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Peter Adamson
Personal blog · historyofphilosophy.netphilosophyhistory
Peter Adamson writes History of Philosophy without any gaps, a personal blog at historyofphilosophy.net about philosophy and history. Since 2012, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 64 times, most often “History of Philosophy “without any gaps””. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
64mentions?
26recommend?
46HN people?
2012–2025first – last linked?
Often recommended · 26 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers recommend Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast and site as an accessible, thorough history of philosophy that also covers Islamic, Indian and African traditions.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Podcast by Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at LMU Munich and KCL London. Includes western, Islamic, Indian, and Africana philsosophy.
Most-linked posts?
- History of Philosophy “without any gaps”18 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2017-03-04
- /5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-07-30
- /all-episodes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-07-30
- /faq2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-11-01
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-04-16
- History of philosophy, “without any gaps.”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-09-13
- /all-episodes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-11-01
- /series/classical-indian-philosophy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-02-20
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-03-21
What Hacker News says?
Nice short episode on them here for those who are interested https://historyofphilosophy.net/sophists
Comment linking /sophists
on “Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show”Submitted History of philosophy, “without any gaps.” as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDitto moral philosophy, civics, epistemology, logic. The earlier, the better. Started binging History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps during the apocalypse. So grumpy that I missed all this stuff. If nothing else, I would have learned that most of our debates in society are truly ancient, maybe save myself some angst. https://historyofphilosophy.net/all-episodes
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on “Stanford CS Curriculum 2021”Submitted History of Philosophy “without any gaps” as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOne of my favourites: http://historyofphilosophy.net
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on “Show HN: I made a Hacker News for podcasts”Submitted History of Philosophy without any gaps as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis is the one I have listened to on and off: https://historyofphilosophy.net/
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on “C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books”Submitted History of Philosophy without any gaps as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI've been working my way through the podcast "A history of philosophy without any gaps". I find the episodes are a perfect length for my commute, and the presenter seems to be pretty well informed: https://historyofphilosophy.net/
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on “MindWeb – A Computer Science Bachelor Curriculum”Submitted Podcast: The Relevance of Medieval Philosophy Today as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIn a similar, though less wide ranging, vein is Peter Adamson (LMU, Munich/KCL) and Jonardon Ganeri (NYU/KCL): https://historyofphilosophy.net/series/classical-indian-phil...
Comment linking /series/classical-indian-philosophy
on “Vijayanagara – The Last Emperors of South India [audio]”Submitted History of Philosophy without any gaps as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMaybe not too similar, but still in the same ballpark: The History of Philosophy without any gaps. [0] Especially the series on islamic and indian philosophy is very well researched, easy to listen to and quite illuminating. If I'm not mistaken the author, Peter Adamson is a professor without teaching obligations due to the workload associated with the podcast. [0] https://historyofphilosophy.net/
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on “Vijayanagara – The Last Emperors of South India [audio]”I would like to suggest "History of Philosophy without any gaps" podcast website which explains in a rather complete way Philosophy in layman's terms. Everything is neatly organized (just check the top menu). Also it includes non western philosophy such as Avicenna's writings, its importance and relation to Aristotle's work. Here is ths relevant episode on Aristotelian ethics: https://historyofphilosophy.net/aristot…
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on “Nicomachean Ethics”> For most of history the question "What should one do?" got much the same answer everywhere This is so not true, that I'd like to point the author, and people who think in a similar vein, to a very enjoyable podcast on the history of philosophy, namely the "History of Philosophy without any Gaps" [1]. Hopefully this will persuade you that there are many ways to think about what to do with the life that was given to…
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on “What to Do”I recommend "History of philosophy without gaps". It starts from "scratch" and also ventures out in Islam, India and Africana. So it's not entirely Western. https://historyofphilosophy.net
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on “Ask HN: Learning about philosophy”The podcast The History of Philosophy without any gaps is a great way to get into it. I found the philosophy of the pre-socratics all the way through to the scholastics was easy to understand and grasp as a lay person. After that, the language gets a bit dense. However, I was still able to understand it. https://historyofphilosophy.net
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on “Ask HN: Learning about philosophy”There really aren't any must-read books, except for certain areas there are a bunch of must-read books, and none of them make a good entry point to the study and practice of philosophy. Like most mature fields, philosophy has a well developed body of theory, and jargon for discussing it, and understanding it often requires a decent knowledge of the history of philosophy (most philosophy is done in reaction to earlie…
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on “Ask HN: Learning about philosophy”I can recommend an interesting podcast series covering that topic. Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps [^1]. Some of the series is already in book form, which goes into more depth than the podcast. [^1] https://historyofphilosophy.net/
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on “Montreal is taxing churches (2017)”Kudos for the effort. Unfortunately, category error is littered throughout. > The problem domain for Jesus teachings is ethical action and how to encourage it. If it did have a problem domain it would be how to get into Heaven and not into Hell. Ethical action would be the way in which that is achieved. It does not, however, have a problem domain because without Christianity there is no problem to be solved. It is n…
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on “Who Was the Buddha?”The “claim of NASA endorsing Sanskrit” is an exaggeration that is easy to debunk, but the paper itself is real: it presents (though in a vague way) something of historical interest, namely a dialect of Sanskrit that was (and is) used for giving precise definitions and statements, attempting to avoid ambiguity. Of course from one perspective this is “just” a historical curiosity and an irrelevant dead end as far as A…
Comment linking /india
on “Bhūribhirbhāribhirbhīrābhūbhārairabhirebhire”https://historyofphilosophy.net/ has a great series on the history of philosophy.
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on “Ask HN: Intellectually simulating Podcasts/conversations/Talk”A fantastic resource on the history of philosophy, not linked to here, is Peter Adamson's "History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps", both the books and the series of podcasts: https://historyofphilosophy.net/ . Apart from very good coverage of the usual suspects, here you have much, much more Africana and Islamic philosophy (for example) than the average Western academic philosopher has been exposed to.
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on “So You Want to Study Philosophy”The excellent podcast History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps did a whole series on African philosophy: https://historyofphilosophy.net/series/africana-philosophy And Bryan van Norden, a professor of Chinese and comparative philosophy, made a reading list for non-western philosophy: http://www.bryanvannorden.com/suggestions-for-further-readin...
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on “So You Want to Study Philosophy”It is tangential, but I’ll take this opportunity to plug one of the best* podcasts ever: The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. If you want thought provoking summaries of philosophical thought, spanning the history of philosophy, this podcast is for you. I have no affiliation with it, I just enjoy it: https://historyofphilosophy.net/ * subjectively, from a person with a BA in Philosophy and a JD, FWIW.
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on “Philosophy as a public service”If you just have ears, History of Philosophy without any gaps is great podcast: https://historyofphilosophy.net/ . Great and thorough companion when I do the dishes.
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on “Philosophy as a public service”There's a nice podcast[1] by the King's College in London about philosophy. It's not going deep on any particular philosopher, bar Plato, but will give you an overview of ancient and modern Philosophy. Then you can decide were you'd like to dig more. [1]: https://historyofphilosophy.net/
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on “Why read Aristotle today?”The History of Philosophy episode on icons and iconoclasm is relevant and, as with the rest of the podcast, excellent. https://historyofphilosophy.net/iconoclasm MP3 direct: https://hopwag.podbean.com/mf/play/h7m3vi/HoP_303_-_Don_t_Pi... I've been thinking of our recent technological fetish for digital identity and identifiers as something of a modern cult of idolatry, grounded in many of the same aims, and subject…
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on “Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?”I think, philosophy has not answered all the questions posed by Plato and Aristotle but it has put up quite some more interesting questions since then. Science has answered some of these questions -- Nameley in the fields of astronomy, biology and geology wich was considered natural philosophy in ancient times. For anyone interested in this topic, I hereby plug one of my favourite podcasts: https://historyofphilosop…
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on “Has there been progress in philosophy?”Reminds me somewhat of the Sankhya school of Indian philosophy, which was strongly dualist but (unlike Cartesian dualism) considered thought processes as part of material reality, and spirit as some sort of "consciousness capability" which worked mostly as an spectator. https://historyofphilosophy.net/samkhya
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on “What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?”
