At first glance, a “political philosophy of mind” would seem to be an oxymoron of sorts. Minds, after all, are often considered to be the individual basis for decision and action, while political philosophy would demand that we think at least on some level in terms of collectivity if not relations. A political philosophy of mind demands, then, overcoming the binary of individual and collective, individual and society. The individual and collective is only one such challenge proposed by a political philosophy of mind. If we consider the mind to include not only cognitive dimensions and aspects, but also the affective basis of actions– the feelings, moods, and emotions, that structure our responses– then a political philosophy of mind also crosses the divide between mind and body.

Such crossings are necessary to move beyond an economy and society that increasingly frames everything in terms of purely individual and rational decisions, as neoliberal calculations subsume our economic life, and even “you do you” guidelines replace public health. In this episode, we talk to John Protevi (Phyllis M. Taylor Professor of French Studies, Louisiana State University) about a political philosophy of mind, and why it might be necessary to think of the mind across the division of individual and society, mind and body.

In this episode, we discuss the following ideas/thinkers/texts/etc.:

• Judith Butler and the “Alt-New College” of Florida
• The battle between Governor Rick DeSantis and the New College of Florida
• Naomi Wolf, Doppelgänger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023)
• John Protevi, Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic (2009)
• Francisco Varela 
• Enactivism and Embodied Cognition
• Panpsychism
• Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics (1677)
• conatus
• Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis)
• Jan Slaby (University of Berlin)
• Michelle Maiese and Robert Hanna, The Mind-Body Politic (2019)
• Iris Marion Young, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Bodily Comportment Motility and Spatiality” (1977)
• Gayle Salamon, Ann Murphy, and Gail Weiss (Eds.), 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology (2019)
• W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
• Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
• Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (1949)
• Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, et al)
• analytic vs. Continental philosophy “divide”
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
• The hermeneutics of suspicion (Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, et al)
• John Protevi, “The Terri Schiavo Case: Biopolitics and Biopower: Agamben and Foucault” (2006)
• John Protevi, “Katrina” (2009)
• John Protevi, “Political Physiology in High School: Columbine and After” (2004)
• John Protevi, “Toward a Political Philosophy of Mind: Principles and a Case Study” (2023)
• The life and death of Shanetta White-Ballard
• John Protevi, “COVID-19 in the United States as Affective Frame” (2022)
• Philosophical “thought experiments” and our Season 3, Episode 33 on “Thought Experiments” 
• The Beyesian Brain
• The Selfish Brain
• Inattentional blindness and “The Invisible Gorilla” video
• Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart (1979)
• Social reproduction theory
• Lindsey Stewart, The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism (2021)
• Neo-abolitionism
• New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s “You do you” COVID masking guidelines
• Decision theory
• Melinda Cooper, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (2019)
• West Virginia University budget crisis
• Five unforgettable Philadelphia sports fan moments

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