I picked up a package of tapes by Rick Roderick about 20th Century philosophy for a quarter at a garage sale. It was fun. Roderick has a broad West Texas accent and frequently jokes about being overweight and smoking. Unfortunately, he died of heart failure when he was 52, which make his comments sad.

The tapes start with Heidegger and move through several 20th century thinkers including Sartre and ends with Derrida and Baudrillard. This was all new to me. I knew Heidegger and Sartre through existentialism, but 90% of the content was new ideas. I am not usually concerned with “logic choppers” as Roderick calls philosophers.

Roderick sums up thousands of pages of philosophy in a few cute phrases. The four tapes cover a huge amount of ground with about 45 minutes spent on each of the philosophers and their ideas.

My favorite notion was one by Baudrillard that claimed that Reality is simulation. That we cannot understand the real unless it is simulated. This is a very cyberpunk notion and it also might indicate that computer simulations have just as much a claim on reality as do our only internal simulations based on sensory input.

This was issued by the Learning Company, but is no longer available. If you are lucky enough to come across it, I would highly recommend listening. There is also a video version, but I don’t think that you lose much with just the audio. Pictures above are Rick from the video version.

Rick Roderick – Self Under Siege – Philosophy in the 20th Century (1983)

It is available at eBay, but for much more than 25¢.