The Wednesday Society

Season one: On Beauty - What philosophers and writers have said about beauty over the centuries.

Philosopher Dalia Nassar takes you on a journey through experiences of beauty. She asks the question that so many philosophers, poets and artists have asked: Can beauty actually change our lives? To think through this question with Dalia is  concert pianist and writer, Simon Tedeschi.

In each episode Dalia and Simon discuss beauty in...

Professor Dalia Nassar takes a philosophical deep dive into forgotten or intentionally neglected texts and figures.

TheWednesday Societytakes its name from the radical intellectual clubs that met in London, Berlin and Vienna. It invites listeners to explore overlooked, misunderstood and ignored ideas and thinkers. 

We ask big (and small) questions about paths not taken and ideas not realised. 

• Producer: Sarah Allely
• Compo...

The final step on Diotima’s ladder is the most enigmatic. Diotima says that we encounter the beautiful “in itself,” without any form or shape. This seems impossible, given that beauty is something we sense - or at least discern in some particular person or thing… 

Dalia Nassar and Simon Tedeschi think about this enigma in light of Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic.” Can Lord...

Cosmos in Greek means both order and beauty, and it refers to the order of the universe. So what is the relationship between beauty and order?

Just a few years after the French revolution and during the reign of terror, philosopher and poet Frederick Schiller wrote a series of letters in which he defended the idea of an aesthetic education for a healthy and robust democracy. But his idea has gone largely unnoticed. What is an aesthe...

The third step in Diotima’s ladder asks us to see the beauty of goodness. But what kind of beauty is this? And how can we think of beauty as having to do with the good when - so often - it seems to also be embroiled in evil?

In this episode, Dalia and Simon consider an essay by the twentieth-century French philosopher, Simone Weil. She was described by Albert Camus as the only great spirit of our time. Weil’s thinking wa...

What might it mean to speak not of a beautiful body, but of the beauty of bodily form? This is the question that Diotima’s second step asks us to answer. And to do so, Dalia and Simon discuss a novel that - as Simon puts it - is one of the best novels he’s read. But he’d never heard of it until this episode

Germaine de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy, published in 1807, was a best-seller in its time. It takes on bi...

Physical beauty is the first step in Diotima’s ladder. In some ways it’s super easy. We know what she means. In other ways it’s not straightforward. It can be uncomfortable, superficial, even dangerous. But is it possible that the problem isn’t physical beauty, but the way our culture sees physical beauty as just visual - rather than the full experience of sound, smell and touch? 

To think through this q...

We start by going back - to ancient Greece, to an itinerant seer named Diotima. She saved Athens from the Plague for ten years; and taught Socrates everything he knew about love and beauty. Diotima, who appears in Plato’s dialogue - the Symposium - gave us the very first philosophical discussion of beauty. Her claim is that beauty is not one. Beauty appears in different guises, and to see these different guises, we must ascen...

Season one: On Beauty - What philosophers and writers have said about beauty over the centuries.

Philosopher Dalia Nassar takes you on a journey through experiences of beauty. She asks the question that so many philosophers, poets and artists have asked: Can beauty actually change our lives? To think through this question with Dalia is  concert pianist and writer, Simon Tedeschi.

In each episode Dalia and Simon discuss beauty in...

A podcast that takes a philosophical deep dive into forgotten or intentionally neglected texts and figures.

The Wednesday Society takes its name from the radical intellectual clubs that met in London, Berlin and Vienna. It invites listeners to explore overlooked, misunderstood and ignored ideas and thinkers. 

Hosted by philosopher Dalia Nassar, the podcast asks big (and small) questions about paths not taken and ideas not realis...

A podcast that takes a philosophical deep dive into forgotten or intentionally neglected texts and figures.

The Wednesday Society takes its name from the radical intellectual clubs that met in London, Berlin and Vienna. It invites listeners to explore overlooked, misunderstood and ignored ideas and thinkers. 

Hosted by philosopher Dalia Nassar, the podcast asks big (and small) questions about paths not taken and ideas not realis...