Hi Dr. Anderson- thanks so much for your videos! They're super accessible and thought-provoking, and as a recent college graduate, I love watching them to stay intellectually stimulated and to learn more about philosophy. I look forward to your future videos!

You always seem to be uploading videos on topics currently being discussed in class, such a great resource.

I was reading some Judith Butler for class today and this really helped me understand their references to Irigaray’s ideas. Thank you!

Thank You. Always helpful. Love your quote, “envision a union that preserves differences and upholds wonder.”

Thank you for the clear explanation; the text itself had always eluded my own understanding. ❤

Your videos are so good, thanks!

Firstly thanks for the show, really helps fill a post-phd void. This really reminds me of the work of Val Plumwood, who expressed pretty much the same ideas but through an ecofeminist framework. I'd recommend her book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature as a wild ride from beginning to end, though her essays about predator-prey relationships and her fight with a crocodile are a fun late-night read.

First comment. thank you. this is(a channel on philosophical works/reviews) something I wanted to have on youtube 2 yrs back :) . Even if we reject the difference in social standings, which have been a reflection of biological differences, things will only rhetorically change which is also important for the gradual big-change. In modern world, the further we move into the mental domain of human growth story, the more this biological difference will start to dwarf in it's influence on social standings(male-female dynamics). Looking forward to changes. ^+^

loved that idea of 'difference without hierarchy', made me think of 'difference as a shifting graph/network of interactions'. neat how the farther we get into the 21st century, and into the digital revolution, our philosophical language starts to pick up different tones of complexity, perhaps thanks to our daily experience with the internet/web. also loved the 'men and women are different' voice, lol

excellent presentation style - fresh, concise

Thank you so much!!!

love your background and shirt!

you should add affiliate links to the books you discuss in the description! would make it easier to find the books for your audience and would give you a couple extra bucks!

A perfect précis ~ once again!

Good job to pronunciate Yrigaray 👏

thank you

Que buenos videos suele estudiarlos en español y ahora que estoy aprendiendo ingles me gustar ver tus videos tu speaking es muy bueno, I like your videos.

interesting ! it made me want to read this book

I like the idea of sexual difference as a difference in otherness. And, I love wonder, which I believe disentangles anything we get tangled up. Sometimes I feel that feminist theory is exclusive when it stays theory and does not become applied to our practices. As with most theory, I dislike theory when it stays only in the abstract. But, I too love the idea that ethics must come first, before metaphysics and before ontology. Hopefully, whatever ethics that it is is an inclusive one which respects more and more the ideas and behaviors of groups which thrive in inclusivity. I love your voice, and that it sounds very composed and confident. I wish I had such a way of projecting my own, and I think that because of your own good voice, that people really tune in and attend to this channel of yours.

I like the notion of the interval as a place of wonder. An in between. An imaginal fecund. In Mesoamérica we have the "neplanta"... which points to a virtual power between the subjective and objective...a transjective ...as an allowance for novel modes of un concealment...Irigaray as shamanic adjacent...;)

Getting close to a video on Lacan I am hoping. Very interesting talk.

Listening to Irigaray's ideas sort of reminded me of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls

Surely the opposite of wonder is indifference or apathy? What ST Coleridge referred to as 'death in life' in his Ancient Mariner. Incurious springs to mind as another possible antonym.

Ever considered doing one on Phillip Mainlander? (Philip Batz.) Very Cheery guy.

Very well said, wonder is the core of sexuality and what I refer to as a Mystery Dance. Sexuality as symbol is more revealing that its parts and actions.

There's some decent ideas here, the value of 'wonder' about the unknown etc., but framing it all around masculinity/femininity seems silly. Similarly to how it seems silly for Butler to identify Descartes 'ego' with masculinity, when what Descartes' does is to disregard any particulars of the human being and thus to also to neuter them. The words 'masculine' and 'feminine' may indeed have misuses which fit onto the conceptual scheme of neutral/other or objective/subjective or something like that, but they also have more basic uses which simply describe real features of human beings -- and I'd insist on the first kind of case being a *misuse* of terms, as well as the valuableness of the genuine use.

..interesting (& important) to remember that Irigary got torn to shreds by Sokal & Bricmont - she thought that E=mc² was a 'sexed equation', and that the (unsolvable) Navier-Stokes equations (of fluid dynamics) were unsolved & unsolvable by 'men' who were not equipped to understand the 'fluid' - which was the domain of women. Other ideas she's had are also rooted in her abrahamic background - e.g. god = male/singular/space, the usual shame-laced fascination with the genitalia, etc.

thank you, very insightful. I wanted to ask about the interval, space and air thing, Isn't it very close to phenomenology? both Merleau-Ponty and queer phenomenology as Sarah Ahmed? Doesnt it seem that phenomenology is a more natural framework to conceptualise this thing in between to re-conceptualise how we look at the world?

I always have the impression that Irigary was on the right track as a feminist thinker, and a revolutionary one, before the Butler school of deconstruction went badly awry in the 1990s. All the hints at one-dimensional critiques of binary and essentialism slipped in here suggest this to be the case - regression in intellectual engagement to fit a political agenda. Still I enjoy these videos and think they are helpful to undergrads and preparatory students.

Will you ever make a video criticizing Lacan?

hi 😊 love your dress ❤️

Dear Ellie, Vive la difference!

Huh. Interesting. Gonna think a bit.

Thank you. You’re awesome! We need more of feminism view points.

Another wonderful, insightful video. I would like to begin a study of epistemology. Can you recommend a text that does a good job of surveying the topic?

deleuze has a really cool early paper (his first published anything) called "description of woman" that probably scratches this itch somehow the sexual difference feminists have been less useful to my purposes, probably because their focus seems to be political

Please reverse the play order of the Continental Philosophy Playlist. It is currently in reverse chronological order by topic. I'm pretty sure the series is intended to be viewed in forward chronological order by topic.

Is this essentially a form of postmodernism? Great video.

As a male (in Norway), young in the 70s and 80s, I contend that we (some, at least) experienced a short period of faith in actual equality - genders, workplaces, ethnicity… Why? Well, at that point in modernity, we still had this belief in teleological progress. Wrong as it was, nurturing a hope also influenced thoughts and actions - i.e. on the topic of this video. However, modernity “progressed”. We are way beyond a society that can ever solve “issues” by increasingly reductionist methods. “Issues” being the culprit itself - an issue is by itself out of context and time. Solving one “issue” without generalising towards our misconceptions, is comfortable, but no actual solution. A person in a society isn’t a “complicated mechanism”, we’re not machines. We are complex living beings by nature. Social constructs though, are made by us, not nature itself. There’s more than matter both in us and between us. Maybe there’s a better understanding if we embrace as well as quantise?

Isn´t apathy the opposite of wonder?

Dr. Anderson, Were you in the video in favor of binary categorization as false? If so, is this the actual stance of recent feminist where there is only historic-perceptual differences in sexuality? If so, is there an answer, on your view, for the apparent discrepancy between the sexes?

I wonder (heh) about this notion that there is no opposite of wonder. Isn't being jaded the opposite of wonder? Or does that not get at what she means?

Opposite of wonder?? Disappointment? Boredom? Wow, Lakoff shows that metaphor drives our everyday language, for all people. Philosophy takes it to a whole other level, but probably not applicable to ways non-philosophers think about things like sex (either conscious or subconscious or culturally).

OMGGGGGG

It sounds like Irigaray is saying that 1+1 does not equal two, because of the "interval" between 1 and 1 (or between the lips), which seems like some irrational or mystical thinking, w/ the notion of the "interval" being invoked as some kind of magical and unlocatable presence (absent presence) that works a kind of mathematical alchemy by means of which 1+1 is somehow not 2, and likewise a binary is not a binary, which seems like some pretty sketchy logic.

boredom isn't the opposite opposed to wonder? Maybe it's disdain? Where does Descartes say wonder has no opposite passion?

Just wondering. The Wonder. How much different is it from the Adventure? Does the subject disappear? Is it timeless? Is that masculine? Not to make a joke. I just want to understand. To me it is the Human Universe. You can never leave that. A prisoner of a species being. But still a recognition. Maybe the Human Universe is not so complete. Because of who wrote. And feminism is a mind and not a body. Just want to understand. Lacan. The unconscious. But just to say something different. I like my chair firmly on the ground. Because I can see the chair. I like that. Every once in a while, someone throws it back into the air. Where it was a long time ago. I do not see dualism going away. Subject Object. There seems to be always some clever attempt to fuse them together. Even from the East. Thanks Ted Norcross

Efforts of egalitarianism (gender)are somewhat self defeating because what they do is draw more attention and regard to masculine values/traits to the detriment of feminine ones.

Do you think men and women can just be friends?

Asserting that sexual differences exist is borderline heretical in the Anglosphere in the 21st century.

when philosophy goes into the way the world should work, rather than the way it works, it runs into trouble, in effect it becomes a form of politics which is why they don't mix well or if they do mix, its a disaster of which there are plenty of examples going back to the farce of plato's involvement with the sicilian tyrants

alenka zupancic

Something tell me Irigaray must be heterosexual and might not like transgender people...

If wonder is found in the "other," then the opposite of wonder would be sameness. In any case, good overview, but I find when one steps back and looks critically/carefully at what a philosopher like Irigaray is saying, it really amounts to nonsense and absurdist thinking.

I want to whine about the bullshit of the argument as it relates to time and space: that 'space is female' and 'time is male'. One may as well say that Time is about being conservative and Space is about being liberal. On the surface, it may appear as much, but its reduction to such primals reduces the argument to nothing, or nothing much. Now the Lips comparison is interesting in male-female relations as we all have to breathe, but I wanted more insight into the 'alleged female/male divide'. Is pursuing that fraction worth destroying the whole of historically philosophy? Ugh, nuke the world while you (plural)'re at it. Yes, we want to fit in (generally speaking), but beyond creation as a phallus/vulva act (traditionally), what people do in their lives may easily run tangent to those actions. Do people need community? Do gender-types need to intermingle? Should mingling be managed or regulated, and/or why/why not? There is probably friction in intermingling gender-types, owing to differences, given any situation. Each may have a wide range of priorities, stated and unstated. How do those priorities interact, where the 'other' is or isn't assumed to be an 'enemy agent'? And so on ... Thanks for sharing. Very interesting.

I love the idea of ethics as first philosophy but I cannot accept it. It appeals to my preferences and biases - I think ethics is more important than metaphysics. But I think ethics implies a right way, which implies ways - and therefore things like ways, distinct from not ways, and what else is there? Somehow there's an ethics of asking these questions however... Maybe philosophy is first philosophy... Maybe its domains are commensurate?

wut

Impossible to listen to this without thinking of Boghossian and Lindsay's hoax paper: "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct"

The very act of destroying a binary system is itself a binary struggle. 😉

Hermeticism has had a profound affect on philosophy. I don't think even authors who make use of it heavily really appreciate this consciously.

Wow. A lot of imaginative play with random disconnected concepts. Unfortunately, so disconnected not only with each other but also with reality that it will not move anyone closer to the truth of the human condition. Who does it help exactly to try and ground our sexual understanding and understanding of the person with people's lips, just because both women and men have them and it seems to be neutral ground. Irigarays work as presented in your monologue, no doubt very accurately, is a fantastic play with words, much closer to pure fantasy than to philosophy. The dignity of philosophy is its attempt to move everyone closer to the truth. Irigarays work appears much closer to a delusional and/or deceptive play with words than to a genuine move towards the truth.