Peter Sloterdijk Knows it All

New Books in Intellectual History

#Society #History #Marshall Poe

24:42

Episode Notes [01:14] Unexpected Email from Employer [05:49] The Deferred Resignation Program [06:34] Initial Reactions and Concerns [08:01] Evaluating the Offer [08:21] Enhanced Standards of Conduct [08:55] Personal Reflections and Concerns [12:21] Seeking Advice and Making a Decision [13:01] Option One: Do Not Resign [14:56] Option Two: Resign [16:44] Insights from Conversations [21:30] Making The Decision [23:51] Final Thoughts and Gratitude Resources Mentioned Sebastian Junger The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson Donald Trump Elon Musk Steve Bannon Russell Vought Derek Sivers Sumner Crenshaw Brian Fretwell at Finding Good Chad Littlefield The Thought Leaders Practice by Matt Church Simon Cowell Beauty Pill Producer Ben Ford Questions Asked Is it legitimate, and can it be trusted? How are you feeling? What questions come to your mind? Where does your mind go? Are you seeking safety? Would this have been an adrenaline rush as you raced to send the resignation response? What an "enhanced standard" regarding loyalty and trustworthiness was? What are these new "enhanced standards?" Are they beyond what my Constitutional oath requires? If I don't resign, how bright will the target on my back glow? My leadership has supported all my work, but would termination direction come from higher up the chain of command? What would you recommend if we talked over coffee? What questions would you ask? How would you use listening? How would you use silence? How is this scenario playing out in your mind and body? What is coming to the surface for you? How might that influence what you are about to say to me? What are the chances of my name popping on a list and getting fired? How about the chances of being part of an official Reduction in Force and early retirement? Would the administration make a better offer? What do I know about the pending job market? What did I expect the workplace to be like and did I want to be there as the contractions took place? Will the administration pay me through the end of September or will they renege? Can I sufficiently build the Curated Questions business to transition by 1 October? - Do I have the faith or confidence to step into this future as a sole practitioner and grow Curated Questions into all I envisioned? Was this purpose calling? What would I expect the job market to look like at the end of summer if I hadn't developed the income streams to maintain our lifestyle? What is your recommendation? Did it change from your initial recommendation? Where in your body are you feeling the uncertainty? Are you processing this scenario in parallel with your decision as if you had received the email? What additional questions should I have considered? Who else should I have consulted with? How would you have changed my risk rating? What is the correct length of the pregnant pause before making an important announcement? What processes would you use in my circumstance, and what would be different? What questions are at the top of your list to get to a decision? Who would be the members of your pantheon you would counsel with to gain clarity? Apart from the heady analysis, what other key practices would you include in your journey through a similar situation?…

6 days ago 1:12:01

MP3•Episode home

Today’s guest is Dr Thomas Sutherland, author of the Bloomsbury title, Speaking Philosophically: Communication at the Limits of Discursive Reason (Bloombury, 2024), lecturer in digital media at the University of Southampton, and researcher into digital culture and the humanities, the history of philosophy and contemporary continental philosophy, and technologies of the self.

We discuss three areas that concern the odd character that is Peter Sloterdijk; namely, spheres, the practising life and his rehabilitation of philosophy as wisdom.

Dr Thomas Sutherland is a deep dabbler in Sloterdijk’s thought, having written various papers on his work, including Peter Sloterdijk and the ‘security architecture of existence’: immunity, autochthony, and ontological nativism, and Ontological co-belonging in Peter Sloterdijk's spherological philosophy of mediation. He is also familiar with a regular mention here on the podcast, François Laruelle and his non-philosophy.

We touch on;

Sloterdijk’s original work on Cynicism and why it is still relevant today
Spheres, co-existence & interdependence
The Practising Life & why ‘You Must Change your Life’
The Art of Philosophy as Wisdom
The strengths and weaknesses of Sloterdijk’s insights

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

1017 episodes

New Books in Intellectual History

Peter Sloterdijk Knows it All

New Books in Intellectual History

31 subscribers

published 6 days ago

MP3•Episode home

We discuss three areas that concern the odd character that is Peter Sloterdijk; namely, spheres, the practising life and his rehabilitation of philosophy as wisdom.

We touch on;

Sloterdijk’s original work on Cynicism and why it is still relevant today
Spheres, co-existence & interdependence
The Practising Life & why ‘You Must Change your Life’
The Art of Philosophy as Wisdom
The strengths and weaknesses of Sloterdijk’s insights

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

1017 episodes

#Society #History #Marshall Poe

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New Books in Intellectual History

1
Rune Nyord, "Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 52:55

11 hours ago52:55

52:55

Many of us are familiar with the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with immortality and the great efforts they made to secure the quality of their afterlife. But, as Dr. Rune Nyord shows in Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife (University of Chicago Press, 2025), even today, our understanding of the Egyptian afterlife has been formulated to a striking extent in Christian terms. Dr. Nyord argues that this is no accident, but rather the result of a long history of Europeans systematically retelling the religion of ancient Egypt to fit the framework of Christianity. The idea of ancient Egyptians believing in postmortem judgment with rewards and punishments in the afterlife was developed during the early modern period through biased interpretations that were construed without any detailed knowledge of ancient Egyptian religion, hieroglyphs, and sources. As a growing number of Egyptian images and texts became available through the nineteenth century, these materials tended to be incorporated into existing narratives rather than being used to question them. Against this historical background, Dr. Nyord argues that we need to return to the indigenous sources and shake off the Christian expectations that continue to shape scholarly and popular thinking about the ancient Egyptian afterlife. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher , wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
William Max Nelson, "Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:12:31

1 day ago1:12:31

1:12:31

In Enlightenment Biopolitics (U Chicago Press, 2024), historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical thought emerged and circulated. He locates that context in the Enlightenment when emancipatory ideals sat alongside the horrors of colonialism, slavery, and race-based discrimination. In fact, these did not just coexist, Nelson argues; they were actually mutually constitutive of Enlightenment ideals. In this book, Nelson focuses on Enlightenment-era visions of eugenics (including proposals to establish programs of selective breeding), forms of penal slavery, and spurious biological arguments about the supposed inferiority of particular groups. The Enlightenment, he shows, was rife with efforts to shape, harness, and “organize” the minds and especially the bodies of subjects and citizens. In his reading of the birth of biopolitics and its transformations, Nelson examines the shocking conceptual and practical connections between inclusion and exclusion, equality and inequality, rights and race, and the supposed “improvement of the human species” and practices of dehumanization. William Max Nelson is associate professor of history at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Time of Enlightenment: Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One and a coeditor of The French Revolution in Global Perspective . Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel . Twitter . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
William H. F. Altman, "Ascent to the Beautiful: Plato the Teacher and the Pre-Republic Dialogues from Protagoras to Symposium" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020) 2:21:56

3 days ago2:21:56

2:21:56

With Ascent to the Beautiful , William H. F. Altman completes his five-volume reconstruction of the Reading Order of the Platonic dialogues. This book covers Plato’s elementary dialogues, grappling from the start with F. D. E. Schleiermacher, who created an enduring prejudice against the works Plato wrote for beginners. Recognized in antiquity as the place to begin, Alcibiades Major was banished from the canon but it was not alone: with the exception of Protagoras and Symposium, Schleiermacher rejected as inauthentic all seven of the dialogues this book places between them. In order to prove their authenticity, Altman illuminates their interconnections and shows how each prepares the student to move beyond self-interest to gallantry, and thus from the doctrinal intellectualism Aristotle found in Protagoras to the emergence of philosophy as intermediate between wisdom and ignorance in Symposium, en route to Diotima’s ascent to the transcendent Beautiful. Based on the hypothesis that it was his own eminently teachable dialogues that Plato taught—and bequeathed to posterity as his Academy’s eternal curriculum— Ascent to the Beautiful helps the reader to imagine the Academy as a school. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Joshua Ehrlich, "The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 51:23

5 days ago51:23

51:23

Welcome to the Global Corporations Special Series on the Law Channel on the New Books Network. This Special Series is dedicated to interviews with scholars about recent books engaging with different aspects of global corporations – with a focus on the role of law and legal forms. Our guest today is Dr. Joshua Ehrlich, Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Macau. Josh is a historian of knowledge and political thought with a focus on the East India Company and the British Empire in South and Southeast Asia. We spoke with Josh in a live event as part of a workshop in Hong Kong on the history of companies in Asia about his first book, The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. The book is a deeply researched and well-written account of how East India Company officials developed and deployed ideas about knowledge to bolster its own authority, and to manage the transition from corporate sovereignty towards unitary state sovereignty. In the process, Josh develops a novel methodological approach that he calls the history of ideas of knowledge – an approach that allows us to recover past meanings and usages of concepts about knowledge to make them available again in the present. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Surekha Davies, "Humans: A Monstrous History" (U California Press, 2025) 1:09:09

6 days ago1:09:09

1:09:09

Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science in Humans: A Monstrous History (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal. In an age when corporations increasingly see people as obstacles to profits, this book traces the long, volatile history of monster-making and charts a better path for the future. The result is a profound, effervescent, empowering retelling of the history of the world for anyone who wants to reverse rising inequality and polarization. This is not a history of monsters, but a history through monsters. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher , wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Peter Sloterdijk Knows it All 1:12:01

6 days ago1:12:01

1:12:01

Today’s guest is Dr Thomas Sutherland, author of the Bloomsbury title, Speaking Philosophically: Communication at the Limits of Discursive Reason (Bloombury, 2024), lecturer in digital media at the University of Southampton, and researcher into digital culture and the humanities, the history of philosophy and contemporary continental philosophy, and technologies of the self. We discuss three areas that concern the odd character that is Peter Sloterdijk; namely, spheres, the practising life and his rehabilitation of philosophy as wisdom . Dr Thomas Sutherland is a deep dabbler in Sloterdijk’s thought, having written various papers on his work, including Peter Sloterdijk and the ‘security architecture of existence’: immunity, autochthony, and ontological nativism, and Ontological co-belonging in Peter Sloterdijk's spherological philosophy of mediation . He is also familiar with a regular mention here on the podcast, François Laruelle and his non-philosophy. We touch on; Sloterdijk’s original work on Cynicism and why it is still relevant today Spheres, co-existence & interdependence The Practising Life & why ‘You Must Change your Life’ The Art of Philosophy as Wisdom The strengths and weaknesses of Sloterdijk’s insights Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Andrew Clapham, "War" (Oxford UP, 2021) 1:03:06

7 days ago1:03:06

1:03:06

This book poses the question: How relevant is the concept of war today? Professor Andrew Clapham of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva examines how notions about war continue to influence how we conceive rights and obligations in national and international law. It considers the role international law plays in limiting what is forbidden and what is legitimated in times of war or armed conflict. The book highlights how, even though war has been outlawed and should be finished as an institutions, sates nevertheless continue to claim that they can wage necessary wars of self-defence, engage in lawful killings in war, imprison law-of-war detainees, and attack objects that are said to be part of a war-sustaining economy. Professor Clapham argues that, while there is general agreement that war has been abolished as a legal institution for settling disputes, the time has come to admit that the belligerent rights that once accompanied states at war are no longer available. In other words, simply claiming to be in a war or an armed conflict does not grant anyone a licence to kill people, destroy things, and acquire other people’s property or territory. In this podcast, we begin by exploring Professor Clapham’s motivation for writing the book and the central arguments challenging traditional ideas of war, law, and state power. We discuss how historical, and outdated, ideas of ‘prize’ or war booty continue to influence modern conflict, and explore how rhetorical usages of the words ‘war’ and ‘armed conflict’ exert a particular influence on populations and even on the soldiers themselves. Professor Clapham argues that human rights law should play a bigger role in limiting actions of states in armed conflict, and looks to the future legal challenges posed by cyber warfare, drones and AI / autonomous weapons. We also touch on accountability for war crimes and other international crimes, both at the level of international state responsibility as seen at the International Court of Justice, and at the individual criminal liability as seen in the International Criminal Court. We end with an intriguing insight into how Professor Clapham is looking to further develop his thinking for his next book. This book is available OPEN ACCESS here . Alex Batesmith is an Associate Professor in Legal Professions in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. His University of Leeds profile page can be found here : Bluesky: @batesmith.bsky.social LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
David D. Grafton, "Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century" (NYU Press, 2024) 1:21:43

8 days ago1:21:43

1:21:43

Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur'an were sometimes read as part of language instruction. Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship. Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary (NYU Press, 2024) examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders' ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations. The Rev. Dr. David D. Grafton is the Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations on the faculty of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford International University Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel . Twitter . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Marilyn Nissim-Sabat and Neil Roberts, "Creolizing Hannah Arendt" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) 1:04:22

9 days ago1:04:22

1:04:22

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat and Neil Roberts have edited a new collection of essays, Creolizing Hannah Arendt . This edited volume dives into Hannah Arendt’s thinking while also pushing the understanding and ways that Arendt has influenced political theory, philosophy, and politics. The idea of “creolizing,” especially philosophic or theoretical work, is to explore a thinker’s work from more pluralistic perspectives, often pushing the ideas and their analysis beyond the northern and western position in which that work was generally created. Arendt’s work, which comes to us in a number of forms, was written in the context of the Holocaust and the world before and after that trauma. The contributing authors to Creolizing Hannah Arendt build on Arendt’s considerations and analysis, taking and applying her work to other situations, to determine what we can learn in a distinct situation or in context of other theoretical frameworks. Creolizing is an engagement where two or more elements come into discourse with each other, rethinking the ways those in western political thought are positioned, or see the world. This process questions, on some level, the entire notion of the “canon” and the design of borders that hem in thinking, or disciplinary lines. Creolizing Hannah Arendt is a sophisticated collection of essays that brings forth Hannah Arendt’s thinking about freedom and individuals while also integrating other theorists who have interpreted Arendt’s work over the last century. Arendt focused some of her early work on the notion of being an outsider, of having a kind of double consciousness (for her, it was her Jewish identity in Europe during the Holocaust and afterwards in the United States.) But double consciousness was originally posited as an understanding and perspective by W.E.B. Dubois and Sylvia Wynter in their work, specifically the experience of African Americans, and that Paget Henry analyzes in the chapter “Sylvia Wynter, Political Philosophy, and the Creolization of Hannah Arendt.” Thus, putting these ideas in conversation with each other is an example of creolization, and an example of the kind of analysis in this edited volume. This is a fascinating book, opening up spheres of thinking not just about Arendt, but about so many other important theorists. And putting these ideas into conversation with each other. Creolizing Hannah Arendt does not intend to proselytize on behalf of Hannah Arendt, as Nissim-Sabat and Roberts note in our conversation, but to truly interact act with Arendt’s thinking and her ideas about freedom and unfreedom, double consciousness, revolution, and the concept of humanity. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Mick Brown, "The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:43:10

9 days ago1:43:10

1:43:10

Mick Brown’s The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West (Oxford UP, 2023) is a riveting account about the West's engagement with Eastern spirituality across a century. It traces the life of multiple characters that intersected across time and space to create a network of interlinking stories about saints, salesmen and scoundrels all involved in spirituality. From Edwin Arnold, whose epic poem about the life of the Buddha became a best-seller in Victorian Britain, to the occultist and magician Aleister Crowley; and from spiritual teachers Jiddu Krishnamurti, Meher Baba and Ramana Maharshi to the controversial guru Rajneesh, The Nirvana Express is an exhilarating, sometimes troubling journey through the West's search for enlightenment. Archit Nanda is PhD scholar in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Simon Rabinovitch, "Sovereignty and Religious Freedom: A Jewish History" (Yale UP, 2024) 1:21:44

10 days ago1:21:44

1:21:44

It is a common assumption that in Israel, Jews have sovereignty, and in most other places where Jews live today, they have religious freedom instead. As Simon Rabinovitch shows in this original work, the situation is much more complicated. Jews today possess different kinds of legal rights in states around the world; some stem from religious freedom protections, and others evolved from a longer history of Jewish autonomy. By comparing conflicts between Jewish collective and individual rights in courts and laws across the globe, from the French Revolution to today, this book provides a nuanced legal history of Jewish sovereignty and religious freedom. Rabinovitch weaves key themes in Jewish legal history with the individual stories of litigants, exploring ideas about citizenship and belonging; who is a Jew; what makes a Jewish family; and how to define Jewish space. He uses recent court cases to explore problems of conflicting rights and then situates each case in a wider historical context. This unique comparative history creates a global picture of modern legal development in which Jews continue to use the law to carve out surprising forms of sovereignty. Simon Rabinovitch is the Stotsky Associate Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern University. He teaches and writes on a range of topics in European, Jewish, Russian, and legal history. Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939 . Mentioned in the podcast: • Simon Rabinovitch, Jewish Rights, National Rites: Nationalism and Autonomy in Late Imperial and Revolutionary Russia (2014) • Maurice Samuels, The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (2016) • David Sorkin , The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (2008) • David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation: A History across Five Centuries (2019) • Lawrence Rosen, The Rights of Groups: Understanding Community in the Eyes of the Law (2024) • Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in US Law (2020) • Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers, American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (2022) • David Biale, Power & Powerlessness in Jewish History (1986) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Andrew Janiak, "The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2024) 47:27

11 days ago47:27

47:27

The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2024) introduces the work and legacy of philosopher Émilie Du Châtelet. As the Enlightenment gained momentum throughout Europe, Châtelet broke through the many barriers facing women at the time and published a major philosophical treatise in French. Due to her proclamation that a true philosopher must remain an independent thinker rather than a disciple of some supposedly great man like Isaac Newton or René Descartes, Châtelet posed a threat to an emerging consensus in the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman highlights the exclusion of women from colleges and academies in Europe and the fear of rupturing the gender-based order. Andrew Janiak is Professor of Philosophy and Bass Fellow at Duke University. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Chance E. Bonar, "The Author in Early Christian Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 50:18

12 days ago50:18

50:18

While scholars of ancient Mediterranean literature have focused their efforts heavily on explaining why authors would write pseudonymously or anonymously, less time has been spent exploring why an author would write orthonymously (that is, under their own name). The Author in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge UP, 2025) explores how early Christian writers began to care deeply about 'correct' attribution of both Christian and non-Christian literature for their own apologetic purposes, as well as how scholars have overlooked the function that orthonymity plays in some early Christian texts. Orthonymity was not only a decision made by a writer regarding how to attribute one's own writings, but also how to classify other writers' texts based on proper or improper attribution. This Element urges us to examine forms of authorship that are often treated as an unexamined default, as well as to more robustly consider when, how, for whom, and for what purposes an instance of authorial attribution is deemed 'correct. New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review Chance Bonar is a postdoc at Tufts University. Michael Motia teaches in the classics and religious studies department at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Kobi Kabalek, "Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025) 58:12

13 days ago58:12

58:12

In Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism (U Wisconsin Press, 2025), Kobi Kabalek examines how the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust has been understood and represented in Germany from the Nazi period to the present. In many regions outside Germany, a small number of known Holocaust rescuers are often held up as exemplars of broad pro-Jewish sentiment among that country's population during World War II, thereby projecting an image of national moral virtue. Within Germany, by contrast, rescuers are often presented in both scholarship and public commemoration as a small minority; their examples condemn the majority by showing what Germans could have done but did not do. Kabalek argues that such simplistic depictions of the majority versus minority obscure the complex motivations and situations that led people in Nazi Germany to help persecuted Jews. Against the view that the rescuers were "forgotten" after the war, he shows that portrayals and interpretations of helping Jews appeared in various media and social discourses in East, West, and unified Germany and were used to actively debate questions of collective morality. Rescue and Remembrance analyzes the varied and changing depictions of rescue in the distinct German politics from the Nazi period, examining how the very notions of "majority" and "collective" were articulated and reformulated. Kobi Kabalek is Assistant Professor of German and Jewish Studies, Penn State University, since 2019. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia, with a dissertation on “The Rescue of Jews and the Memory of Nazism in Germany” (2013). In 2014-2017 he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as part of the ERC project “Experience, Judgment, and Representation of WWII in an Age of Globalization,” and examined conflicting perspectives concerning the war in Mandatory Palestine and their impact on the postwar historiography of Israel and Zionism. Former editor of The Journal for Holocaust Research and assistant editor of History & Memory . His research focuses on historical perceptions, moral sentiments, and memory in film, literature, auto/biography, oral narratives, art, etc., in German, Israeli, and global Holocaust history. He currently explores marginalized and extreme phenomena in Holocaust testimonies, historical writing, and popular culture – with special attention to the role of fantasy, imagination, and horror – and their impact on our understanding and representation of the Holocaust. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history…

New Books in Intellectual History

1
Nima Bassiri, "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:12:02

16 days ago1:12:02