Untimely Reflections #39: Weltgeist - Schopenhauer on History, Love, Life & Death

Welcome to Becoming-Spooky! This is the first of three episodes in this special, seasonal series. Join me and deterritorialize the domains of sanity, the familiar and the human. Patrons will receive two additional episodes! The first half of the episode is my full reading of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. The second half includes my philosophical analysis, drawing on Lovecraft's essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, as well as my own impressions about the story.

Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? Join me and find out as we explore the most famous novel of Voltaire, one of Nietzsche's most important influences. Candide is a satirical novel that lambasts the optimism of Leibniz, the hypocrisy of religion and tradition, and the pretensions of philosophy itself. We will examine the Lisbon Earthquake & the debates about it that form the background of the work, as well as the life of Voltaire, before an in-depth discussion of the philosophical insights of the novel.

Neema Parvini is well known on Youtube for his channel, Academic Agent, and for his para-academic work at the Academic Agency. He discusses a broad range of topics in political philosophy, and does not shy away from any topic, from elite theory to Marxism, from Julius Evola to Guy Debord. We discuss how he moved from literary theory to political philosophy; what politics really demands and why it is not the same as theorizing, the "take economy", or expressions of individualism; we discuss the difference between Evola & Nietzsche; and we try to come to an understanding of how it is that politics as most people experience it and understand it is fake. Join us for what I believe to be a fascinating conversation about the illusions of politics, and hopefully a step in the direction of disillusioning ourselves. Neema's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AcademicAgent Academic Agency: https://www.academic-agency.com/

Melanie Coughlin, a scholar whose work focuses on Nishitani and the Kyoto school, joined me for a conversation that will hopefully provide a nice conclusion to the recent focus on Buddhism. We discussed karma, the misleading nature of intentions, Nishitani's theory of affect, emptiness-as-affect, the important difference between Nietzsche & Feuerbach, and the insights of Nishitani regarding technology and the modern world. Melanie's latest article: https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/speculative-philosophy/article/doi/10.5325/jspecphil.40.3.0269/411454/Cripping-Epistemic-Justice-Yoritaka-s-Model-of?guestAccessKey=57a4823a-0672-4798-aff3-1a0d6f49f975

How did the bicameral mind emerge, and how did consciousness eventually take its place? Join me for an exploration of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, in which Julian Jaynes traces the evidence over the centuries that suggest a disappearance of the gods and the emergence of subjectivity. The episode concludes with a brief tour of the shift to subjectivity found in the Old Testament.