How might "oppression" be best understood as a "cage"?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/marilyn-fryes-oppression
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"Nostalgia" is a portmanteau coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer, combining the Greek nostros (homecoming) and algos (pain, ache). Hofer was a medical student, and he invented this term to describe a kind of melancholia, a somewhat depressive state–- and so, from its inception, "nostalgia" was viewed as a mood disorder. For the Romantics, it was a sentimentality for the past, the good old days of yore, combining the sadness of loss with a joy that that loss is not complete or total.

Nostalgia is also paradoxical, because the past we long for and re-member is a past that was never present. If it is a "homecoming," what one discovers in returning home, as Odysseus does, is that there is no "there" there.

That is, nostalgia is always unheimlich ("unhomely") or more accurately, "uncanny." It always involves a manner of self-deception about what was by distorting or idealizing the past. This can often have negative, even dangerous consequences: individually, socially, and politically.

More than just a "mood," nostalgia is a vector of philosophical investigation par excellence that opens onto a wide range of themes: memory, time, the hermeneutics of personal identity, and even reality itself.

So, pour a drink, and let's see what might be problematic about what we "fondly remember"!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/nostalgia
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BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

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Bad arguments are nothing new, so why does it appear as if they have become so pervasive in public discourse?

When we watch so-called "debate" videos with titles like "Conservative professor DESTROYS woke student" or "Liberal pundit OWNS Conservative Senator," are we actually watching a rational debate? Is anyone learning anything in these exchanges? Or, as is most likely, are we watching the performance of a well-reasoned debate, absent any concern for the truth whatsoever?

The ancient Greeks had a name for this: sophistry. It originally referred to the craft of paid expert-teaching-- especially training in rhetoric-- for success in public life. So, how did “expertise in persuasive argument” later become something more like “specious reasoning in service of persuasion rather than truth”?

Are we actually harmed-- as individuals and as a society-- by bad reasoning, logical fallacies, and the robust critical thinking that might correct them? Pour yourself a drink and join us for this conversation about the historical and current iterations of sophistry.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/sophistry
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SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!