検索キーワード： 著者 "Sophia Blackwell" すべてのカテゴリー

You're smarter than Plato. So why is your life still a mess? You know the Earth goes around the sun. You know where babies come from. You're walking around with more accurate facts about the universe than the greatest minds of antiquity could have dreamed of. And you still can't figure out why you feel hollow after a good week, still fall for the wrong people, still lie awake at 3 a.m. wondering what you're doing with your one shot at this. Here's the uncomfortable news. That's not new. Every problem wrecking your life right now was already wrecking somebody's life 2,400 years ago.

Polari Salon founder Paul Burston is joined by poet and radio host Sophia Blackwell, with extracts from live LGBTQ+ literary events and in-depth backstage interviews with the authors about their books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Someone recommended Crime and Punishment. Maybe it was a professor. Maybe it was that person at the coffee shop who looked very thoughtful. Maybe you just wanted to seem interesting at parties. Whatever the reason, you're now 200 pages into a Russian novel where a sweaty man has a theory about Napoleon, and you're starting to suspect you've made a terrible mistake. Welcome. You're in the right place.

Finally, a philosophy book that doesn't take itself as seriously as the theorists it eviscerates! Nothing Means Anything mercilessly skewers postmodernism's most pretentious thinkers with savage wit and zero academic mercy.

What the Hell tears into Ludwig Wittgenstein—history's most insufferable genius—with savage wit and zero academic pretension. Journey through the mind-bending contradictions of a trust-fund philosopher who claimed to solve all philosophical problems (twice!), while making everyone around him miserable. Discover how a man who couldn't maintain a single healthy relationship somehow revolutionized our understanding of language, meaning, and communication.

In this mercilessly funny takedown, Jean-Jacques Rousseau—history's most insufferable philosopher—gets the roasting he so richly deserves. Noble Savage, Deadbeat Dad exposes the spectacular hypocrisy of a man who abandoned five children at orphanages while writing the definitive guide to education, preached natural virtue while exposing himself to strangers, and railed against wealth while living off rich patrons.

In Leibniz’s Monads: Because Particles with Feelings Totally Make Sense, Sophia Blackwell (author of Kant You Not) returns with another brutally honest, laugh-out-loud, actually-informative tour through one of philosophy’s weirdest, most ambitious systems. From the problem of evil to quantum physics, ecology to ethics, this book unpacks Leibniz’s windowless wonders and shows how his soul-marbles still haunt modern science, spirituality, and your existential crisis at 2am.

John Locke: Enlightenment philosopher, father of liberalism, inventor of “natural rights,” and accidental spiritual patron of land developers, libertarians, and your uncle who won’t shut up about property taxes.

Why Did That Happen? Aristotle Has Four Answers and None of Them Are Helpful is your brutally sarcastic, surprisingly educational crash course in Aristotelian philosophy—specifically his theory of causality, aka why things happen according to a man who thought everything, including acorns and chairs, had a spiritual destiny.

No Self, No God, No Clue: David Hume and the Joy of Destroying Everything is your ruthlessly sarcastic crash course in the philosophy of David Hume—history’s most cheerful intellectual arsonist.

What if your political identity, your core beliefs, and even your taste in snack food weren’t really yours? What if they were built out of language, hijacked by desire, and quietly manipulated by slogans, myths, and a Symbolic Order you didn’t ask to be born into? Welcome to the world of Jacques Lacan, where nothing means what it seems, and everything is your unconscious acting out.

I Think, Therefore I’m Wrong: Descartes and the Birth of Overconfidence is your gloriously sarcastic, brutally honest, and deeply unhinged guide to the man who launched modern philosophy with one anxious thought spiral and never looked back.

This is not a polite introduction to Thomas Aquinas. This is a fully sarcastic, gloriously disrespectful roast of the chubbiest, holiest overachiever in Catholic history—a Dominican friar who took Aristotle’s metaphysics, added Latin, guilt, and divine purpose, and built the intellectual operating system of the Catholic Church.

The Sickness Unto Death, and Other Fun Danish Party Games: Kierkegaard Without the Prozac is your gloriously sarcastic, brutally insightful, and occasionally soul-crushing guide to philosophy’s original sadboy, Søren Kierkegaard. Tired of listening to philosophy that feels like intellectual sandpaper? This book unpacks Kierkegaard’s anxiety-fueled, despair-drenched theology with the humor and honesty it desperately needs.

This audiobook is your guide to learning philosophy without crying, sounding smart without being a menace to society, and asking big questions without falling into a spiral of despair (unless you're into that, in which case, proceed).

Thus Spoke My Therapist: Nietzsche Without the Mental Breakdown is your one-way ticket to understanding one of history’s most misunderstood philosophers—without needing a doctorate or a prescription for existential dread.

God or Nature, Whatever is what happens when a philosophy grad student decides to explain Baruch Spinoza—the 17th-century lens grinder who got canceled by every major religion—using sarcasm, swearing, and a deeply unhealthy relationship with Euclidean geometry. Sophia Blackwell takes Spinoza's Ethics (a book structured like a math textbook, only less fun) and translates it into plain, hilarious, possibly heretical English. The result? A philosophical roast that actually teaches you something. Inside, you'll learn: Why Spinoza thought God was just...

Ever tried reading Kant and felt your brain melt into a puddle of transcendental confusion? You're not alone! "Kant You Not" is the hilarious antidote to philosophical pretension that explains Immanuel Kant's revolutionary ideas without inducing narcolepsy. In this irreverent guide to history's most unnecessarily complicated philosopher, author Sophia Blackwell translates Kantian gibberish into actual human language while mercilessly mocking his impenetrable prose, bizarre personal habits, and occasionally absurd conclusions.

Ever found yourself staring into the void and wished it would at least tell a good joke? Wonder how a chain-smoking French philosopher with unflattering glasses became an intellectual sex symbol? Want to understand existentialism without developing an addiction to black turtlenecks and cigarettes? "Sartre's No Exit" is the antidote to pretentious philosophical despair you've been waiting for.

Being Really Confused is the hilariously brutal, no-holds-barred, sarcasm-soaked guide to Martin Heidegger’s philosophical fever dream. Whether you’re a burned-out philosophy major, a curious masochist, or someone who just wants to sound terrifyingly deep at brunch, this book unpacks the most infamously unreadable thinker of the 20th century—with jokes, rants, and zero patience for pretension.