SynTalk

Do you have the courage of a Spartan? Are we all partly anarchists? What are we truly? What do we value? Are Reason and Nature entangled? Is there a hierarchy of beings above/below human beings? What do Gods have that humans don’t have? Does Nature offer us moral guidance? How do plants imitate Gods? How much does human nature vary with (say) geography, culture, language, & time? Are we more (or, less?) diverse at birth? Do you want to transcend your body? Is matter evil? Does social evolution change (the psychological) human nature? Does one need to have a theory of human nature to think about political forms? What is it to be a flourishing human? Do literature and art have the function of ‘making’ human? Do stories around the world share something? Why do classics endure? Do each one of us need to realize our human-ness? Where does this normativity come from? Does (only) force keep us together? Is the construct of human nature both useful and dangerous? Are (most) determinisms dangerous? &, will any new kind of world in the future (off a new structure) have a new kind of human nature? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from German language & literature (Dr. Milind Brahme, IIT Madras, Chennai), philosophy (Dr. Aditi Chaturvedi, Azim Premji University, Bangalore), & political studies (Prof. Chandran Kukathas, Singapore Management University (SMU), Singapore). Listen in...