And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to you with the support of the LMU in Munich and Kings College London online at

W.W.

History of Philosophy. Net. Today's episode,

burnt offerings, the Mymonities controversy.

I've been wondering whether this podcast should have a minimum age restriction. I try to keep things family friendly, but it isn't always easy to avoid adult themes.

We've had some scenes of a sexual nature with Plato's erotic dialogues and the cynics copulating in public,

to say nothing of the steamy interaction of unity and multiplicity in Pythagorean metaphysics.

There's been violence too in late antiquity with the brutal treatment meted out to the pagan

platenist hierarchlies and the Christian theologian Maximus the Confessor, and more recently the Mongol's innovative

method for killing the last of the Abassid Califs.

As for philosophy itself, it certainly involves making things explicit.

Nonetheless, I'm a firm believer that it is never too early to start doing philosophy.

If you've ever discussed ethics or Zeno's paradoxes with a child, you'll know that they have some pretty good ideas.

In fact, recently a listener got in touch to report his five-year-old son's solution to the Sorieties paradox,

and I bet that Chrysippus himself couldn't have done better at that age.

So it's hard for me to hold on to my historian's sense of detachment

when I consider what happened in Barcelona in the year 1305.

In a foreshadowing of FC Barcelona's ban on letting the other team ever touch the ball,

in that year the Jewish authorities laid down a ban on touching books about philosophy.

Specifically, they stated that anyone under the age of 25 should be forbidden from reading Greek works on physics or metaphysics, either in Greek or in translation.

Here we are, about 1,700 years after the death of Socrates, and philosophy is still being accused of corrupting the youth.

The rabbinic judge who imposed the ban was named Solomon Ibn Adret, also known as

...