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On Karl Jaspers's "On My Philosophy" (1941), featuring comedian/actor/director/author Paul Provenza.
What's the relationship between science and philosophy? What about religion? Jaspers thinks that science gives you facts, but for an overarching world-view, you need philosophy. Living such a world-view requires Existenz, or a leap towards transcendence, which is of course religion's stock and trade, though Jaspers is not a fan of dogmatism (or of giving definitions for his basic terms).
Seth got to go hang at the Provenza mansion and hooked up with Mark, Wes, and Dylan for an especially lively session covering the different flavors of existentialism, freedom, Jaspers vs. Heidegger, philosophical comedy, how existentialism just ripped off Buddhism, and Seth's visit to not-a-strip-club.
Be sure to listen to Mark's introduction, then read more about the topic and get the text. When you're done, listen to the Aftershow for more discussion hosted by Stephen West.
End song: "Another Way to Fall," New People, from The Easy Thing (2009), written by Matt Ackerman.
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The Jaspers picture is by Sterling Bartlett.
dmf says
January 19, 2015 at 8:59 pmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology#World
Glen says
January 20, 2015 at 5:45 amOne of the best episodes.
Living ironically is what keeps me from being depressed.
dmf says
January 20, 2015 at 10:02 amthere is the attempt to be at home in the world and not to be alienated/un-heimlich and that is related to Heidegger on Thinking vs Gossip and for those of us involved in exchanges via the intertubes anonymity vs commitment: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_kierkegaard.html
In terms of comedy I’ve heard many leading comics talking about being on top of their games for a show and having an attuned audience which is feeding back into that excellence/flow pushing them higher.
On the science front one would be hard pressed to live all aspects of one’s life thinking/relating as a scientist (engineer, doctor, etc)and probably we would judge such a life (if one could succeed) as somehow missing the mark.
The text got a bit lost in this one.
burl says
January 20, 2015 at 6:15 pmas humans, we often have a gripping experience as a feeling of cosmic order and where the warrant for it originates…enter all the irratic, random snippets of thought in this podcast…realize that the function of Reason is to live better…and try to be a reasonable (and not absurd) participant as one of the many. humankind’s enlightenment ensues by fits and starts.
dmf says
January 21, 2015 at 11:41 amsounds like Logos…
burl says
January 23, 2015 at 8:19 am[edited]
as humans, we often have a gripping experience as a feeling of cosmic order and [wonder] where the warrant for it originates…enter all the irratic, random snippets of thought in this podcast…realize that the function of Reason is to live better…and try to be a reasonable (and not absurd) participant as one of the many. humankind’s enlightenment ensues by fits and starts.
i guess this sounds like a ringing endorsement for logic and certainty, but i was thinking ala whitehead when paraphrasing his definition of reason (to live, to live well, and to live better). my point was that while we really are exisrenZially immersed in a universe of affect and will never get IT all right in our understanding, the role of the discipline devoted to the love of wisdom is not to give license to stupid shit like ‘it’s all absurd, full stop.’
dmf says
January 23, 2015 at 10:26 ammy point, following the neo-pragmatists, is that there is no such thing/process/method/etc as Reason, just reasoning which is no more or less than our on the rough ground, in-the-midst, alltoohuman attempts to manipulate our environs.
So rather than chasing the old pipe dream of a TOE/meta-physics we should adopt something more like “Assembling Ethics in an Ecology of Ignorance”
http://openwetware.org/images/7/7a/SB1.0_Rabinow.pdf
burl says
January 24, 2015 at 8:45 ami read the linked pdf. i wonder what the ZAMM Pirsig would think of
it. it was a talk, so its allovertheplace nature can be excused. the
lecture had strong 70s antitech vibes.
life is risky, as is human technology. there is no omniscience.
not being chemists, romans were unaware of the impact lead water
pipes had on their pre dark age brains (if this story is not just some
fanciful myth). technology frees us from starting every endeavor
from scratch. this seems to free us from monotony, but we just end
up with new forms of monotony (tending to automobiles, watching
TV, reading emails/tweets…). habit, i guess. plus ca change…, and
all that.
as for the modern ubiquitousness of globalized ministerings of PC
and democritization that must cater to individuals’ entitlement to
perceived rights, maybe this will go down better than a Stalin
Omlet…maybe not.
but your casting my philosophical concerns as maybe a dogmatic
demand for the world to conform to ‘the right geometry and the right
theology’ may over-confine my concerns…i sense some serious
behind the back maneuverings by the celebrities of the day.
einstein and bertrand r., for instance worked to contain whitehead’s
superior genius to the humble halls of academe. i am thinking it is
more sinister, more personal vindictive, than just the prominence of
the analistic logical positivism of the day…i have seen enough of
academe to justifiably harbor such hunches.
if there is a physical TOE, i am confident it’ll take a long time to
apply it in our technology. but regardless of this, the fruit of an
evolutionary planet that ‘peopled’ us behaves with such erratic
unpredictability that the humanities will be scratching their heads
far longer
burl says
January 24, 2015 at 9:43 amREPEAT FOR FIXING FORMAT
i read the linked pdf. i wonder what the ZAMM Pirsig would think of it. it was a talk, so its allovertheplace nature can be excused. the lecture had strong 70s antitech vibes.
life is risky, as is human technology. there is no omniscience.
not being chemists, romans were unaware of the impact lead water pipes had on their pre dark age brains (if this story is not just some fanciful myth). technology frees us from starting every endeavor from scratch. this seems to free us from monotony, but we just end up with new forms of monotony (tending to automobiles, watching TV, reading emails/tweets…). habit, i guess. plus ca change…, and all that.
as for the modern ubiquitousness of globalized ministerings of PC and democritization that must cater to individuals’ entitlement to perceived rights, maybe this will go down better than a Stalin Omlet…maybe not.
but your casting my philosophical concerns as maybe a dogmatic demand for the world to conform to ‘the right geometry and the right theology’ may over-confine my concerns…i sense some serious behind the back maneuverings by the celebrities of the day. einstein and bertrand r., for instance worked to contain whitehead’s superior genius to the humble halls of academe. i am thinking it is more sinister, more personal vindictive, than just the prominence of the analistic logical positivism of the day…i have seen enough of academe to justifiably harbor such hunches.
if there is a physical TOE, i am confident it’ll take a long time to apply it in our technology. but regardless of this, the fruit of an evolutionary planet that ‘peopled’ us behaves with such erratic unpredictability that the humanities will be scratching their heads far longer
Marc says
January 24, 2015 at 7:54 pmThis wonderful episode on Jaspers banished the suffocating stench left over from episode 108. It is like breathing in an ocean breeze after trudging through the fecal impacted sewers beneath a rundown city. The banter and intellectual curiosity between the PEL players was exquisite, nuanced, and full of life. Paul was humorous as well as erudite, even though he carries the stigmata of a new atheist. I have a new-found appreciation of Jaspers, and had fun finding it in the process. Thank you guys.
AlanC says
January 28, 2015 at 2:22 pmThere was some discussion in the podcast about the status of the multiverse hypothesis as a scientific theory. Here’s a good, though brief, article that touches on that.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/01/27/381809832/the-most-dangerous-ideas-in-science
Andrew says
February 9, 2015 at 2:45 amA good podcast on a much neglected thinker. It may be the result of the text chosen, but I felt there was a good deal of time spent discussing science before you related these concerns to some of Jaspers’ other concepts, such as the Encompassing. I know this structure was necessary for delving into the reading and laying out Jasper’s intellectual environment, but it would have been quite interesting to tease out the different applications of the Encompassing Jaspers used, culminating in the Encompassing of the Encompassing, etc. Very few people even discuss–let alone read–Jaspers, so I always feel as if there should really be more time dedicated to his writings. (As an exercise: just do a search on his name in the Philosopher’s Index and compare the number of results to those produced from a Heidegger search.)
I’ve published a bit on Jaspers, and I recommend the Karl Jaspers Society of North America and Ehrlich’s book on Jaspers for reference, for what it’s worth. A different text in the future might help to carry the conversation forward more. Perhaps a selection from his Basic Philosophical Writings by the Ehrlichs and Pepper. There’s also–unfortunately–a lot of untranslated material, which is not so good for your wide audience.
I don’t wish to detract from the praise I want to lavish on all of you, especially given the many fine podcasts over the years. (My students enjoy the podcasts as well, and I really liked the recent Burke one on the sublime, as he is also often overlooked.) However, there was one irritation: Seth has said in the past that he never intentionally mispronounces anything (Nietzsche podcast comments). According to Wikipedia, he’s fluent in German, and I know Mark has taken German. Why is it, then, that all of you incorrectly pronounced Jaspers’ name throughout the podcast? This has not been done with other thinkers, I think. Certainly, the various pronunciations of ‘Sartre’ are well known, and there’s probably no reason for preferring one over all others. I know it’s sometimes argued that one chooses the pronunciation one learned when first reading the philosopher, but I know of no professional philosophers—and certainly no professional organization, e.g. the Karl Jaspers Society of North America, who actually use that incorrect pronunciation. It really grated. Sorry! While ‘Jaspers’ with a ‘j’ is tough, ‘Jasper’ with no ‘s’ was even more difficult. I feel genuinely bad for even mentioning this (my Kantian ways prevent me from ignoring the Moral Law within here), particularly since it’s not so much a philosophical issue as a linguistic one. So forgive me.
Have you considered doing a podcast on Kierkegaard’s Present Age or on Badiou?
Mark Linsenmayer says
February 12, 2015 at 9:48 amRe. the pronunciation issue, as a few people have now brought this up, I’ll happily yield my stubbornness. The truth is I was never taught any Jaspers in school at all, and though I’d heard it as “Yah-spares” in some context or other, I assumed that the hard J was an acceptable anglicization. But on the other hand, there’s 0% chance that we’d pronounce Max Weber (“Vay-Bear”) as “Webber,” and the difference is simply that I have been a part of the oral tradition with regard to Weber and was not previously part of any such line of influence re. Jaspers. So I give in this case, though if anyone’s going to tell me that I can’t anglicize Chuang Tzu, then bite me!
not a comedian says
February 11, 2015 at 9:19 amPlease no more comedian guests, I’m only 15 minutes in already very annoyed. I thought this is a philosophy podcasts not a talk show. Don’t get greedy, focus on quality. And when you get greedy remember what Diogenes said: “In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but his face.”
Mark Linsenmayer says
February 12, 2015 at 9:43 amListen to the rest of it. Paul was a wild card in terms of making it difficult for us to plod point by point through the text, but all the info got out there (you can listen to my precog if you want organized), and he made for a lively conversation participant.
Yes, I do want to get more celebrities for occasional appearances to raise our public profile. And I think that bringing such people in (who are presumably not going to have listened to our entire back catalog) ensures that such episodes will be a little more friendly to beginners than, say, the Whitehead one we just released. This is a necessary counter, I think, to our tendency to become too insular and self-referential. But we still plan to have at least half of our episodes to be guest free, and most of our guests to be philosophy academics of some sort.
not a comedian says
February 19, 2015 at 1:24 pmLuckily it did improve somewhat. Obviously one must respect anyone who has the courage to take part in a public discussion on an topic as obscure (?) as this one. But your Kierkegaard episode on similar topics was more successful I think.
Jennifer Tejada says
April 4, 2017 at 10:10 pmOk – so you probably don’t remember but I gave you some shit about the Lucy Lawless episode. You recommended this one.
This was great! I loved your guest. He helped make the conversation a little more accessible to people like me with zero knowledge about all of this I think.
You guys are awesome. I think you should do a PEL app – lots going on on your page! I keep discovering new things.