LUNA's road trip in philosophy
Ol and Val, two Australian philosophers in Paris - and their lucky guests - get into a lively discussion about how to make modern philosophy work - how to get it to work to make sense out of life nowadays.
Episodes
21 episodes
Episode 21 in which Ol and Val confuse tequila and traffic with Spinoza on the human body
Episode 20 in which Ol, Val and special guest Daniel Yslas investigate the human mind via Spinoza
In our 20th episode we go back to our original orientation and ask the kind of questions that suit an introduction to philosophy, and that are found in Part 2 of Spinoza's Ethics.How can the human mind be just the idea of the body, as Sp...
Episode 19 in which Ol and Val get into a tiff about fictional ideas and the mind of God
On Part II of Spinoza's Ethics, Propositions 7 through 10.
Episode 18 - Spinoza's Ethics Part Two in which Luna encounters the mind of God and Val gets a strawberry cupcake
Ol and Val get methodical with Spinoza's construction of human minds and the mind of God.
Episode 17 in which Val, Ol and guest Jasper Lear all melt into one whilst interpreting Part I of Spinoza's Ethics
We explore Spinoza's absolute rationalism, his love of causal explanation, his arguments against multiple substances and how - going against our theological prejudices - he conceptualises an immanent God.
Episode 16 in which Spinoza throws Luna into the indivisible and indistinguishable infinite
Luna ventures out into absolute substance, learning to equate a depersonalised God with Nature, Nature as the necessary unfolding of an intricate causal nexus. Val tries out the bad pantheistic hippy German idealistic reading of Spinoza but Lun...
Episode 15 in which Luna 'deliminates' Spinoza's project to liberate us from all prejudice
Ol and Val find a back door into Book I of Spinoza's Ethics, making everything a lot easier with some context: the Appendix to Book I where Spinoza critiques our theological prejudices which lead us to imagine God as some kind of super human &n...
Episode 14 in which LUNA meets Spinoza, free-thinking lens-grinder and working class hero
Ol and Val try to figure out why Luna chose to travel just up the road from The Hague to Amsterdam to meet Spinoza and read his book The Ethics.
Episode 13 in which Ol, Val and Eloise get embroiled in a royal situationship between Descartes and Elizabeth of Bohemia
Elizabeth of Bohemia, member of a world-historical family, diplomat, philosopher, convent-founder, friend of religious dissidents, refuser of a compromised marriage, finds a massive problem in Descartes Meditations and thereby founds the modern...
Episode 12 in which LUNA finally makes her way to the very end of Descartes' Meditations
Led astray by impostors of Mr Pleasure and Miss Pain LUNA finds that her body can betray her and tell her to do things which are bad for it: is there any remedy?
Episode 11 in which Ol & Val meet Professor Nature and her two teaching assistants, Pleasure and Pain
Descartes takes Luna back to nature and nature's teachings so as to secure the foundations of our knowledge of the properties of external material bodies - and of "light, sound and pain"!
Episode 10 in which Val complains of all the forks in Descartes's argument but still nothing solid to eat
LUNA ventures out into the material world, edging out along the argument from sense-perception, holding herself on a cliff edge over the ocean waves, asking herself where all these unwanted untidy sense-perceptions come from...
Episode 9 on Meditation 6 in which LUNA tentatively steps out onto a shaky bridge to the material world
LUNA explores the 1st section of Descartes' Meditation 6 on the powers of the imagination and its probable origin in the material world - can LUNA ever make it back to certain knowledge of her everyday reality, where she was perfectly happy bef...
Episode 8 Ol and Val prove the existence of God a second time, meditate on triangles, and ward off sweaty goats
LUNA continues her travels through Meditation 5 of Descartes' Meditations in which Descartes attempts to secure certain knowledge of material things and ends up happy talking to triangles.
Episode 7 in which Val, Ol and Katherine get trapped in a grocery store by the paradoxes of freedom
Featuring special guest and LUNA friend Katherine Everitt, a philosopher working on Hegel and Badiou, trained at the European Graduate School.
Episode 6 in which Val, Ol and Nalla explore the soul and its gateway to infinity, from Islam to Descartes
Val and Ol were very happy to welcome a special guest, Nalla Diallo, student of philosophy at the American University of Paris, singer-songwriter and guitarist extraordinaire with the punk-reggae band Sonder Rage, to talk about Islam and Descar...
Episode 5 in which Descartes discovers the idea of God
We look at Descartes' proof of the existence of God based on the especially special idea of God... and Val wraps his arms around a mountain.
Episode 4 - in which Ol and Val wonder where their ideas come from
Ol and Val tackle the first half of Meditation 3
Episode 3 Ol and Val discover that they exist & Val becomes a penguin on an iceberg
Exploring the second of Descartes' Meditations, during which the Rene pulls a fast one and uncovers the famous cogito as his rock of certainty - "I think therefore I am" - although not quite in those words, and in which he ransacks the corners ...
