A Curious Disputation
By Lauren D. Sawyer, Ph.D.
A Curious DisputationJun 15, 2022
Season 2, Episode 8: Post-Structuralism, or "Against Essentialism" (Season Finale)
In the final episode of A Curious Disputation, Lauren talks about structuralism and post-structuralism from her two scholar-friends Kelsey Wallace and Michael Anderson. She then shares her conversation with Hunter Bragg about deconstruction in a Derridean sense versus its colloquial meaning. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich. All other music from Epidemic Sound.
Here’s list of all the scholars Michael names in the episode: David Foster Wallace, Roland Barthes (structuralist-turned-post-structuralist literary theorist), Chela Sandoval (Methodology of the Oppressed), Hélène Cixous (The Laugh of the Medusa), Jacques Derrida (The Politics of Friendship, The Work of Mourning), Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Lacan.
{03:43} That is, a post-structuralist is someone who is a deconstructionist but doesn’t want to be called a deconstructionist.
{07:17} “Well narratives.”
{12:50} “Not to jump ahead…” Last year I also talked to Kelsey and Michael about Queer Theory and Feminism. You can listen to that episode on Spotify (Season 1, Episode 9)
{17:30} TERF = trans-exclusionary radical feminist. These feminists believe that there is something “essential” about being born female, so therefore trans women do not “count” as women.
{18:05} Put our gal Mary Wollstonecraft in this camp, too.
{22:57} Here’s that truly brilliant article on Luce Irigaray by Jules Gill-Peterson (author of Histories of the Transgender Child)—completely, totally worth the read: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/117/382426/the-miseducation-of-a-french-feminist/
{23:16} Kelsey, in the throes of her early Ph.D. work, could be found around campus saying such phrases as, “F--k Derrida!”
Here is Kelsey’s website: http://kelseyerinwallace.com Here’s Michael’s Twitter: twitter.com/lonelygeryon
Season 2, Episode 7: "Black Communal Flourishing" and the White Social Gospel (Rebroadcast)
This is a rebroadcast of last year's episode. (It's a good one!)
Lauren chats with Rev. Julian Cook about the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Walter Rauschenbusch: on their scholarly endeavors, social environments, and church life. Together Lauren and Julian ask, is there a Black social gospel as Dorrien suggests? Lauren begins the episode by surveying the historical context of this period. In the final section of the episode, Lauren and Julian talk about how they experience the tensions of theory and praxis, philosophy and art.
When we talk about the turn-of-the-century, we’re talking about these overlapping categories:
1865-1877 - Reconstruction Era 1870s-1900 - The “Gilded Age” 1897-1920 - Progressive Era
{2:07} Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 by Gail Bederman: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3683791.html
{4:11} That’s “non-white races."
{08:40} Make that two falls ago.
{08:46} Sweet baby Langston is a toddler now!
{15:55} The books by Traci C. West that we mention: Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance and Disruptive Christian Ethics. Julian currently studies with Dr. West, and she was on my dissertation committee.
{25:00} The Crisis, the “Black folks’ Bible,” was founded by Du Bois as a publication of the NAACP in 1910. Read archived issues of the magazine here: https://modjourn.org/journal/crisis/
{25:41} Ida B. Wells, mentioned earlier as well, was a Black feminist activist who spoke out against the lynching of Black men, among other causes.
{26:16} “Progress” and “progressive” had very particular meanings in this time period. It’s not how we use this language today. Simply, folks believed that social progress would lead to (a) a utopian society or (b) the Second Coming of Christ (the Millennium), depending on the person’s particular spiritual beliefs. The United States played an important role in this narrative as a Christian nation/white nation.
{30:46} Keri L. Day is a theologian and scholar of African-American religion at Princeton Theological Seminary: https://www.ptsem.edu/people/keri-day
{31:23} Reinhold Niebuhr was a key figure in the social gospel and a prominent Christian ethicist who taught at Union Theological Seminary for many years. His most well-known book is Moral Man and Immoral Society.
{32:55} Father Divine was the leader of the International Peace Mission movement. He has been called a cult leader by some and a social activist by others. See West’s chapter on him in Disruptive Christian Ethics or Judith Weisenfeld’s chapter in Devotions and Desires https://uncpress.org/book/9781469636269/devotions-and-desires
{37:55} “I went to Harvard.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz0XxyhTRnc
{40:36} Read more on the fundamentalist and modernist debate here: https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2020/05/the-fundamentalist-modernist-controversy
See Julian’s complete bio: https://www.houghton.edu/staff-members/julian-cook
Season 2, Episode 6: Existentialism (Rebroadcast)
This is a re-broadcast of last season’s episode. (It was so good I couldn’t find a single thing to change. ;))
In this episode, Lauren talks about all things existential. First, she gives some background to Nietzsche’s concepts of master morality and slave morality. Then, Lauren talks with Kierkegaard scholar Carly Corrine Lynch about her journey alongside dear sweet Søren. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich. All other music from Epidemic Sound.
Note: The Zoom recording of Carly is not great. My internet was unstable.
{00:28} It might be helpful to know the timeframe we’re talking about here: broadly the 19th century. Kierkegaard lived from 1813 to 1855; Nietzsche from 1844 to 1900.
{00:38) OK, I cut this from last week’s episode, so you have to take my word for it. Absolute and universal.
{01:05} Gott ist tot. Basically, the Enlightenment killed the need for or possibility of God. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” From Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science.”
{01:18} Nihilists believe there are no morals, period. A moral subjectivist says we make our own morals.
{01:54} Fun fact: Sartre was romantic partners with Simone de Beauvoir, the early 20th century feminist.
{05:15} My use of male pronouns throughout this section is no mistake. Nietzsche didn’t think women had what it took to be an Übermensch.
{05:23} Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth Föster-Nietzsche was super anti-Semitic and may be the reason Nietzsche’s work became associated with the Third Reich. She herself was a member of the Nazi Party, so much so that Hitler attended her funeral in 1935.
{05:44} Quote from The Will to Power.
{06:29} It’s hard to get a robot to pronounce “Kierkegaard.”
{06:35} I’m using these terms interchangeably—existential crisis and crisis of faith. That’s not 100% accurate, but I think that for me it makes sense to intertwine them. I was facing the crisis of my existence alongside a crisis of my belief in God.
{07:37} This is, actually, the theme of my dissertation: how young women and queer youth exercise their moral and sexual agency within purity culture… so choosing to kiss boys or not, choosing to date or “court,” etc.
{09:16} I am pretty mortified by this period of my life. Haha.
{09:46} You heard this on season 2 episode 1 of the podcast! (From Kierkegaard’s Journal AA.)
{11:31} The legend.
{41:02} Johan Frederik Schlegel.
{50:00} From Works of Love (1847).
Read Carly’s bio here: https://www.scu.edu/cm/profiles/lynch.html
Season 2, Episode 5: Rights & The High Enlightenment
Welcome to the Enlightenment! In this second episode on the era, we imagine ourselves in a Parisian coffeehouse with key philosophers of the High Enlightenment. In the second half of the episode, I talk to doctoral candidate Hunter Bragg about the legacy of Enlightenment ideas in the United States criminal justice system. Theme music and voice work by Alex Mrakovich. Additional music and sound effects from Epidemic sound. The timeline of the Modern Era is once again useful.
{00:04} This is from Kant’s essay, “What is Enlightenment?”
{00:08} Nonage is a period of immaturity or youth.
{00:45} The Enlightenment thinkers, especially the ones mentioned here, did meet in cafes and coffeeshops to philosophize and share ideas.
{01:19} Voltaire’s Candide is such a bizarrely funny book.
{01:34} Rousseau’s memoir is called Confessions, like another friend of ours…
{01:47} We know from the Logan article that Kant preferred tea, but then I got down a little rabbit hole of what tea was around in Europe in the 18th century.
{02:07} “Sheeple” is an anachronism, but I think Kant would’ve liked that one. These quotes or paraphrases are from “What is Enlightenment?”
{02:16} Cafe de Foy, and other French cafes, played an important role in planning of the French Revolution.
{03:23} Carlos Eire provides some really interesting commentary on the shifts in views of death and the afterlife during the Enlightenment in A People’s History of Christianity: Student Edition: From the Reformation to the 21st Century.
{03:30} “Posterity is for the philosopher what the next world is for the man of religion….” Denis Diderot, quote cited in A People’s History.
{04:06} A pitched-down version of “The Preamble” from Schoolhouse Rock. (Sorry that it’s now stuck in your head!)
{06:55} Thomas Hutchinson in “Strictures Upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia.”
{08:32} A priori: “relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience.”
{20:07} Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23968
{23:58} Jacques Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge”: https://monoskop.org/images/0/05/Derrida_Jacques_Acts_of_Religion_2002.pdf
{37:09} Rev. Julian Cook. You’ll hear him on the podcast in just two weeks! https://www.houghton.edu/staff-members/julian-cook/
{49:46} Mariame Kaba, “Communities keep communities safe.” http://mariamekaba.com/
{51:38} Zing!
{52:26} Hunter’s current dissertation title is, “Condemning Whom We Do Not Know: A Political Theology of Plea Bargaining in American Criminal Justice.”
Season 2, Episode 3: Aristotle & the Aristotelian Tradition (Expanded)
This episode is a re-release of Season 1 Episode 3 but with a brand new epilogue! In this episode, Lauren asks that her listeners spend some time outside. She talks about Aristotle and the golden mean; Thomas Aquinas and Christian virtue ethics; and Hildegard of Bingen and mysticism. Here are links for an image of The School of Athens by Raphael and Ordo Virtutum by Hildegard. Sources include the Ethics textbook Lauren used to teach from (The Moral of the Story by Nina Rosenstand); “The Androcentrism of Desire" in Erotic Attunement by Cristina L. H. Traina; “The Varieties of Religious Experience" by Williams James, the Flowing Light of the Godhead by Mechthild of Magdeburg; a very helpful video on Aquinas and natural law, an episode of The Good Place (how could she not??), and more. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich. Additional music from the Epidemic Sound library and by Hildegard herself. The epilogue includes a meditation on swimming with a cameo by Lauren’s friend Sara.
Now stop reading this, and look at some trees!
Season 2, Episode 2: Augustine of Hippo (Rebroadcast)
In this episode, we meet Augustine of Hippo, the fourth century rhetorician, bishop, philosopher, ethicist, African. Part 1 situates Augustine in his cultural, religious, and historical context(s). In part 2, we dive into Augustine’s philosophical leanings. In part 3, we talk about Augustine’s theology/ethics/philosophy of desire. The episode concludes with a meditation on letting our minds be changed. Voice work by Amiel Wayne. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich.
Map of Roman Empire/North Africa: http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/roman_empire_4th.htm
{01:06} From Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Brown is the premier scholar of Late Roman Antiquity.
{10:20} A timeline of Augustine’s life vis-a-vis Western Christian history: https://tinyurl.com/2vt3rvdf
{13:28} The City of God against the Pagans (De civitate Dei contra paganos) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45304/45304-h/45304-h.htm
{14:10} Anthony J. Chvala-Smith, “Augustine of Hippo” in Empire and the Christian Tradition, edited by Kwok Pui Lan.
{15:42} For more on Augustine’s ties to Neoplatonism, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/#PhilTradAuguPlat
{19:30} From Confessions, Book 3, chapter 8.
{19:51} Debauch. (De-bock?)
{22:18} This section is based on several sources including, but certainly not limited to: Feminist Interpretations of Augustine, edited by Judith Stark; Rereading Historical Theology and Desire and Delight, both by Margaret R. Miles, Elizabeth’s Clark collection of Augustine’s writings on sex and marriage; the City of God and Confessions by Augustine.
{24:48} Dan in Real Life: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480242
Note: I’m using romantic and sexual desire here as my example, but just like Augustine did not limit his ideas to sex, neither should we. You can certainly desire wrong things that have nothing to do with sex or bodies, even.
{30:17} "We are what we look upon and what we desire." Plotinus, Ennead.
{31:55} Concupiscence: strong sexual desire, lust.
{31:56} Cupiditas: desire, lust, passion. (Think: Cupid!)
{32:06} “Being weak, babies’ bodies are harmless, but babies’ minds aren’t harmless.” Confessions, Book 1, chapter 13.
{37:12} It’s not just wiggling the ears that Augustine uses as an analogy for controlling the genitals: “We do in fact find among human beings some individuals with natural abilities very different from the rest of mankind and remarkable by their very rarity. … A number of people produce at will such musical sounds from their behind (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from that region.” City of God, Book 114, chapter 24.
{37:59} As Augustine most famously wrote, “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Confessions, Book 1, chapter 1.
{43:32} I slip and call Brown “Peter”—we’re on a first-name basis.
{44:16} Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, 445.
{46:09} This is not a Divjak letter, actually, but letter 263. The sentiment Brown expresses still applies. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102263.htm
Check out Amiel’s work here: http://amielhartwayne.wordpress.com
Season 2, Episode 1: (Un)subjugated Knowledge
In the season premiere of A Curious Disputation, Lauren muses on this question, “Who is philosophy for?” and talks to her friend and colleague Dr. Desmond Coleman about where knowledge is subjugated in the academy and in his research on the philosophical history of Blackness.
Music by Epidemic Sound. Theme song by Alex Mrakovich.
{07:51} I got to watch Desmond’s doctoral defense from my hotel in Mexico. (Oh, the wonders of Zoom!)
{10:18} From this week’s readings: subjugated knowledges are “the kinds of knowledge that are excluded from dominant discourse when our way thinking and knowing itself becomes ‘subject’ to a dominant culture” (Frykenberg).
{16:39} “A philosophical history of Blackness told as and through a philosophical history of alchemy.”
{16:55} “Philosophical athleticism” - Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatarri
{19:38} For an overview of the history of the Arab-Islamo slave trade, see: https://newafricanmagazine.com/16616/
{26:19} For more on the Saint Dominigue Revolution, see: https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/haitian-revolution-1791-1804/
{28:42} Get Out is available for rent on YouTube. Best watched with the lights on and peeking out from underneath the covers. The movie is about a Black man, Chris, who finds himself lured in and trapped by a white family that attempts to empty his consciousness in order to sell his body to house the consciousness of white people. They are essentially using the bodies of Black people to subsist and to sustain their lives/consciousnesses.
{34:09} Black Skin, White Masks - Frantz Fanon
{34:30} For an article on this history of black skin and anti-Black racism, see: https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race
{36:11} Kanye West on TMZ: https://www.tmz.com/2018/05/01/kanye-west-tmz-live-slavery-trump/
{37:44} #IfSlaveryWasAChoice: https://twitter.com/search?q=ifslaverywasachoice&src=typed_query&f=top
{38:09} The meme in question: 4BC618D600000578-5683455-image-a-51_1525279258899.jpg
{39:00} The response to Kanye’s statement: https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1187855163962417152?lang=en
{41:38} For more on Afropessimism, see: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/afropessimism-wilderson-critical-race/
Hear more about Desmond’s work on Season 1, Episode 1 of A Curious Disputation: https://anchor.fm/lauren-sawyer/episodes/Episode-1-What-Have-Athens--Jerusalem-to-Do-with-ettiad
Episode 9: Feminism & Queer Theory (Season Finale)
Lauren continues her conversation with Kelsey Wallace and Michael Anderson, focusing this time on feminism and queer theory. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich. (Disco) music from Epidemic Sound.
Note: In the academy, the term queer is used in different ways. One way is as an umbrella term “used to describe sexual orientations or gender identities that may fall outside of heterosexuality and gendernormativity.” Queer theory often attends to this: queer love, queer desire, queer relationships. Queer theory talks about the “death drive,” or the presumed impossibility of queer love to procreate in a normative, heterosexual form of childbearing. But queer can also function as a technical term, meaning as an adjective non-normative and as a verb to destabilize, disrupt, or skew. For example, queer childhood studies scholar Hannah Dyer argues that all children are queer, as in, they do not follow the scripts adults set for them, in terms of how they perform gender, how they play, and grow up. Children often grow “sideways,” developing and regressing in ways deemed atypical, at least next to the standard of “normal,” meaning often white middle-class boys.
Here’s a list of all the scholars and texts Michael names in the episode: Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, Alan Bray, Gloria Anzaldúa, Rosario Morales (The Bridge Called My Back), Martin F. Manalansan (Global Divas), Jack Halberstam, Lee Edelman, and Joseph M. Pierce.
{02:58} Traci C. West, “Is a Womanist a Black Feminist a Womanist? Marking the Difference and Defying them” in Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society, edited by Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas.
{07:56} Canon within the canon: Perhaps you find that you do not read the Pauline epistles or you only read the New Testament or you can’t stand the book of James.
{10:35} Judith Butler uses she/they pronouns.
{27:22} The J.K. Rowling TERF saga: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnstaceyennis/2019/12/19/jk-rowling-comes-out-as-a-terf/?sh=32eef0425d70
{28:16} I want to be clear that I am not actually waiting for the day these old school feminist scholars die. (Heh.) I am looking forward to when they do not have such a stronghold over feminist scholarship that intentionally excludes trans women and people of color. I have been in the inner rooms with such scholars, and it is troubling how obstinate these folks are about what it means to be a woman, what it means to be inclusive and equitable, etc.
I decided to cut from the podcast the specific calling out of second-wave feminist scholars of religion—not that I want to give them a pass, but as a way to honor y'all’s experiences of these scholars, many of whom (perhaps) offered important insights to you as theologians-in-the-making. You have the tools to read folks critically and determine whether or not X, Y, or Z is problematic or not; I don’t need to tell you.
{32:55} Throwback to episode 7!
{33:45} For context, in her dissertation, Kelsey reads Exodus together with Pierce Brown’s Red Rising novels. She brings insights gleaned from the field of memory studies into conversation with theories of large-group psychology, intertextuality, and cultural studies in order to demonstrate the ways in which the Exodus story and its motifs--such as liberation, exile, covenant, dwelling, and the wielding of divinely ordained leadership--explode beyond their original narrative boundaries and participate in the ongoing creation of new worlds, identity formations, and meaning-making. In doing so, she argues that reading Exodus alongside (and even as) speculative/science fiction creates a provocative tension that compels readers toward the dream of a better future.
{45:20} Caca boudin. Google it.
Episode 8: Post-Structuralism, or “Against Essentialism”
In this episode, Lauren learns about structuralism and post-structuralism from her two scholar-friends Kelsey Wallace and Michael Anderson. She then gives an example of how Michel Foucault’s work shows up in her dissertation. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich. All other music from Epidemic Sound.
Here’s list of all the scholars Michael names in the episode: David Foster Wallace, Roland Barthes (structuralist-turned-post-structuralist literary theorist), Chela Sandoval (Methodology of the Oppressed), Hélène Cixous (The Laugh of the Medusa), Jacques Derrida (The Politics of Friendship, The Work of Mourning), Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Lacan.
{03:57} That is, a post-structuralist is someone who is a deconstructionist but doesn’t want to be called a deconstructionist.
{07:32} “Well narratives.”
{13:05} “Not to jump ahead…” I talked to Kelsey and Michael about post-structuralism and feminism and queer theory on the same day. We had a hard time keeping these two topics separate. (You may find the overlap useful.)
{17:44} TERF = trans-exclusionary radical feminist. These feminists believe that there is something “essential” about being born female, so therefore trans women do not “count” as women.
{18:16} Put our gal Mary Wollstonecraft in this camp, too.
{22:59} Here’s that truly brilliant article on Luce Irigaray by Jules Gill-Peterson (author of Histories of the Transgender Child)—completely, totally worth the read: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/117/382426/the-miseducation-of-a-french-feminist/
{23:30} Kelsey, in the throes of her early Ph.D. work, could be found around campus saying such phrases as, “F--k Derrida!”
{21:23} This is from The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, pp. 103-106.
{36:12} Copyright, me. :)
Here is Kelsey’s website: http://kelseyerinwallace.com Here’s Michael’s Twitter: twitter.com/lonelygeryon
Episode 7: "Black Communal Flourishing" and the White Social Gospel
Lauren chats with Rev. Julian Cook about the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Walter Rauschenbusch: on their scholarly endeavors, social environments, and church life. Together Lauren and Julian ask, is there a Black social gospel as Dorrien suggests? Lauren begins the episode by surveying the historical context of this period. In the final section of the episode, Lauren and Julian talk about how they experience the tensions of theory and praxis, philosophy and art.
When we talk about the turn-of-the-century, we’re talking about these overlapping categories:
- 1865-1877 - Reconstruction Era
- 1870s-1900 - The “Gilded Age”
- 1897-1920 - Progressive Era
{2:07} Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 by Gail Bederman: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3683791.html
{4:11} That’s “non-white races."
{15:55} The books by Traci C. West that we mention: Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance and Disruptive Christian Ethics. Both Julian and Lauren are studying with Dr. West.
{25:00} The Crisis, the “Black folks’ Bible,” was founded by Du Bois as a publication of the NAACP in 1910. Read archived issues of the magazine here: https://modjourn.org/journal/crisis/
{25:41} Ida B. Wells, mentioned earlier as well, was a Black feminist activist who spoke out against the lynching of Black men, among other causes.
{26:16} “Progress” and “progressive” had very particular meanings in this time period. It’s not how we use this language today. Simply, folks believed that social progress would lead to (a) a utopian society or (b) the Second Coming of Christ (the Millennium), depending on the person’s particular spiritual beliefs. The United States played an important role in this narrative as a Christian nation/white nation.
{30:46} Keri L. Day is a theologian and scholar of African-American religion at Princeton Theological Seminary: https://www.ptsem.edu/people/keri-day
{31:23} Reinhold Niebuhr was a key figure in the social gospel and a prominent Christian ethicist who taught at Union Theological Seminary for many years. His most well-known book is Moral Man and Immoral Society.
{32:55} Father Divine was the leader of the International Peace Mission movement. He has been called a cult leader by some and a social activist by others. See West’s chapter on him in Disruptive Christian Ethics or Judith Weisenfeld’s chapter in Devotions and Desires https://uncpress.org/book/9781469636269/devotions-and-desires
{37:55} “I went to Harvard.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz0XxyhTRnc
{40:36} Read more on the fundamentalist and modernist debate here: https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2020/05/the-fundamentalist-modernist-controversy
See Julian’s complete bio: https://www.houghton.edu/staff-members/julian-cook
Episode 6: Existentialism
In this episode, Lauren talks about all things existential. First, she gives some background to Nietzsche’s concepts of master morality and slave morality. Then, Lauren talks with Kierkegaard scholar Carly Corrine Lynch about her journey alongside dear sweet Søren. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich. All other music from Epidemic Sound.
Note: The Zoom recording of Carly is not great. My internet was unstable.
{00:28} It might be helpful to know the timeframe we’re talking about here: broadly the 19th century. Kierkegaard lived from 1813 to 1855; Nietzsche from 1844 to 1900.
{01:05} Gott ist tot. Basically, the Enlightenment killed the need for or possibility of God. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” From Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science.”
{01:18} Nihilists believe there are no morals, period. A moral subjectivist says we make our own morals.
{01:54} Fun fact: Sartre was romantic partners with Simone de Beauvoir, the early 20th century feminist.
{05:15} My use of male pronouns throughout this section is no mistake. Nietzsche didn’t think women had what it took to be an Übermensch.
{05:23} Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth Föster-Nietzsche was super anti-Semitic and may be the reason Nietzsche’s work became associated with the Third Reich. She herself was a member of the Nazi Party, so much so that Hitler attended her funeral in 1935.
{05:44} Quote from The Will to Power.
{06:29} It’s hard to get a robot to pronounce “Kierkegaard.”
{06:35} I’m using these terms interchangeably—existential crisis and crisis of faith. That’s not 100% accurate, but I think that for me it makes sense to intertwine them. I was facing the crisis of my existence alongside a crisis of my belief in God.
{07:37} This is, actually, the theme of my dissertation: how young women and queer youth exercise their moral and sexual agency within purity culture… so choosing to kiss boys or not, choosing to date or “court,” etc.
{09:16} I am pretty mortified by this period of my life. Haha.
{09:46} From Kierkegaard’s Journal AA.
{41:02} Johan Frederik Schlegel.
{50:00} From Works of Love (1847).
Read Carly’s bio here: https://www.scu.edu/cm/profiles/lynch.html
Episode 5: The High Enlightenment
The timeline of the Modern Era is once again useful.
{00:01} This is from Kant’s essay, “What is Enlightenment?”
{00:05} Nonage is a period of immaturity or youth.
{01:25} Not very cool to the “fair sex” here.
{05:30} The Enlightenment—the hot new nightclub. ;)
{05:38} Not an anachronism here: the Enlightenment thinkers, especially the ones mentioned here, did meet in cafes and coffeeshops to philosophize and share ideas.
{06:11} Voltaire’s Candide is such a bizarrely funny book.
{06:22} Rousseau’s memoir is called Confessions, like another friend of ours…
{06:36} We know from the Logan article that Kant preferred tea, but then I got down a little rabbit hole of what tea was around in Europe in the 18th century. Read more here.
{06:54} “Sheeple” is an anachronism, but I think Kant would’ve liked that one. These quotes or paraphrases are from “What is Enlightenment?”
{07:06} Cafe de Foy, and other French cafes, played an important role in planning of the French Revolution.
{08:00} Carlos Eire provides some really interesting commentary on the shifts in views of death and the afterlife during the Enlightenment in A People’s History of Christianity: Student Edition: From the Reformation to the 21st Century.
{08:26} “Posterity is for the philosopher what the next world is for the man of religion….” Denis Diderot, quote cited in A People’s History.
{9:05} A pitched-down version of “The Preamble” from Schoolhouse Rock. (Sorry that it’s now stuck in your head!)
{12:56} Thomas Hutchinson in “Strictures Upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia.”
{13:45} A priori: “relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience.”
{14:46} Chidi Anagonye from The Good Place is a self-described Kantian.
{15:59} Probably the most Enlightenment Era thing about Bentham is that he donated his body to medical research and asked that his body be on display at university board meetings. Google “Jeremy Bentham’s head” for some nightmares.
{16:29} Intensity, duration, certainty, remoteness (or “propinquity,” a word I cannot say), purity, fecundity, extent.
{22:36} Note, Kant did say that children were ends in themselves, though they did “belong” to other people for a time. They had the potential to become full rational and autonomous humans.
{23:08} This language is in the Declaration of Independence, actually. Whoops.
{32:32} “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal…”
Episode 3: Aristotle & the Aristotelian Tradition
In this episode, Lauren asks that her listeners spend some time outside. She talks about Aristotle and the golden mean; Thomas Aquinas and Christian virtue ethics; and Hildegard of Bingen and mysticism. Here are links for an image of The School of Athens by Raphael and Ordo Virtutum by Hildegard. Sources include the Ethics textbook Lauren used to teach from (The Moral of the Story by Nina Rosenstand); “The Androcentrism of Desire" in Erotic Attunement by Cristina L. H. Traina; “The Varieties of Religious Experience" by Williams James, the Flowing Light of the Godhead by Mechthild of Magdeburg; a very helpful video on Aquinas and natural law, an episode of The Good Place (how could she not??), and more. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich. Additional music from the Epidemic Sound library and by Hildegard herself.
Now stop reading this, and look at some trees!
Episode 2: Augustine of Hippo
In this episode, we meet Augustine of Hippo, the fourth century rhetorician, bishop, philosopher, ethicist, African. Part 1 situates Augustine in his cultural, religious, and historical context(s). In part 2, we dive into Augustine’s philosophical leanings. In part 3, we talk about Augustine’s theology/ethics/philosophy of desire. The episode concludes with a meditation on letting our minds be changed. Voice work by Amiel Wayne. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich.
Map of Roman Empire/North Africa: http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/roman_empire_4th.htm
{00:32} From Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Brown is the premier scholar of Late Roman Antiquity.
{09:20} A timeline of Augustine’s life vis-a-vis Western Christian history: https://tinyurl.com/2vt3rvdf
{12:54} The City of God against the Pagans (De civitate Dei contra paganos) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45304/45304-h/45304-h.htm
{13:29} Anthony J. Chvala-Smith, “Augustine of Hippo” in Empire and the Christian Tradition, edited by Kwok Pui Lan.
{14:45} For more on Augustine’s ties to Neoplatonism, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/#PhilTradAuguPlat
{18:55} From Confessions, Book 3, chapter 8.
{19:17} Debauch. (De-bock?)
{21:42} This section is based on several sources including, but certainly not limited to: Feminist Interpretations of Augustine, edited by Judith Stark; Rereading Historical Theology and Desire and Delight, both by Margaret R. Miles, Elizabeth’s Clark collection of Augustine’s writings on sex and marriage; the City of God and Confessions by Augustine.
{22:14} Dan in Real Life: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480242
Note: I’m using romantic and sexual desire here as my example, but just like Augustine did not limit his ideas to sex, neither should we. You can certainly desire wrong things that have nothing to do with sex or bodies, even.
{29:40} "We are what we look upon and what we desire." Plotinus, Ennead.
{31:22} Concupiscence: strong sexual desire, lust.
{31:23} Cupiditas: desire, lust, passion. (Think: Cupid!)
{31:24} “Being weak, babies’ bodies are harmless, but babies’ minds aren’t harmless.” Confessions, Book 1, chapter 13.
{36:38} It’s not just wiggling the ears that Augustine uses as an analogy for controlling the genitals: “We do in fact find among human beings some individuals with natural abilities very different from the rest of mankind and remarkable by their very rarity. … A number of people produce at will such musical sounds from their behind (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from that region.” City of God, Book 114, chapter 24.
{37:26} As Augustine most famously wrote, “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Confessions, Book 1, chapter 1.
{42:57} I slip and call Brown “Peter”—we’re on a first-name basis.
{42:59} Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, 445.
{43:46} This is not a Divjak letter, actually, but letter 263. The sentiment Brown expresses still applies. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102263.htm
{44:03} From Augustine’s Sermon 356.
Check out Amiel’s work here: http://amielhartwayne.wordpress.com
Episode 1: What Have Athens & Jerusalem to Do with...?
In this first episode, Lauren sets the stage for what TCE 520: Philosophy and Theological Thought is all about and how students should expect to engage with the podcast. In part one, she introduces the challenge of mind-body dualism and names herself as an embodied person. In part two, she talks with philosopher-artist Desmond Coleman about the creation of language, alchemy, and the Black hypostatic body. In part three, Lauren asks the key questions of the course. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich. Additional music from Erokia (free to use through the creative commons).
{02:30} The particular reading of Augustine as a seeker of ultimate pleasure comes from Margaret Miles’s splendid work, Desire and Delight: A New Reading of Augustine’s Confessions.
{03:09} cogito ergo sum: “I think before I am,” from Descartes (...and Billie Eilish).
{03:32} This clip is from the second-to-last chapter of The Last Battle from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Audio drama available on YouTube.
{7:02} The Symposium by Plato.
{07:51} philia: fondness, in Greek.
{13:16} What Is Philosophy? by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatarri. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/what-is-philosophy/9780231079891
{15:32} Drip was a coffee shop located in Madison, New Jersey. It has since closed its doors. (R.I.P.)
{17:57} “For [people] were first led to study philosophy, as indeed they are today, by wonder,” from Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
{21:19} Get Out is available for rent on YouTube. Best watched with the lights on and peeking out from underneath the covers. The movie is about a Black man, Chris, who finds himself lured in and trapped by a white family that attempts to empty his consciousness in order to sell his body to house the consciousness of white people. They are essentially using the bodies of Black people to subsist and to sustain their lives/consciousnesses.
{29:09} G. W. F. Hegel texts referenced by Desmond: Philosophy of Mind and The Science of Logic.
{31:18} “The thing-in-itself” (das Ding an sich) from Immanuel Kant, meaning something that exists outside of human observation. https://www.britannica.com/topic/thing-in-itself
{31:51} caput mortuum: alchemical term meaning “dead head” or “worthless remains.”
{34:06} For a very accessible article on the history of race, see: https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race
{38:38} hypostasis: an underlying reality or substance.
{40:52} Desmond uses air quotes around “prostitute” as he talks about sex workers.
{48:06} “On the Prescription of Heretics,” chapter 7, by Tertullian. Text was edited slightly for easier comprehension. http://www.tertullian.org/works/de_praescriptione_haereticorum.htm
{49:25} “…curious disputation…”
Check out Desmond Coleman’s work here: https://politicaltheology.com/genius-genealogy-and-get-out-on-melanosis/