Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and this is a special bonus episode to give you all something to listen to while the podcast is on summer break.

As some of you may have seen, I have a book coming out, not another installment of the book series based on the podcast.

You can get all six of those from Oxford University Press, and there are more on the way.

But a volume called Don't Think For Yourself, Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy.

It brings together a lot of the things I learned while I wrote the podcast on Medieval Philosophy in the Islamic Latin Christian and Byzantine cultures, and add some ideas from my other research.

All of that is brought to bear on an issue that has become increasingly urgent in recent history.

How should we form beliefs on the basis of expert authoritative testimony?

The book will be published by University of Notre Dame Press, and will appear in October 2022.

You can pre-order it from their website, undpress.nd.edu, and get a 20% discount if you use the order code 14FF20.

That's 14F as in fabulous book, F as in fantastic present for any gift giving occasion to zero.

To wet your appetite, I've recorded the first chapter which you're about to hear.

It introduces a central concept in the book, Takheed, which means the uncritical acceptance of ideas based on authority.

In the rest of the book, I look at lots of other medieval ideas about belief and authority.

For instance, the contest between Plato and Aristotle as authoritative authors, the attempts of women authors to establish themselves as authoritative, and the use of philosophy into religious debates.

Again, you can get the book from Notre Dame University Press, it's called Don't Think For Yourself, authority and belief in medieval philosophy.

As always, thanks to everyone out there for listening, and if you get the book, then thanks for reading.

Chapter 1, Takheed, authority and the intellectual elite in the Islamic world.

I live in Europe where people usually ride bicycles, and recently I was riding with my wife through Munich.

We came to an intersection.

Ahead of me, my wife slowed down, checking for oncoming cars, then went across.

It suddenly struck me that it would be perfectly reasonable for me to follow her across the intersection without bothering to look whether it was safe.

After all, my wife is reliable and has good judgment both in general and when it comes to the rules of the road.

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