Episode for Purchase: On Buber's 1923 book about the fundamental human position: As children, and historically, we start fully absorbed in relation with another person (like mom). Before that, we have no self-consciousness, no “self” at all. It's only by having these consuming “encounters” that we gradually distinguish ourselves from other people, and can then engage in what we'd normally consider “experience,” which Buber calls “the I-It relation.” Buber thinks that unless we can keep connected to this “I-Thou” phenomenon, through mature relationships, art, and nature. With guest Daniel Horne.
Search Results for: daniel horne
Ep. 39: Schleiermacher Defends Religion
Episode for Purchase: Discussing Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “On Religion; Speeches to its Cultured Despisers” (1799, with notes added 1821), first and second speeches. Does religion necessarily conflict with science? Schleiermacher says no: the essence of religion is an emotional response to life; it doesn’t give knowledge or even tell us what to do exactly. Moreover, this attitude is a necessary to fully enter into life, to be a whole and fulfilled person. Yes, he’s of the “romantic” school, but his approach can still be seen today in liberal Protestant churches. With guest Daniel Horne.
Episode 99: Looking Back on 100 Discussions and 5+ Years
What have we learned? How has our take on the PEL project changed? On the eve before our big ep. 100 live show, we sat down to reflect on what we’ve been doing here. With guest Daniel Horne.
Ep. 29: Kierkegaard on the Self
Episode for Purchase: Discussing Soren Kierkegaard’s “The Sickness Unto Death” (1849). What is the self? or K. we are a tension between opposites: necessity and possibility, the finite and the infinite, soul and body. With guest Daniel Horne.
PREVIEW-Episode 71: Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”
On Buber’s 1923 book about the fundamental human position: As children, and historically, we start fully absorbed in relation with another person (like mom). Before that, we have no self-consciousness, no “self” at all. It’s only by having these consuming “encounters” that we gradually distinguish ourselves from other people, and can then engage in what we’d normally consider “experience,” which Buber calls “the I-It relation.” Buber thinks that unless we can keep connected to this “I-Thou” phenomenon, through mature relationships, art, and nature. With guest Daniel Horne.
PREVIEW-Episode 39: Schleiermacher Defends Religion
Discussing Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “On Religion; Speeches to its Cultured Despisers” (1799, with notes added 1821), first and second speeches. Does religion necessarily conflict with science? Schleiermacher says no: the essence of religion is an emotional response to life; it doesn’t give knowledge or even tell us what to do exactly. Moreover, this attitude is a necessary to fully enter into life, to be a whole and fulfilled person. Yes, he’s of the “romantic” school, but his approach can still be seen today in liberal Protestant churches. With guest Daniel Horne.
PREVIEW-Episode 29: Kierkegaard on the Self
Discussing Soren Kierkegaard’s “The Sickness Unto Death” (1849). What is the self? or K. we are a tension between opposites: necessity and possibility, the finite and the infinite, soul and body. With guest Daniel Horne.
The Montaigne Project
In 2011, Dan Conley started, and completed, My Montaigne Project: a series of 107 essays, one a day for 107 days, each inspired by one of Montaigne’s 107 Essais. This week, he brought it back to the web with a newly designed website.
Against Debate
Why the typical model of public argumentation, where two adversaries square off, is not the best model for philosophy and not good for our podcast.
Episode 100: Plato’s Symposium Live Celebration!
Our big live episode (also on video) about love, sex, self-improvement, and ancient Greek pederasty! Featuring a set by Mark Lint, plus Philosophy Bro on Plato’s “Apology.”
Topics for #97-100: Sandel, Symposium, and What We’ve Learned
Ep 97 and 98: Michael J. Sandel, Ep 99: What Have We Learned, Ep 100: Plato’s Symposium
5,000,000 Downloads
In Nov 2012 we posted a retrospective mini-episode to celebrate 2 million PEL episodes downloaded according to libsyn (whom we haven’t hosted with since the beginning, so there are some additional ones from the first year or so in addition to whatever they tell us). We’ve now hit 5 million, and all you get is this little overshare about behind Continue Reading …
What the Word “Bigot” Actually Means (and Why it is Important)
Update: Coates responds. I rebut. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Andrew Sullivan have both responded to my criticisms of their claim that Alec Baldwin is a “bigot” for, among other offenses, calling a photographer a “cocksucking fag.” In doing so, they resort to two tried-and-true tactics available to someone on the losing side of an argument: the first is to quietly abandon various Continue Reading …
Blogging Guidelines
We welcome guest bloggers at The Partially Examined Life. We do however want to maintain a certain consistency and character in our blog without spending a lot of time editing guest posts. Hence the guidelines below. If you would like to contribute a post on our site and feel you can follow these guidelines, contact us and explain what you have Continue Reading …
What Would an I-Thou Encounter Look Like?
A dialogical relation will show itself also in genuine conversation, but it is not composed of this. …On the other hand, all conversation derives its genuineness only from the consciousness of the element of inclusion—even if this appears only abstractly as an “acknowledgement” of the actual being of the partner in the conversation; but this acknowledgement can be real and Continue Reading …
I and Thou: The Spreadsheet!
Regardless of how or whether you relate to Buber’s vision, I and Thou makes for a frustrating read. Seemingly simple words are used in new and alien contexts. Solutions are announced rather than derived. Worse, while nominally divided into three parts, I and Thou is really more of a loose collection of 61 aphorisms. Following Buber’s reasoning by comparing his Continue Reading …
Topic for #71: Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”
On Feb. 1 we up again with previous guest and PEL blogger (and Twitter/YouTube master) Daniel Horne to discuss Martin Buber. Listen to the episode. Buber is known as a religious existentialist, much like Kierkegaard, which means he’s concerned with our fundamental relation to reality, and thinks that our individual attitude has some impact on our being, on whether we’re Continue Reading …
Also Looking for Wanna-Be Philosophy Journalists
I received such a response to my post on needing helpers for Not School that I thought I should go ahead and express this need as well: I’ve long envisioned this blog as fulfilling two purposes beyond being just a communications platform for announcements about the podcast: First, for every episode, I’d like to have several posts up in the Continue Reading …
Halloween Not-Scholarships: One Free Month for up to 10 Newbies
November starts tomorrow, which means the Not School groups need to get all sorted out ASAP. The proposed “What Is Philosophy?” group (reading a bit of Plato, Locke, and Bertrand Russell) is ideal for new-to-philosophy readers–or anyone who has been out of the game for a while and wants an easy and fun way to get back in. Right now, Continue Reading …
Film Review: Examined Life
As my first Not School group, I led some folks in discussing two Netflix philosophy documentaries, i.e. things that have been on my instant queue forever, and which I feel culturally, given my position here, I should watch, but always seemed too boring. Examined Life (2008) (Netflix link) was the best of the two that we picked, and the well Continue Reading …
The Upside of Fandom
A recent blog post at New York Magazine’s Vulture blog queries whether fandom is inherently pathological. This seems a fair question to ask after some of the more amusing anecdotes revealed on the Lucy Lawless episode: [Fandom is], by definition, a bit different from hobbies like cooking or learning an instrument in that fandom is in the service of someone else’s Continue Reading …
Literature and Philosophy: Antagonists or Partners?
Can literature be philosophical? Can philosophy be considered literature? What are the roles of literature and philosophy in relation to “truth?” Why should philosophers be interested in literature? While trying to come up with something to post in relation to the recent PEL discussion on Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men” I came across an interesting discussion over at Continue Reading …
Robert Solomon on Nietzsche on Truth
For another take on Nietzsche’s theory of truth, here’s a lecture from Prof. Robert Solomon, one of the stars of The Great Courses series. Solomon describes Nietzsche’s concept of truth as perspectivist rather than relativist. (Though, unlike Rick Roderick, Solomon is willing to concede that other Nietzsche interpreters have — rightly or wrongly — gone farther.) Solomon’s argument sources the origin Continue Reading …
Rick Roderick on Nietzsche on Truth and Lie
As usual, Rick Roderick proves to be a great go-to guy on Nietzsche. In this series of videos (one lecture put together by Daniel Horne), he takes on the accusation that Nietzsche is taking a relativist stance towards truth, or as it can be labeled, a ‘perspectivist’ stance. Roderick does an (as usual excellent) exposition of Nietzsche’s. It starts with Continue Reading …
Bertrand Russell on Aristotle’s Politics
Listen on YouTube. Like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate. Even so, Bertrand Russell’s prose is entertaining enough to make this audio chapter on Aristotle’s Politics a worthwhile supplement to PEL’s Politics episode. -Daniel Horne
Do Phenomenal Concepts Negate Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument?
Watch on Vimeo In the video above, Prof. David Papineau compares different “naturalist” theories of consciousness to propose that phenomenal concepts pose a problem for Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (A version of this issue was briefly raised during the second episode discussing Philosophical Investigations.) Hint: If you’re not yet familar with the “Mary’s Room” thought experiment, it would be helpful to Continue Reading …
Alan Watts on Buddhist and Christian Mythographies
Watch on YouTube. I liked the meta-discussion that kicked off the second PEL naturalized Buddhism episode, specifically on what knowledge we gain by assessing the supernatural “rules” contained within “religious” Buddhism. Even after rejecting a supernaturalist stance, there’s value in reviewing the form of life revealed within Buddhism’s supernatural tenets. In that spirit, I enjoyed Boddhisatva’s Brain most for its comparison of different philosophical worldviews. Continue Reading …
Zen and the Brain
Watch on Vimeo One way to naturalize Buddhism is to discern the moral lessons it might offer after shedding its metaphysics. Another way is to scrutinize the physiological effects of its practices. As Owen Flanagan explained on PEL’s first “naturalized Buddhism” episode, not all Buddhist sects practice meditation. But of course, many do, particularly within the Japanese Zen tradition so popular Continue Reading …
Stokely Carmichael’s Sartrean Influences
One of the names dropped during the Race and Philosophy episode was that of Stokely Carmichael. Below is a famous recording of one Carmichael’s “Black Power” speeches, given after Carmichael was appointed Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC: Watch on YouTube.
Structuralism Summarized in 30 Minutes
Watch on YouTube. Here is a surprisingly edifying and entertaining synopsis of structuralism. I particularly like how Prof. Louis Markos connects Saussure’s work to the “proto-structuralism” of Freud and Marx. Also enjoyable is Markos’ mini-rant, in light of Wes’s recent post: Structures are found in all areas of thought and study, from history to linguistics, psychology to anthropology.
Rick Roderick on Derrida
http://youtu.be/LvAwoUvXNzU
Watch on YouTube.
For anyone still trying to sort Derrida out, here’s a hopefully helpful attempt at explication from Rick Roderick. I liked Roderick’s approach in directly opposing Derrida’s theory to the “Theory of Reference.” This is an allusion to Gottlob Frege, who was discussed in an earlier PEL episode.
Brian Leiter’s New Philosophical Categories
A really good interview with Nietzsche scholar and opinionator Brian Leiter appears in 3:AM Magazine, where he drops pithy quotes on Obama, Nietzsche, Marx, and Foucault. But he also appears to have a new argument to sell. Leiter advocates a new way to divide the philosophical canon, not into “contintentals” or “analytics,” but rather into “naturalists” and “anti-naturalists”. You can also Continue Reading …
In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens
Watch on YouTube. Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday after a punishing bout with cancer, and I’d like to take the liberty of inserting a brief memoriam. I do this in a philosophy blog partially because PEL recently discussed one of his books. But mostly I do it because I would hate to think anyone remembers Hitchens as nothing more than a “New Continue Reading …
The Personal Philosophy of (i.e. for) Chris Hardwick in Early 2010
Ah, success. Fame. Money. A little of it whets our appetite for more, twists our priorities, and like your clothes in a public dryer that you have to sit there and watch lest they get stolen, it’s a source of stress. When we started this podcast, it was just a leisure time activity, something primarily for us, the podcasters, but Continue Reading …
Amartya Sen on Hume on Ethics
Watch on YouTube. This video records Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s somewhat rambling lecture, wherein he discusses a few themes in Hume’s ethical work which he deems relevant today. Specifically, Sen wants to advocate for Hume’s argument that society’s globalization tends to expand its moral sensitivities. We hear that Hume was among the first to argue that a society’s mores were a Continue Reading …
The Tree of Life’s Contingent Universe
Watch on YouTube I can write nothing on Heideggerian scholar*/(anti)Hollywood director Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life that hasn’t been better written elsewhere. Even so, the film has just come available on DVD and digital download, so I thought I’d recommend it to anyone who has been interested in PEL’s recent religion episodes. (Suggestion: try to watch the HD version Continue Reading …
Swinburne Contra Dawkins on Complexity and Creation
Watch on YouTube. A name that popped up in Episode 43 and Episode 44 was that of Oxford philosophy professor Richard Swinburne. Swinburne has made his reputation positing analytic arguments in favor of Christian theism. As Robert pointed out toward the end of Episode 43, most Christians, even if sympathetic, would probably not find Swinburne’s arguments dispositive toward their belief. Even Continue Reading …
Are Men Naturally Predisposed to Excel in Life?
Watch on YouTube A 1999 episode of In Our Time was ostensibly about “feminism,” but in fact addressed a narrower and more pressing issue: Are men “by nature more competitive, ambitious, status-conscious, dedicated, single-minded and persevering than women”? And if so, doesn’t that mean men are biologically better disposed than women to achieve material success? And if that’s true, doesn’t it Continue Reading …
Magnetic Morality Modulation
This September, PBS will re-broadcast an interesting episode of NOVA ScienceNOW, which touches on some points raised in PEL’s interview with Patricia Churchland. The episode demonstrates a procedure called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), which can influence a person’s moral judgments as they are being made, simply by messing with the neural activity located within the brain’s Right TemporoParietal Junction (RTPJ): If you find Continue Reading …
More Fun Debating Free Will (and Bashing Dan Dennett)
Pop science journalists / authors Bob Wright and John Horgan have an interesting debate on free will from a, well, pop science point of view. Nothing gets resolved, as always, but I like hearing well-informed middle-aged guys argue the same debate we’ve been hearing since the university dorm room. Highlights include Wright’s assessment of Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves:The book is stupid, Continue Reading …
On Religion, the PowerPoint!
Given Schleiermacher’s dense prose, I found it a lot easier to prepare for the podcast by “translating” his first two speeches into a more modern voice. As a result, here’s On Religion, the PowerPoint! (Well, the first two speeches, anyway.) If you want to review Schleiermacher’s basic arguments without having to wade through 18th century German translated into 19th century English, Continue Reading …
Heidegger on Schleiermacher’s Second Address
Let us think for a while of a farmhouse in the Black Forest, which was built some two hundred years ago by the dwelling of peasants. Here the self-sufficiency of the power to let earth and heaven, divinities and mortals enter in simple oneness into things, ordered the house. – Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1951) Schleiermacher’s On Religion provided me a Continue Reading …
Schleiermacher as Romantic Vanguard
Watch on YouTube Many of the books discussed on PEL advance their thesis methodically. Not so with Schleiermacher’s On Religion. (Schleiermacher’s approach changed after he became a university professor, whereupon he became more systematic and less interesting.) Schleiermacher’s lack of structured argument may have resulted from his theological, as opposed to philosophical, training. But it’s also a function of his Continue Reading …
Comparing Kant with Schleiermacher on God and the Soul
Listen on YouTube On the Schleiermacher episode, we spent some time comparing On Religion to Kant’s religious arguments, particularly citing Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. Kant did not try to prove God’s existence or the soul’s immortality. Rather, he postulated those concepts as helpful ways to help realize the summum bonum, the highest good. “Postulate” is defined as a “a hypothesis Continue Reading …
Capturing Schleiermacher’s Romantic Mood
Watch in YouTube Can modern film depict Schleiermacher’s nature-obsessed 18th century Romantic mood? Probably not, but let’s go. I thought I better understood Husserlian phenomenology after reading Sartre’s Nausea, which even in translation has some gripping prose. The clip above, from Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu (1979) exudes both the German Romantic aesthetic, and a phenomenological approach of sorts. Bonus points if you catch the Continue Reading …
Bertrand Russell’s Very Short Introduction to His Ontology
Watch in YouTube For those who can’t get enough Bertrand Russell, here’s an introduction to logical analysis from his History of Western Philosophy. In this concluding chapter, Russell explains his own philosophy, as inspired by Frege, so even critics of Russell-as-historian shouldn’t object. I was particularly taken with Russell’s ontology, via Einstein. Russell succinctly and I think fairly summarizes a Continue Reading …
Georg Cantor and Ever Larger Infinities
Watch on youtube. A big name-drop during the middle of the Russell episode was the sad story of Georg Cantor and his insanity-inducing continuum hypothesis. Anyone unaware of Cantor and his contributions might want to look at this clip from the Dangerous Knowledge BBC documentary. I thought it provided a good visual explanation of higher levels of infinity. But perhaps Continue Reading …
Debating Locke’s View of Slavery as War
Ta-nehisi Coates, a senior editor for The Atlantic, recently opened up a discussion on Locke’s Second Treatise, with respect to the discussion of slavery. A fairly intelligent debate thread followed in the comments section. Check it out if you found that section of PEL’s Locke episode interesting. Some of the better comments in the thread debated whether or not Locke was Continue Reading …
Žižek on Hegel on Identity
One public intellectual who has made much hay of Hegel’s continued relevance is Slavoj Žižek, who begins one of his jazz-session-like lectures on Hegel’s concept of identity here: Watch on youtube. It’s not clear to me whether Žižek is properly interpreting Hegel, mostly because I find both Žižek and early Hegel incomprehensible. Z’s been accused of mis-reading Hegel, and of Continue Reading …
Logicomix!
In the recent Frege episode, Mark related the famous anecdote of how Bertrand Russell, the man who “discovered” Frege, later confounded him by pointing out a paradox apparent within his logical system. As Wes recounted, Russell’s own attempt to ground mathematics in logic was also later frustrated by a young Kurt Gödel, whose early incompleteness theorems crippled the central purpose of Principia Continue Reading …
Montaigne, Mirror Neurons, and Men with Guns
Here’s an excerpt from a good series on Montaigne the Guardian UK ran last year, written by Sarah Bakewell, who just published a well received book on Montaigne: To take just one example of how we can derive wisdom from Montaigne: his Essays give us a wealth of anecdotes exploring ways of resolving violent confrontations. As a teenager in Bordeaux, Montaigne had Continue Reading …
Science Proves Heidegger (Partially) Correct?
Irony so overwhelming I want to tweet about it with a #Heidegger hashtag: A scientific study recently found empirical support for Heidegger’s concept of zuhanden, which was discussed in the Being and Time podcast.* Wired Science covered the story last year, but the study itself is short enough that you can get through it during a lunch break. To quote the summary Continue Reading …
The Wittgenstein Blues
This one’s self-explanatory. Nothing too weighty, but anyone who can work Wittgenstein into a catchy hook deserves all the exposure he can get: Watch on YouTube. -Daniel Horne
Dworkin on Defining the Good Life
Mark’s posts on Frithjof Bergmann help lay the groundwork for the upcoming episode on Montaigne and what constitutes the “good life.” Coincidentally, there’s a similarly-themed article by Ronald Dworkin in this month’s New York Review of Books. I may disagree with Mark’s conclusions, and maybe even some of his premises. But I better appreciate Mark’s approach after reading Dworkin’s essay. Nowhere Continue Reading …
When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong
A research physicist friend of mine who works at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a bit of a global warming skeptic. When I brought up all the scientific research on the subject, he said, somewhat dismissively, “Yes, but anyone who gets a PhD in climate science goes into it with an agenda. No one goes into particle physics just to Continue Reading …
David Foster Wallace on Wittgenstein
Slate Magazine recently posted a great article on the recently-departed author and essayist David Foster Wallace, focusing on how Wallace (correctly?) interpreted Wittgenstein’s early and late philosophy to cope with his allegedly crushing sense of solipsistic dread. I’m not sure I buy this thesis, but Wallace’s suicide implies something was clearly bothering him. Even so, I’d ascribe a more clinical Continue Reading …
Martial Arts Without the Mysticism
A trivial generalization about modern Western philosophy is that it splits between the more scientific “analytic” and more humanistic “continental” traditions.* A crass — but more true than false — characterization of these two traditions is that the analytic tradition attempts to solve problems, and the continental traditions…um…don’t. Similarly, one might roughly divide East Asian martial arts into those emphasizing mutual Continue Reading …
The Sickness Unto Death, the PowerPoint!
I mentioned on the Kierkegaard episode having prepared a PowerPoint on The Sickness Unto Death, so I submit to you, the morbidly curious, TSUD: The PowerPoint! (Warning, it’s over 700KB, and might take a while to download on slower connections.) I believe Seth made some minor corrections and improvements, but any errors in spelling, interpretation, or insight are mine. Feel Continue Reading …
Kierkegaard, Docudramatized
Kierkegaard’s stern Christian vision originated with a strict, almost traumatic, upbringing. His defense of individualism and radical subjectivity would not likely have developed without it. But it’s hard for the modern reader to get past Kierkegaard’s freakish, introverted persona. A more sympathetic view of K. might be found in the 1984 BBC television series Sea of Faith, written and presented by controversial Continue Reading …
Modern Science Searches for the Self
Below is a clip from David Malone’s recent documentary, Soul Searching, originally broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4. It reviews some of the latest developments in brain science to discover that the self might just be an illusion, a byproduct of the brain’s left hemisphere trying to construct a narrative of reality. It makes for compelling viewing, and those uninterested in Continue Reading …
Kierkegaard and Cinema
You don’t have to be a self-absorbed mope to like Kierkegaard, but it can’t hurt. Below is a stereotypically morose clip from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), which echoes themes presented in The Sickness Unto Death: Watch on youtube. The protagonist, Antonius Block, is a medieval knight suffering from what Kierkegaard might classify as conscious despair of infinitude. Despite assertions by many Continue Reading …
What is Despair, Anyway?
[Editor’s note: If you’ve listened to the Kierkegaard episode, then you’ve heard plenty of felicitous exposition and argumentation by Mr. Daniel Horne, whom we’ve consequently invited to post some follow-up thoughts and resources over the next weeks: Yes, we know Kierkegaard thought of despair as sin, but is despair “a” sin? Is it “sin” writ large? Despair is prohibited by no Continue Reading …
Karen Amstrong, Ross Douthat, and the Functions of Religion
My post on fake myths has generated some good discussion, and our future podcast guest Daniel Horne pointed me to a nice concise New York Times review by Ross Douthat of Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God, which prompted my line of thought about myth. Douthat’s review presents a much better summary to the book than my preliminary attempt, and Continue Reading …
Links
Further resources: The primary means of discussing issues raised on individual episodes is this blog. Go read the comments and reply to our posts! Here are recent comments. See those categories on the right side of the page, under the summary of this podcast? Use those to filter the blog to see only music entries, or videos, or reviews, or Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XI: Arthur O. Lovejoy, the Great Chain of Being and Pre-Darwinian Biology
“Next to the word ‘Nature,’ ‘The Great Chain of Being’ was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century, playing a part somewhat analogous to that of the blessed word ‘evolution’ in the nineteenth.” –Arthur O. Lovejoy
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part V: Ian Barbour—The Synthesis Model
“I need the binocular approach of science and religion if I am to do any sort of justice to the deep and rich reality of the world in which we live.”
–John Polkinghorne (Physicist, Anglican Priest)