Philosophize This!

Fantastic content, thank you! Accessible, humorous, brilliantly expressed!

Awesome pod 👍

Sometimes to emphasize philosophical principles he will make sweeping judgments of personality types and various societal types en masse. His episode on cynicism made me uncomfortable and how much of a rant it was. He relentlessly hammered cynicism as a character trait that was not only immutably un Chaney Kley horrible in any particular human being, but any measure of it polluted that individual entirely. As though cynicism can’t really contain some healthy doubt. I understand that philosophers don’t always have what we might call a balanced view, because of course they love to debate. But as defined by this episode, practically everybody in America is now a cynic, because political stance and expression and discourse is so much more powerful than ever. And judging by the performance of the political system, that is simply cause-and-effect. So for heaven sake, calm down!

I listen to a lot of great podcasts, but this is the one I look forward to the most. Stephen West has the knack to create clear-eyed and witty takes on fundamental philosophical questions. In a world with so much distracting, polarized BS in politics and social media, this podcast keeps reminding me to think about the questions that actually matter.

I was watching an episode of some tv show and two characters were sitting at a bar and both referenced philosophers and though I recognized the names I had no way to contextualize what they said. I decided right then to better acquaint myself with philosophy in general. Very fortunately this show is how I started that process. The return on investment from listening to Stephen West give an overview and context to all these great thinkers and thoughts is huge and I can’t recommend this show enough.