• Log In

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

Subscribe on Android Spotify Google Podcasts audible patreon
  • Home
  • Podcast
    • PEL Network Episodes
    • Publicly Available PEL Episodes
    • Paywalled and Ad-Free Episodes
    • PEL Episodes by Topic
    • Nightcap
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Pretty Much Pop
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • (sub)Text
    • Phi Fic Podcast
    • Combat & Classics
    • Constellary Tales
  • Blog
  • About
    • PEL FAQ
    • Meet PEL
    • About Pretty Much Pop
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • Meet Phi Fic
    • Listener Feedback
    • Links
  • Join
    • Become a Citizen
    • Join Our Mailing List
    • Log In
  • Donate
  • Store
    • Episodes
    • Swag
    • Everything Else
    • Cart
    • Checkout
    • My Account
  • Contact
  • Mailing List

PREVIEW-Episode 36: More Hegel on Self-Consciousness

April 10, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 21 Comments

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/partiallyexaminedlife/PREVIEW-PEL_ep_036_3-17-11.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:11 — 29.5MB)

This is a 32-minute preview of a 1 hr, 32-minute episode.

Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more causally.

Part 2 of our discussion of G.F.W. Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit," covering sections 178-230 within section B, "Self-Consciousness." Part 1 is here.

First, Hegel's famous "master and slave" parable, whereby we only become fully self-conscious by meeting up with another person, who (at least in primordial times, or maybe this happens to everyone as they grow up, or maybe this is all just happening in one person's head... who the hell knows given the wacky way Hegel talks)? Then the story leads into stoicism, skepticism, and the "unhappy consciousness" (i.e. Christianity). We are again joined by Tom McDonald, though Wes is out sick. Wild speculation and disagreements of interpretation abound!

Buy the peach translation by A.V. Milleror read this online translation by Terry Pinkard.

End song: “I Die Desire,” by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000).

Looking for the full Citizen version?

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Filed Under: Podcast Episodes Tagged With: G.W.F. Hegel, philosophy podcast, self-consciousness, skepticism, Stoicism, Tom McDonald

Comments

  1. Douglas Lain says

    April 10, 2011 at 11:40 pm

    Ah! Something to look forward to tonight! Thanks again, guys.

    Reply
  2. Seth Paskin says

    April 11, 2011 at 7:43 am

    Just for the record, the ‘master and slave’ section in the Miller translation is titled “lordship and bondage” and he uses the terms “Lord” and “bondsman”. I try to stick to that terminology so if you hear me saying that, it means the same thing.

    Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      April 11, 2011 at 8:20 am

      I can’t believe we got through that whole discussion without anyone making a “bondage” joke.

      Only through S&M can we achieve full self-consciousness, with gimpy adopting the stoic position. The safe word is “God.”

      Reply
      • Tom says

        April 11, 2011 at 10:56 am

        Funny but wouldn’t be an altogether inaccurate inference of Hegel’s meaning IMHO if labor-bondage means serving pleasure and “God” means we ought to share the labors and pleasures more equally.

        Reply
  3. Tom McDonald says

    April 11, 2011 at 9:02 pm

    I’m digging the tune “I Die Desire”. Nice one Mark.

    Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      April 14, 2011 at 12:01 pm

      Thanks. This is a remake from 2000 of a song I wrote in college; the original, crazy lo-fi version is at http://marklint.com/MayTricksAlbum.html).

      Reply
  4. stephen says

    April 12, 2011 at 7:39 am

    Jay Bernstein, of the New School, has a course of audio lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit here.They’re pretty good and go into a lot of depth. A good supplement to the podcasts here, which, btw, I enjoyed very much. In fact, best show yet, in my personal opinion. Please find some way to do more Hegel in the future.

    Reply
    • Daniel Horne says

      April 12, 2011 at 12:55 pm

      Nice link, thanks!

      Reply
  5. Tom says

    April 12, 2011 at 10:00 am

    Re: Stephen’s note: I used the Jay Bernstein audio lectures in the past and learned a lot from them. His affected speaking style can be grating at times, but his overall treatment of the book is very deep and broad and learned. It is more of a literary approach (PhG as odyssey of western civilization), but he is not weak on logical argumentation either. Bernstein could be called “critical theorist” in the Frankfurt school tradition that lives on at The New School in NYC. He teaches Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment, but not Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (i.e. normative reasoning). Bernstein claims that Hegel remains a post-Kantian “critical philosopher”, accepting most of Kant’s conclusions but replacing Kant’s ahistorical-metaphysical account of morals with the experientially richer historical-developmental account that is the Phenomenology of Spirit.

    Reply
  6. Tim says

    January 19, 2012 at 3:00 pm

    Hey guys, I appreciate the in depth reading done in this and the previous episode. Two thirds of the discussion still go over my head, but I may go back and listen to these two a few times.

    My interest was really piqued by the talk near the 1:48 mark about the modern idea of reason having its origins in Christianity. This is something I’ve been interested in for a while, and I’d be curious to read more about how Hegel relates to that idea. Any recommendations for secondary literature that deal specifically with that? I’m planning on reading Michael Allen Gillespie’s “The Theological Origins of Modernity” sometime soon.

    Reply
  7. Christian says

    November 27, 2012 at 6:45 pm

    For an interesting fictional actualization of the Lord-Bondsman metaphor check out Ugly Americans Se1Ep11. There’s a notably absurd subplot that mirror’s Hegel’s description and the series is readily available on Netflix.

    Reply
  8. Joseph says

    January 30, 2014 at 12:40 am

    In our dialogue course, we have just been assigned two Hegel selections. The first, about the Lord and the Bondsman, irritated the hell out of me. Friends from my past are trying to diagram part of a sentence, or maybe a sentence itself, attributed to Hegel by Nikulin with “the activity of thinking thinking itself in itself.” I thought that was bad until I read his actual thoughts and I’m convinced I’m half-mad now. I say this to congratulate you all for the effort here. I won’t have time to listen to your three Hegel episodes tonight, but having heard them before helped me to only be half-mad.

    Reply
  9. Erik Weissengruber says

    April 11, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    I am trying to better understand concept formation in phenomenological thinking.

    Where (or how can) logical categories meet the structures of experience.

    And some guy wrote a book about it.

    The Introduction is up at Academia.edu

    https://www.academia.edu/23954468/Infinite_Phenomenology_The_Lessons_of_Hegels_Science_of_Experience

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Hegel vs. Eliminative Materialism in Neuroscience | The Partially Examined Life | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    April 14, 2011 at 11:30 am

    […] argument in response to this position comes out of the discussion in episode 35 and episode 36 on Hegel’s account of self-consciousness. Here is the […]

    Reply
  2. Partially Examined Life Podcast Topic #42: Feminism | The Partially Examined Life | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    July 25, 2011 at 3:57 pm

    […] The end result is something that sounds a bit like the “finding oneself” described in our Hegel episode, while the moral reasoning model that considers concrete situations in their individuality rather […]

    Reply
  3. The Self and Selfishness (and Aesthetics and “The Fountainhead”) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    June 2, 2013 at 7:12 am

    […] the humanity of the many people around her infects Rand’s picture of self-development. Like Hegel/Buber/Lacan, etc., Rand thinks the self is built, but she marginalizes the role of other people in […]

    Reply
  4. Bergmann as Philosopher (Before All that “New Work” Stuff) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    September 20, 2013 at 12:47 am

    […] do we get a self? That’s now been the topic of several of our podcasts, including the ones on Hegel’s Phenomenology (the master and slave), Sartre, Buber, Lacan, and it’s come up on several other occasions. […]

    Reply
  5. Feeling Good About Oppression | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 26, 2013 at 4:49 pm

    […] In the Nietzsche episode, I made a point relating Nietzsche’s “bright side” of slave morality with Hegel’s account of the master-slave encounter. […]

    Reply
  6. Technology and Individuality | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    April 4, 2014 at 12:37 pm

    […] connection here to Hegel’s struggle for recognition (see episode 35 and 36) is obvious (Cf Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality; episode 23). We can individuate […]

    Reply
  7. Is “Do What You Love” Elitist? | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    May 19, 2014 at 12:37 pm

    […] but it’s the profound and legitimate finding of a whole philosophical tradition starting with Hegel that we start off as literally self-less and need to be built up from […]

    Reply
  8. Episode 172: Mind, Self, and Affect with Guest Dr. Drew (Part One) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    September 18, 2017 at 7:39 am

    […] We recommend that you check out first and foremost our episodes on Hegel's Phenomenology (#35 and #36) where we more or less introduced this topic. We gave variations on this story in our Kierkegaard, […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

PEL Live Show 2023

Brothers K Live Show

Citizenship has its Benefits

Become a PEL Citizen
Become a PEL Citizen, and get access to all paywalled episodes, early and ad-free, including exclusive Part 2's for episodes starting September 2020; our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more causally; a community of fellow learners, and more.

Rate and Review

Nightcap

Listen to Nightcap
On Nightcap, listen to the guys respond to listener email and chat more casually about their lives, the making of the show, current events and politics, and anything else that happens to come up.

Subscribe to Email Updates

Select list(s):

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Support PEL

Buy stuff through Amazon and send a few shekels our way at no extra cost to you.

Tweets by PartiallyExLife

Recent Comments

  • Bibliophile on Pretty Much Pop #143: Pinocchio the Unfilmable (Yet Frequently Filmed)
  • Mark Linsenmayer on Ep. 302: Erasmus Praises Foolishness (Part Two)
  • Mark Linsenmayer on Ep. 308: Moore’s Proof of Mind-Independent Reality (Part Two for Supporters)
  • Mark Linsenmayer on Ep. 201: Marcus Aurelius’s Stoicism with Ryan Holiday (Citizen Edition)
  • MartinK on Ep. 201: Marcus Aurelius’s Stoicism with Ryan Holiday (Citizen Edition)

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

Become a PEL Citizen!

As a PEL Citizen, you’ll have access to a private social community of philosophers, thinkers, and other partial examiners where you can join or initiate discussion groups dedicated to particular readings, participate in lively forums, arrange online meet-ups for impromptu seminars, and more. PEL Citizens also have free access to podcast transcripts, guided readings, episode guides, PEL music, and other citizen-exclusive material. Click here to join.

Blog Post Categories

  • (sub)Text
  • Aftershow
  • Announcements
  • Audiobook
  • Book Excerpts
  • Citizen Content
  • Citizen Document
  • Citizen News
  • Close Reading
  • Combat and Classics
  • Constellary Tales
  • Exclude from Newsletter
  • Featured Ad-Free
  • Featured Article
  • General Announcements
  • Interview
  • Letter to the Editor
  • Misc. Philosophical Musings
  • Nakedly Examined Music Podcast
  • Nakedly Self-Examined Music
  • NEM Bonus
  • Not School Recording
  • Not School Report
  • Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts
  • PEL Music
  • PEL Nightcap
  • PEL's Notes
  • Personal Philosophies
  • Phi Fic Podcast
  • Philosophy vs. Improv
  • Podcast Episode (Citizen)
  • Podcast Episodes
  • Pretty Much Pop
  • Reviewage
  • Song Self-Exam
  • Supporter Exclusive
  • Things to Watch
  • Vintage Episode (Citizen)
  • Web Detritus

Follow:

Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Apple Podcasts

Copyright © 2009 - 2023 · The Partially Examined Life, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Copyright Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in