American Socrates
Think Deeper. Live Better.
Most podcasts give you answers. American Socrates gives you better questions.
Host Matt Rupert — Professional Philosopher, Part-time Podcaster — applies the lost art of Socratic thinking to the decisions, relationships, and cultural debates shaping everyday American life. This is not a philosophy class. It's not another self-help podcast. Just rigorous, honest thinking that helps you sift through the rhetoric and live more deliberately.
New episodes every Wednesday. Check your assumptions at the door.
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere you listen.
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/corals/mountain-pine
License code: NT1UAGETRXVL46SM
American Socrates
Latest Episodes
Is Morality Just a Matter of Opinion?
Every culture disagrees about right and wrong — so does that mean morality is just whatever a culture says it is? This episode traces cultural relativism from its origins as an anthropologist's weapon against scientific racism to its collapse u...
What does Life in the Kingdom of Ends look like?
Can a lost wallet full of cash teach you how to be a good person? This episode breaks down Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative and its elegant reformulation, the Kingdom of Ends — the idea that we must treat every person as an end in themsel...
What Does It Mean to Do Your Duty?
In this episode we explore the mechanics of Kant's moral system. From a description of duty to the application of imperatives including the categorical imperative, how is Kant Deontology supposed to offer us moral guidance.
Are Good Intentions Good Enough?
What makes an action morally good: What actually happened, or what you meant to do? This episode opens a study of Kantian ethics by making the positive case for intention as the foundation of moral evaluation. Aristotle argued that intention re...
What if the Consequences Don't Matter?
Is consequentialism, the idea that what makes an action right or wrong is entirely its consequences, the right framework for morality at all? This episode examines three structural failures that can't be fixed: moral luck, the doing/allowing co...
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