Show Notes
What might it mean to speak not of a beautiful body, but of the beauty of bodily form? This is the question that Diotima’s second step asks us to answer. And to do so, Dalia and Simon discuss a novel that - as Simon puts it - is one of the best novels he’s read. But he’d never heard of it until this episode Germaine de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy, published in 1807, was a best-seller in its time. It takes on big philosophical questions concerning love, truth, and goodness - but also beauty and ...
More from The Wednesday Society
A philosophical deep dive into forgotten or intentionally neglected texts and figures. The Wednesday Society takes its name from the radical intellectual clubs that met in London, Berlin and Vienna. It invites listeners to explore overlooked, misunderstood and ignored ideas and thinkers. Hosted by philosopher Dalia Nassar, the podcast asks big (and small) questions about paths not taken and ideas not realised. All episodes available now. Producer: Sarah AllelyComposer: Russ...
Season one: On Beauty - What philosophers and writers have said about beauty over the centuries. Philosopher Dalia Nassar takes you on a journey through experiences of beauty. She asks the question that so many philosophers, poets and artists have asked: Can beauty actually change our lives? To think through this question with Dalia is concert pianist and writer, Simon Tedeschi. In each episode Dalia and Simon discuss beauty in connection to a different neglected, ignored or forgotten t...
Professor Dalia Nassar takes a philosophical deep dive into forgotten or intentionally neglected texts and figures. The Wednesday Society takes its name from the radical intellectual clubs that met in London, Berlin and Vienna. It invites listeners to explore overlooked, misunderstood and ignored ideas and thinkers. We ask big (and small) questions about paths not taken and ideas not realised. Producer: Sarah AllelyComposer: Russell StapletonSound engineer: Bethany Stewart T...
The final step on Diotima’s ladder is the most enigmatic. Diotima says that we encounter the beautiful “in itself,” without any form or shape. This seems impossible, given that beauty is something we sense - or at least discern in some particular person or thing… Dalia Nassar and Simon Tedeschi think about this enigma in light of Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic.” Can Lorde’s notion of the “erotic” - as presence, attentiveness, and playfulness - help us to understand what it...
Cosmos in Greek means both order and beauty, and it refers to the order of the universe. So what is the relationship between beauty and order? Just a few years after the French revolution and during the reign of terror, philosopher and poet Frederick Schiller wrote a series of letters in which he defended the idea of an aesthetic education for a healthy and robust democracy. But his idea has gone largely unnoticed. What is an aesthetic education and how can it be relevant for us today? In thi...