What's Left of Philosophy

Hi everyone! We are thrilled to announce that we will be performing live on August 7 at the Epiphany Center for the Arts in Chicago. This is a one-time only event and tickets are limited! Get yours here: https://link.dice.fm/J7acfdeb77d4 Among other things, we’re planning to talk about the Communist Manifesto. The event will be filmed and released as a special episode. We’re really excited about this – it’s going to be a fantastic time, and we hope to see you there! Thanks for all your suppor...

That's right, folks! Next month, Gil is teaching a class on Spinoza's Ethics at Twelve Ten Gallery in Chicago through the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Enrollments are now open for anyone interested. Check out the course description and sign up here: https://thebrooklyninstitute.com/items/courses/spinozas-ethics/ Hope to see some of you there! leftofphilosophy.com Music: AMALGAM by Rockot

In this episode, we talk about Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. In it, he argues that modern culture is basically continuous with that of predatory barbarism, except that it is drunk on the extreme surplus produced by capitalism. Under these conditions, much of human activity becomes performative: consumption, leisure, and perhaps paradoxically enough even hustle culture are all forms of demonstrating one’s superiority in a petty game of social esteem. We explore some of these ...

In this episode, we discuss the centrality of ‘representation’ in politics and political theory, guided by Hanna Pitkin’s 1967 treatise The Concept of Representation. Much of the focus is on her notion of ‘substantive representation’ – the activity of advancing the welfare and interests of others – in comparison to the empty husk of formal representation we’ve all become accustomed to in our putatively representative democracies. We explore the Anglo-American efforts to constitutionally immun...

In this episode, we discuss “political marxism” as a paradigm shift in Marxist thinking about historical development, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and why that should matter to philosophers with an interest in challenging easy conceptual binaries that remain entrenched even in radical circles, like between economics and politics. We take a look at the two leading figures of this kind of Marxism – Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood – to put the conflict back into class conf...

In this episode, we discuss WLOP co-host William Paris’s recently published book Race, Time, and Utopia: Critical Theory and the Process of Emancipation. In his book, Will examines the utopian elements in the theories of W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, Frantz Fanon, and James Boggs and their critique of racial domination as the domination of social time. The crew talks about the relationship between utopia and realism, the centrality of time for our social practices, and how his...

In this episode, we discuss the 2007 text The Coming Insurrection, written by the pseudonymous collective The Invisible Committee. We talk about the book’s scathing condemnation of the present, its critique of everyday life in the dying late capitalist empires of the 21st century, and the kind of insurrectionary anarchism it advocates. Maybe we’re just grumpy old people who have failed to kill the cops in our heads, but we think the project dead-ends in presentist adventurism and doesn’t take...

In this episode, the boys talk about C.B. Macpherson’s insightful text The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Macpherson holds that liberal political theory from Hobbes to Locke is correct in its premises, since like it or not we basically all are defined by our properties, living in a society almost exclusively defined by market relations—but that those same market relations engender class antagonisms that progressively undermine the possibility of durable social cohesion. He want...

In this episode, we are joined by special guest Tommie Shelby to discuss the arguments presented in his most recent book, The Idea of Prison Abolition. We talk about the social functions that prisons serve, whether any of those are legitimate, and what the differences are between radical reformist and abolitionist positions. This conversation is wide-ranging, making connections between lots of left-wing debates, from how we explain the emergence of unjust institutions to how we argue for soci...

This is a short promo for Race, Time, and Utopia: Critical Theory and the Process of Emancipation (Oxford University Press, 2025), written by WLOP’s very own Will Paris. You can find the book here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/race-time-and-utopia-9780197698877?cc=ca&lang=en&. And check out Will’s interview about the book: https://newbooksnetwork.com/race-time-and-utopia Music: “My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

In this episode, we tackle Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. In this book, Nietzsche diagnoses the cultural pathologies of a Europe that no longer seems able to take risks and experiment with life. We discuss his account of nihilism, his aristocratic commitment to the breeding of new philosophers, and why it is important not to domesticate Nietzsche’s critiques of morality. Along the way, we unpack what Nietzsche would think of philosophers today and why he thinks they have such a h...

You read the title! Next month, Gil is teaching a class on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason at the Goethe Institute in downtown Chicago through the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Enrollments are now open for anyone interested. Check out the course description and sign up here: https://thebrooklyninstitute.com/items/courses/new-york/kants-critique-of-pure-reason-chicago/ Hope to see some of you there! leftofphilosophy.com Music: Titanium by AlisiaBeats

In this episode, we discuss Eric Blanc’s new book about the strategies re-building U.S. labor today, as well as how they can translate across movements and borders. Though many smart philosophers have declared that the labor movement is dead, workers from Starbucks to Amazon have something else in mind. So, what’s left? leftofphilosophy.com References: Eric Blanc, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big (The University of California Press, 2...

In this episode, we discuss the work of brilliant heterodox economist Karl Polanyi. We talk about his criticisms of neoclassical orthodoxy, his arguments against the commodification of land, labor, and money, and his critique of the dominance of markets in theory and in practice. Put markets in their place and regulate the hell out of them! We also consider his influence on recent leftist economic thought, and talk through what’s at stake in the difference between Marxist and Polanyian approa...

In this episode, we discuss the work of the late, great Fredric Jameson. Basing ourselves on his Marxism and Form, The Political Unconscious, and Archaeologies of the Future, we talk about the notion that history is only accessible in narrative form, the concept of social totality, the tension between poststructuralist criticism and historical materialist thought, and the problems plaguing the increasingly specialized and alienated intellectual division of labor in our times. What do we want ...