The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog
On the Nichomachean Ethics (ca. 350 BCE), books 6–7. Is intelligence just one thing? Aristotle picks out a number of distinct faculties, some of which are relevant to ethics, and he uses these to explain Plato’s puzzle of how someone can clearly see what the good for him is, and yet fail to pursue it due to weakness of the will.
This episode continues our discussion from way back in ep. 5.
End song: “I Die Desire” from The MayTricks (1992).
Here’s another Nietzsche lecture, from Stanford’s Veritas forum, which you can listen to as a podcast (iTunes link) or watch a video: Watch it on Vimeo. Dallas Willard is an unapologetic Christian, and pursues a post-modern tack similar to the one I cited in my review of the Philosophy for Theologians podcast: Modern philosophy tried to ground knowledge on non-revelatory, Continue Reading …
Stony Brook University’s Templeton Research Lectures series features several lectures from early 2007 by David Burrell, an Emeritus Professor in philosophy and theology from Notre Dame University, as well as a Catholic Priest. His specialty appears to be Medieval Studies, focusing on the ties between the various Abrahamic religions, and the lectures on Maimonides and al-Ghazali are excellent. What may Continue Reading …
I wanted to expand a bit on the critique of reason as mentioned in my previous post on Rand, and readers should keep in mind that this is chiefly a response to a strain I’ve picked up on in popular culture which may or may not accurately capture anything Rand actually said (though it does match my 20+ year old Continue Reading …
In preparation for our Aristotle Politics episode, I checked out a new semi-philosophy podcast called the Mile High Sanity Project, as they had an episode on Aristotle’s ethics. I say “semi-philosophy,” because the podcast is made up of three guys in different disciplines. They trade off being the lead guy on episodes, so the philosophy ones are “Norm’s Conceptual Corner,” Continue Reading …
I think during the episode we were too busy trying to understand After Virtue to just say straight out that the attempt to ground morality solely on cultural narratives just doesn’t work, at least not to any more determinate degree than some of the other moral theories that MacIntyre suggests. In the Kant episode, I suggested that we need to Continue Reading …
I made the point both on the episode and in a recent post that I thought MacIntyre to be a better model of the outsider philosopher than Pirsig. This is not a point I really want to hammer, as I like Pirsig and I don’t relish dissing someone that many of our listeners have a great appreciation for. So let Continue Reading …
In this 2009 lecture (posted in four parts), MacIntyre describes the progress of his thinking on moral philosophy. Watch on YouTube. He started as a Thomist, i.e. a Catholic Aristotelian, briefly embraced verificationism (well, he admired Ayer, in any case), and was frustrated with the number of seemingly permanent disagreements within both philosophy and politics/culture generally. He describes Sartre as Continue Reading …
