Podcast for Social Research, Episode 47: Who Needs a Worldview? Raymond Geuss in Conversation

What is a worldview? Why do people so often resort to worldview thinking? What is the alternative? In episode 47 of the Podcast for Social Research, philosopher Raymond Geuss joins Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Michael Stevenson, and Rebecca Ariel Porte to discuss his most recent book Who Needs a Worldview? (Harvard). Among the points considered: why worldviews aren’t simply large theories, but modes of personal identity; how theory arises from failure and personal inadequacy; whether we can have an account of (what Adorno calls) social totality; Hegel’s conception of thinking as “movement”; pragmatism; why Geuss wants us “to forget Kant, forget Plato”; Lenin’s non-dogmatism; why all ideas are bad ideas; the consolations of the worldview; utopianism; the thought and style of Sydney Morgenbesser; philosophizing in public; why Geuss felt he had nothing much to say in America; and “having one’s Bruegel, and critiquing it, too.”