What's Left of Philosophy

• 125 TEASER | Elias Canetti: Crowds and Power

  In this episode, we talk about Elias Canetti’s 1960 book Crowds and Power. Equal parts political theory, poetic sociology, and speculative anthropology, this staggering work explores human social life through an increasingly elaborate series of reflections on the nature of crowds. The result is a fascinating typology of different kinds of crowds in which human beings cast off their individuality for the sake of equality and directed collective action: there are baiting crowds, feast crowds, prohibition crowds… Does a lynch mob follow a logic analogous to that of the viewing public in a world of mass media, a gathering of dancers attuned to the rhythms of the others, or those brought before the host of the invisible dead? What does it mean for the general strike that we fear the touch of others, until it’s the thing we desire most? It’s pretty wild stuff, and we find plenty of insights to pull out and play with.This is just a short teaser of the full episode. To hear the rest, please subscribe to us on Patreon:patreon.com/leftofphilosophyReferences:Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984).Music:“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

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• 124 | Living Through Capitalism w/ Dr. James Chamberlain

  In this episode, we talk with James Chamberlain about his new book, Living Through Capitalism, in which he argues that capitalism is hostile to biological life processes and our ability to know them well enough to lead flourishing lives. Capitalism mutilates all life, and not just human life, in its harnessing of life for its own ends. Only in communities that resist this “strange teleology” that capitalism imposes on life can we truly be free. leftofphilosophy.comReferences:James Chamberlain, Living Through Capitalism: Resisting Devastation Through Communities of Life (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). Music:“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

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• 123 | Adam Smith and the Lessons of Sympathy

  In this episode, we take on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Although he is now more well known as an economist because of his later book The Wealth of Nations, Smith shows himself to be a philosopher in his own right in Moral Sentiments. Smith, contrary to popular characterizations, wanted to show that our conduct is not solely motivated by egoism or selfishness, but that we are also motivated by the fortunes of others. For Smith it is only through sympathy that society can achieve stability and harmony. What follows is a comprehensive examination of how we develop virtue, expound rules for justice, and cultivate emotional maturity through our sympathy for others. This episode is all of you who feel society has become more emotionally dysfunctional, lost its sense of shame, and want to understand why it is so frustrating when our so-called ‘friends’ refuse to hate what we hate. Join the pod as we learn about propriety and justice!leftofphilosophy.comReferences:Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, intro Amartya Sen (New York: Penguin, 2009).Music:“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

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• 122 | Real Abstraction and the Origin of Consciousness with Alfred Sohn-Rethel

  In this episode, we talk about Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s audacious and influential text Intellectual and Manual Labor. A fellow traveler of the Frankfurt School, Sohn-Rethel argued that the social activity of commodity exchange involves a set of real abstractions that actually precede and give rise to the structure of human consciousness and its capacity for mental abstraction. This really puts Kant in his place: the supposedly pure reason of the transcendental subject is historically conditioned by the fact that at some point people started trading stuff with each other. It also means that after the communist revolution succeeds we’ll have a totally new set of a priori categories with which to synthesize experience. That’s worth looking forward to!leftofphilosophy.comReferences:Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labor: A Critique of Epistemology, trans. Martin Sohn-Rethel (Chicago: Haymarket, 2021).Jacob McNulty, “Frankfurt School Critical Theory as Transcendental Philosophy: Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s Synthesis of Kant and Marx,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 60:3 (2022): 475-501.Mladen Dolar, “‘Who baptized Marx, Hegel or Kant?’ On Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Beyond,” Problemi International 5 (2022): 109-133.Music:“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

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• 121 | The Federalist Papers

  In this episode we discuss the essays of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton compiled as the Federalist Papers. We talk about the philosophical justifications of the recently signed US Constitution, focusing especially on the tension between, on one hand, their passionate defense of republicanism against tyranny and despotism, and on the other, their hostility toward democratic forces. We place the problem of the durability of the republic at the core of their thought, and while noting the successes of their constitutional arrangement, ask about the costs of these successes.leftofphilosophy.comMusic:“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

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