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Hosted by Jeffrey Howard, editor-in-chief of Erraticus, Damn the Absolute! is a show about our relationship to ideas.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Pragmatist philosophy and anti-absolutism • truth, language, inquiry, humility • democracy, polarization, trust, deliberation, trauma • race, history education, beloved community • science metaphors, mind, consciousness • ethics, religion, Stoicism, Buddhism • climate, commons, localism, agriculture • education and parentingThis podcast explores how people relate to ideas and how intellectual habits shape moral, political, and cultural life. Conversations are rooted in pragmatic philosophy and adjacent traditions, often treating beliefs as tools tested in experience rather than as timeless certainties. Across episodes, guests examine the risks of absolutism in areas like religion, science, ethics, and politics, and ask what intellectual humility, fallibilism, and pluralism look like in practice.
A recurring focus is democratic life under strain: polarization, declining trust, disputes over history and collective memory, and the appeal of authoritarian or dogmatic worldviews. The show considers how communities might deliberate and cooperate amid uncertainty, including therapeutic or psychoanalytic approaches to unresolved social trauma and frameworks for building “beloved community” in the face of racism and economic injustice.
The podcast also addresses how knowledge is made in different domains. It contrasts scientific and humanistic methods, investigates metaphor and narrative in scientific understanding, and looks at hermeneutics and lived experience as guides for studying culture. Literature appears as a resource for moral imagination and democratic renewal, alongside broader debates about modernism, postmodernism, and proposals for new theoretical paradigms.
Practical questions are common, extending philosophical inquiry into climate response, food systems, localism and placemaking, commons-based governance, education and parenting, animal ethics, and philosophies of living such as Stoicism and Buddhism. Overall, the show uses interviews with scholars and practitioners to connect abstract debates about truth, meaning, and value to concrete social problems and everyday choices.
