Episode #56: Krishnan Venkatesh: A Love of Impartiality

These Fools are thrilled to welcome special guest Krishnan Venkatesh, a philosophy professor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM and formative member of St. John’s Eastern Classics Graduate Program. A rich discussion starts out with whether there are core differences between Eastern and Western philosophy, and touches on many topics, including the influence of Eastern thought on American thinkers like HD Thoreau, fragmentation of society, the meaning of having a “philosophical practice” and the mind-body connection, the advent of artificial intelligence, the value of listening well and how that skill is developed, and the role of language in meaning-making and reality itself.

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See the Fools and Sages show notes: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GVCVW1h2_-4JOU22KREzTO0lVDiN3icg?usp=drive_link

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Krishnan Venkatesh
03:28 Thoreau as an Eastern Philosopher
12:18 The Role of Listening in Learning
22:42 Philosophy and Psychology: A Continuum
28:25 Relationality in Eastern and Western Thought
28:54 Cultural Perspectives on Philosophy
34:09 Philosophical Practices and Their Importance
42:41 Fragmentation of Relationships
53:30 The Nature of Knowledge and Its Transmission
59:41 The Linguistic Nature of Reality
01:03:20 The Gap Between Languages
01:09:46 Philosophy in the Age of AI
01:11:32 Philosophy in Human Existence
01:12:47 Ethics and the Human Experience