#172a - The Odyssey: A Philosophical Analysis, Hubert Dreyfus on Artistic Worldmaking, the Attuning Gift of Greek Gods, Telemachus' Journey to Manhood, Autonomy and the Divine Inspiration

⁠Support me on Patreon⁠ - or leave a review for the show.

Hubert "Bert" Dreyfus (1929-2017) was a ⁠professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley⁠ who specialized in phenomenology, 20th century Continental philosophy, artificial intelligence, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and the aesthetics/literature of existentialism from Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard to ⁠Terrence Malick⁠. He is probably most famous for his ⁠exposition of Heidegger's early masterpiece⁠ "Being and Time" (German: Sein und Zeit), and for his ⁠negative predictions about artificial intelligence.⁠ He taught multiple courses through MOOCs from roughly 2006-2012 about Greek philosophy, existentialism in film and literature, Heidegger's opus Being & Time, and the limits of AI. In this course he uses the ⁠Fitzgerald poetic translation⁠ of the Odyssey with his own amendments and R. Lattimores' meaning-literal translation.

He was also extremely kind to me.

Arete, techne, poesis, aletheia, gnosis...

Books Mentioned:

The Discovery of the Mind - Bruno Snell

The Greeks and the Irrational - E. R. Dodds

-//-