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This is a 33-minute preview of a 2 hr, 13-minute episode.
What effect should the avant garde have on our understanding of what art is? We read three essays by modern, first-rate American philosopher Arthur Danto, all published in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986): the title essay, "The Appreciation and Interpretation of Works of Art," and "The End of Art."
I understand you may not have heard of Danto, and you may think modern art is goofy, but you'll definitely enjoy this discussion and the reading anyway. Danto gives a picture of philosophy and art at war throughout history: philosophy says that art can't get at truth and is otherwise useless, yet philosophers like Plato seem afraid of the power of art to corrupt. What's the deal?
Also, Danto claims that art is over; the end of art has happened. So suck it, artists. (Actually, artists can keep on doing what they're doing; they're fine, yet art is still over.) Plus, can you stare at a urinal and thereby make it art? What if it's in a museum? Danto loves them crazy ass post-modern artists, and thinks that their work shows that art was not what we thought it was.
Plus, Seth talks about the plane crashing into the IRS building near his house, and we respond some listener postings.
Danto's book is definitely worth purchasing.
End song: "This Night Before the End," by Mark Lint and the Simulacra, recorded mostly in 2000 but finished just now. Here's more info about the song.
Note that after this was posted, Danto listened to it and liked it.
The sample that is available on the stream has an error about 15 mins in that keeps even the sample from being played unless you skip a minute or so ahead. (I don’t get angry is the last thing that can be heard) I’m not sure why the full episodes are still not available on the stream for the ones that were initially offered as samples since you have clearly abandoned doing the sample offering of the podcasts some years ago. It would be nice to simply be able to listen to the full episodes. I live on a fixed income and can’t afford to pay everyone for the worthy offerings that they have, and so consequently have not signed up for any memberships for any podcasts that I enjoy. I understand everyone has to make a living. That includes disabled people who have to make do on the pittances that are offered by the US government as compensation.
Thanks for letting me know, I’ll check the file.
This wasn’t something we tried and abandoned. This is us redacting old content to try to get you to pay for it, and it’s the main way we make money. We will in fact be moving MORE episodes behind the paywall soon. It’s very easy for you to hear all the redacted episodes for a mere $5: https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership-options/, or at our Patreon site, you can get some of them for just $1 and more for $3, or purchase them a la carte on our store page for $2 each. Thanks.
I’d have to sign up and download all the content in the first month to listen for only five bucks. If that’s what you prefer I might do that. You could just ask that upfront. A one time payment of $5 for access to all the old content. It would save time explaining the facts of life to people who already know the facts of life as they pertain to them.
Correct, if you spring for the PEL Citizen feed, you can listen in the normal way, but yes, if it takes you 3 months to get through 80 episodes or whatever’s there, then that’s $15, which is still a very good deal. I think our providing 100+ episodes for free fulfills our public service mission and is hopefully enough to get anyone really interested in us hooked enough to want to support our activities on an ongoing basis. That said, if the Citizen feed is too pricey for you, I’m happy to scholarship it, like go ahead and sign up and install, cancel after a month, then ping me and I’ll manually reactivate.
I have a lot more thoughts on this subject than I’m going to put into a comment on a website. Maybe they’ll make it into a blog post because I’m pretty pissed about everything going behind paywalls these days. There was a misnomer about information in the early days of the internet that made the claim that information wanted to be free. Information doesn’t want anything. People need information to be free if those people are going to be tasked with governing themselves. If the information is not free then the people can’t make informed decisions.
Contrary to what most people think, understanding that you have a philosophy whether you want to have one or not, and knowing how that philosophy is encoded and manipulated by others is key to knowing when you are correct in your actions or beliefs and knowing when you are being played (Re: Stormtrumpers) which means making discussion about the bones of philosophy entertaining and accessible one of the most vital things that can be done in this day and age.
You’ve got the entertaining part covered. It would be beneficial to the public if you left the information out where it can be accessed by anyone who is curious about the subject rather than demand payment up front. The benefits of better government through an informed public can be felt by everyone just as who to blame for the Trump hellhole we find ourselves in should be painfully obvious to even the most fervent face-painting Republican. That this isn’t the case can be partially laid at the feet of the way that we have historically financed educational ventures like the one you have embarked on. You should be compensated for your time. Limiting access to the information is a self-defeating means of being compensated.
The now-redacted episodes were free for years and years before we made that move, and it honestly pained me to do so at the time, as of course I want my work to be as widely experienced as possible, but now I’ve got something like 1000 hours of my recorded voice out there which no human being is actually going to be able to get to, so I don’t see how paywalling some of that is “self-defeating.”
It sounds like you’ve never been in a position to have to make that kind of decision. Despite this being a labor of love, there’s 0% we’d still be doing it after 11 years if we weren’t making some income off of it, and at this point it’s a little frustrating that given how much work I put into three podcasts that I still need to work a day job at all.
This is a niche product, so advertising does not even cover our costs. For a few years we went purely on donations, and got a lot of nice support, but because of the assumption you seem to not only share but defend that everything on the Internet should be free, only about 1% of listeners chip in to anything unless they’re incentivized. It seems like you’ve put way more than $20 worth of effort into seething about this.
…it is also worth noting that I wouldn’t be listening in the first place if all I could get were samples and would have to pay for access to the full podcast. I may or may not continue attempting to follow the arguments that are offered in the podcast, even though I am fascinated by the subject of philosophy, because I will have to pay to be able to enjoy them. If I have to choose between eating and entertainment I’m reliably going to pick eating every time. Food for thought.