audiobook

I listened to two Great Courses lecture series on existentialism, No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life by Robert C. Solomon and Existentialism and the Authentic Life by Skye C. Cleary. No Excuses had a lot of lectures devoted to fictional works, more than I expected from a philosophy course. The title comes from Sartre’s idea of Absolute Freedom, that even chained in a dungeon you’re still free to choose your own interpretation of the facts and how you react to them. The Bad Faith concept stuck with me too, the idea that you’re acting in bad faith any time your aspirations ignore the actual facts of your situation. I could aspire to be a champion basketball player, but the facts say I’m 5'11" and almost 50, so aspiring to that would be bad faith. ...

1177 BC is far less a final verdict than I would’ve preferred. Apparently, historians have discussed the Bronze Age collapse for at least 100 years, but this book mostly calls into question the traditional simple ideas and makes a case for a combination of earthquakes, revolts, and, to a much lesser extent than originally thought, the sea people invading, plus maybe some type of disruption of the trade networks, which again could be caused by the sea people or other unknown maritime raiders. ...