Jonathan Rée and James Wood challenge a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of philosophy and literature, as they consider how style, narrative, and the expression of ideas play through philosophical writers including Kierkegaard, Mill, Nietzsche, Woolf, Beauvoir and Camus.
James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for The New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self.
Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English.
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Jonathan Rée and James Wood challenge a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of philosophy and literature, as they consider how style, narrative, and the expression of ideas play through philosophical writers including Kierkegaard, Mill, Nietzsche, Woolf, Beauvoir and Camus.
James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for The New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self.
Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English.
Non-subscribers will only hear extracts from these episodes. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcip
In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscip
Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
Circular reasoning is normally condemned by philosophers, but in his 1841 essay ‘Circles’, Emerson proposes that not getting anywhere is precisely what we need to do to find out where we already are. In this episode, Jonathan and James consider Emerson’s use of the circle to demonstrate an idealistic philosophy rooted in the natural world, in which individuals are bounded by self-created horizons, and the extent to which this fits with Transcendentalist notions of progress and independence. They also discuss what his other essays, including ‘Self-Reliance’, ‘Art’ and ‘Nature’, have to say about the importance of thinking one’s own thoughts, and why Emerson had such a powerful influence on writers as varied as Nietzsche, Saul Bellow and Louisa May Alcott.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcip
In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscip
Read 'Circles' here:
https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/circles/
Read more in the LRB:
Tony Tanner on the life of Emerson:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n10/tony-tanner/arctic-habits
Colin Burrow on the American canon:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n22/colin-burrow/the-magic-bloomschtick
LRB AUDIOBOOKS
Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre:
https://lrb.me/audiobookscip
Conversations in Philosophy
Jonathan Rée and James Wood challenge a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of philosophy and literature, as they consider how style, narrative, and the expression of ideas play through philosophical writers including Kierkegaard, Mill, Nietzsche, Woolf, Beauvoir and Camus.
James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for The New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self.
Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English.
Non-subscribers will only hear extracts from these episodes. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcip
In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscip
Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
