Iberian expeditions to the Americas inspire scientists, and Matteo Ricci’s religious mission to Asia becomes an encounter between European and Chinese philosophy.

HoP 440 - Longitudinal Studies - Exploration and Science

How religious persecution and censorship shaped the context of philosophy in Catholic Europe in the sixteenth century.

HoP 439 - Cancel Culture - The Inquisition

How the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reformation created a context for philosophy among Catholics, especially in Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

HoP 438 - Don't Give Up Pope - Catholic Reformation

An expert on Renaissance alchemy tells us how this art related to philosophy at the time... and how she has tried to reproduce its results!

HoP 437 - Jennifer Rampling on Renaissance Alchemy

Our last figure of the English Renaissance undertakes daring investigations of chemistry, medicine, agriculture, and cosmology – and gets accused of magic and Rosicrucianism.

HoP 436 - Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores - Robert Fludd

The cosmological and methodological implications of breakthroughs in the understanding of magnetism and electricity at the turn of the 17th century.

HoP 435 - Metal More Attractive - William Gilbert and Magnetism

Changing ideas about eyesight, light, mirror images, and refraction – and the skeptical worries they may have inspired.

HoP 434 - The Eye Sees Not Itself But By Reflection - Theories of Vision

How scientists of the Elizabethan age anticipated the discoveries and methods of the Enlightenment (without necessarily publishing them).

HoP 433 - Nature’s Mystery - Science in Renaissance England

Science, intrigue, exploration, angelic seances! It's the life and thought of Elizabethan mathematician and magician John Dee.

HoP 432 - If This Be Magic, Let It Be an Art - John Dee

A discussion of the history and philosophical significance of scholasticism from medieval times to early modernity, and even today.

HoP 431 - Calvin Normore on Scholasticism

The evolution of Aristotelian philosophy from John Mair in the late 15th century to John Case in the late 16th century.

HoP 430 - I’ll Teach You Differences - British Scholasticism

How women’s writing in England changed from the early fifteenth century, the time of Margery Kempe, to the late sixteenth century, the time of Anne Lock.

HoP 429 - She Uttereth Piercing Eloquence - Women’s Spiritual Literature

How Macbeth reflects the anxieties and explanations surrounding witchcraft and witch-hunting in early modern Europe.

HoP 428 - Weird Sisters - Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Witchcraft

Can Shakespeare’s Tempest be read as a reflection on the English encounter with the peoples of the Americas?

HoP 427 - Brave New World - Shakespeare’s Tempest and Colonialism

How the Renaissance turn towards individual identity is reflected in Shakespeare's most famous play. 

HoP 426 - A Face Without a Heart - Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Individualism

We're joined by Patrick Gray to discuss Shakespeare's knowledge of philosophy, his ethics, and his influence on such thinkers as Hegel.

HoP 425 - Patrick Gray on Shakespeare

How should we approach Shakespeare’s plays as philosophical texts? We take as examples skepticism and politics in Othello, King Lear, and Julius Caesar.

HoP 424 - Hast Any Philosophy In Thee? - William Shakespeare

We begin to look at Elizabethan literature, as Sidney argues that poetry is superior to philosophy, and philosophy is put to use in Spenser’s "Fairie Queene".

HoP 423 - Heaven-Bred Poesy - Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser

Richard Hooker defends the religious and political settlement of Elizabethan England using rational arguments and appeals to the natural law.

HoP 422 - The World’s Law - Richard Hooker

The evolution of ideas about kingship and the role of the “three estates” in 15th and 16th century England, with a focus on John Fortescue and Thomas Starkey.

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