Philosophy For Our Times8 Apr 2025

The crisis of the new | Stanley Fish, Claire Hynes, and Martin Puchner

Is genuine originality a realistic goal for artists?

From fashion to fantasy, entertainment to enterprise, we seek the 'new' as the means to originality, change, and creativity. And for the most part, we imagine the new is always identifiable as a radical break from the past. But the nature of the new is more elusive and unknown than it first appears. Is the new an illusion, and the search for originality a mistake? Should creative endeavour be focussed on other goals, such as the timeless, the provocative, and the beautiful? Or is the new an essential part of life, creativity and action, without which we would have mere passive re-orderings of the known?

Martin Puchner is a literary critic and philosopher. He is the Byron and Anita Wien Chair of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Claire Hynes is Associate Professor in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and an author of fiction and creative non-fiction. Stanley Fish is a literary critic, legal scholar, and public intellectual. Renowned for his role in developing reader-response theory in literary studies, Fish has written on a wide range of topics including the poetry of John Milton, the distinction between free speech and academic freedom, and the doctrine of liberalism.

And don't hesitate to email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode!

To witness such debates live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/

And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/

You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(557)

The world after liberalism | Maurice Glasman & Sohrab Amari

Is this the end of liberalism, or just another temporary crisis? If it is the end, what will follow it? And where did it all go wrong?Since the end of WWII, the Western world has been governed by libe...

30 Jun 32min

Why artists shouldn't fear AI | Jaron Lanier

What does originality mean in the age of AI? Why should artists resist the temptation to fear AI? What role will human creativity play in the future we're building?Jaron Lanier, a visionary computer s...

23 Jun 30min

Copying consciousness: the future of mind uploading | Anders Sandberg

What makes you 'you'? If scientists made a digital replica of your mind, would this new 'you' be conscious? And what does this all mean for what it means to exist?Whole-brain emulation (often called “...

16 Jun 37min

The return of idealism | James Tartaglia

Is materialism mistaken in its understanding of consciousness? How can dividing experience into the phenomenal and the transcendent provide a new angle from which to view consciousness? Have you ever ...

9 Jun 28min

Reimagining the right | Richard Tice

Is this the end of Britain's two-party system? How has Reform brought together seemingly contradictory left- and right-wing ideas? Why do they think that we should get used to climate change instead o...

2 Jun 29min

Is philosophy becoming irrelevant? | Mary Midgley

Does philosophy still matter in today's world? If so, why are students less and less interested in studying in it?In a special episode from the IAI archives, Mary Midgley addresses the declining inter...

26 Mai 27min

Who's afraid of gender? | Judith Butler

Why has gender identity become such a controversial talking point in modern politics?Judith Butler, pioneering gender theorist whose changed the way we think about gender and sexuality, explores the t...

19 Mai 40min

Human perception is imagination | Nadine Dijkstra

Nadine Dijkstra is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Neurology at UCL. Her research in Imaging Neuroscience explores how the brain generates mental images and differentiates them from actua...

12 Mai 14min