 'À une passante' and 'Recueillement,' which offer emblematic examples of Baudelaire’s poetic technique and his philosophical heritage, and help to explain why, although he died in utter misery, he was one of the most influential artistic figures of the century that followed.

This lecture and discussion were recorded with a live online audience on June 23rd, 2022.

Authors, Ideas, and Works Mentioned in this Episode

Charles Baudelaire
Eugene Delacroix, 'La Liberté guidant le peuple'
Chateaubriand
Benjamin Constant
Alphonse de Lamartine
Victor Hugo, 'Les Miserables'
George Sand
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Voltaire
Victor Hugo, 'Les Chansons des rues et des bois'
Édouard Manet
Blaise Pascal
Joseph de Maistre
Edgar Allan Poe
Platonism
Neo-Platonism
Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Imp of the Perverse'
Charles Baudelaire, 'L’art romantique'
Charles Baudelaire, 'Les Fleurs du mal'
Carlos Schwabe, 'Spleen et idéal'
Oscar Wilde
Charles Baudelaire, 'À une passante'
Petrus Borel, 'Champavert'
Charles Baudelaire, 'Recueillement'
Charles Baudelaire, 'Le Spleen de Paris'
Michael Edwards, 'Bible et poésie'
Vladimir Jankélévitch, 'La Mort'
Carlos Schwabe, 'Les Noces du poete et de la Muse ou L’Ideal'
Gustav Maureau
Lord Byron

Links of Possible Interest

Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda's biography
https://www.ralston.ac/people/marie-k...

Dr Stephen Blackwood
https://www.stephenjblackwood.com

Ralston College
https://ralston.ac

Ralston College Short Courses
https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-sho...

Ralston College Humanities MA
https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-ma

Ralston College presents a lecture by Arif Ahmed on David Hume’s conception of self in Book I of his ‘Treatise of Human Nature.’ The idea of ‘the self’ or ‘soul’ as an enduring subject of experience seems very natural, indeed almost inevitable. Hume, however, argues that it is a mistake; and he gives a novel account of what it means for you or me to exist at any one time or across different times. In his lecture, Dr Ahmed assesses Hume's central argument and discusses whether it sheds any light on related questions concerning responsibility, the morality of life and death, and the nature and rationality of 'self-interest.' This lecture and discussion were recorded with a live online audience on May 19th, 2022.

Ralston College presents a lecture by Alan Charles Kors on Voltaire's great work 'The Philosophical Letters.' Profoundly impressed by the English scientific and philosophical revolutions of the seventeenth century, Voltaire sought to explain and to popularize new British thinking to his French readers. He argued that sound and innovative thinkers were more important to humanity than its political or military heroes and that preferring the philosophers of one’s native land over those of another nation was a barrier to truth and knowledge. In this second part of a broader lecture on Voltaire's thought, Professor Kors expands upon Voltaire’s observations of the relative political and economic freedom in England at the time and its connection to an underlying philosophical worldview. This lecture and discussion were recorded with a live online audience on April 28th, 2022.

Ralston College presents a two-part series of lectures by Alan Charles Kors on Voltaire's great work 'The Philosophical Letters.' Profoundly impressed by the English scientific and philosophical revolutions of the seventeenth century, Voltaire sought to explain and to popularize new British thinking to his French readers. He argued that sound and innovative thinkers were more important to humanity than its political or military heroes and that preferring the philosophers of one’s native land over those of another nation was a barrier to the advance of truth and knowledge. In this first lecture, Professor Kors explores the reasons for Voltaire's fascination with the English empirical tradition, which is exemplified by Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton. This lecture and discussion were recorded with a live online audience on April 21st, 2022.

Stephen Blackwood speaks with the Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, Vernon L. Smith. They begin by defining and exploring commonly misunderstood economic terms—markets, capitalism, equilibrium—and then unpack the discoveries of Dr Smith’s pioneering experiments in economics, which—against widely held assumptions—revealed the operation of beneficence and non-zero-sum reciprocity at the heart of free exchange. ‘Self-interest’ is thus profoundly re-evaluated. Paradoxically, the only way to self-realization is through concern for others. 

Ralston College presents a lecture delivered on October 26th, 2021 by Dr Iain McGilchrist followed by a discussion with Dr Stephen Blackwood and questions from the audience. In his lecture Dr McGilchrist deals with certain themes that are treated at greater length in his recent book The Matter With Things. He focuses especially upon the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum), which he explores (providing an extraordinary range of illustrative examples) in such a way as to make manifest both its universality and its particular relevance to our present historical moment.

Ralston College presents a conversation between Stephen Blackwood and award-winning architect and author Marwa Al-Sabouni, followed by an audience Q&A. A voice of penetrating clarity and prophetic power, Al-Sabouni discusses the role of architecture in cultivating or undermining our social fabric, arguing that the seeds of the devastating Syria Civil War were sown by the choices of architects and city planners. Though born of particular and painful experience, Al-Sabouni's insights on the nature of human life and community are universal, and offer consolation and hope amidst the civic alienation and aesthetic degradation facing so many of us today.

The event took place online on June 24th, 2021.

In Part II of their discussion Stephen Blackwood and Alexander Stoddart speak about the transhistorical community of past, present, and future. Stoddart explicates his Schopenhauerian view of art as life-denying and thus paradoxically able to help us relinquish our own will to power. He contrasts this view with that of a shallow presentism, a self-absorbed modernist outlook that views the present as inherently superior to both past and future, cutting off its own vital resources and neglecting its fundamental obligations. Stoddart shows another way.

Artists, Art, and Writings Mentioned in this Episode: Homer; Palmyra; Br’er Rabbit and the Tar-Baby; Arthur Schopenhauer; Jean-Paul Sartre; Michel Foucault; Friedrich Nietzsche; Walter Scott; Richard Wagner; Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina; Charles Dickens; Walter Pater; Gian Lorenzo Bernini; Buddhas of Bamiyan; Trajan's Forum; The Colosseum; Bartolomeo Colleoni Monument; The Shard of London; Albert Speer’s Volkshalle ("People's Hall"); T. S. Eliot: “Four Quartets”; Gone with the Wind, House of Tara (Antebellum architecture); Richard James Wyatt; Lincoln Memorial; John Flaxman: Am I Not a Man; Thomas Banks profile of Thomas Muir of Huntershill (https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/thomas-banks); Edgar Degas; Paul Cézanne; Pierre-Auguste Renoir; The Acropolis; Tyche; Statue of Tyche and Plutus in Istanbul; Statue of Liberty; Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro; Mount Rushmore