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Episode 192: “The Closing of the American Mind”: Allan Bloom on Education (Part One)

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On Allan Bloom’s 1987 best-selling polemic. What is the role of the university in our democracy? Bloom thinks that today’s students are conformist, relativistic, and nihilistic, and that great books and thinking for thinking’s sake are the cure.

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NEM#75: Nick Saloman (The Bevis Frond): Indie Every Day!

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Nick has released 22 albums as The Bevis Frond since 1986, alternating jangle-pop with psychedelia and power-guitar rock… pretty much anything ’60s-flavored.

We discuss “Longships” from Example 22 (2015), “Opthalmic Microdots” from White Numbers (2013), and “Coming Round” from London Stone (1992). We conclude by listening to “Portobello Man” from Valedictory Songs (2000). Intro: “He’d Be a Diamond” from New River Head (1991). Hear more at bevisfrond.bandcamp.com.

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Phi Fic #22 “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf

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Listen as Dylan Casey from The Partially Examined Life Podcast joins us to discuss this remarkable novel, in which many scholars believe Woolf found her voice. Written in a stream of consciousness, the plot of the book is written inside the souls, struggles. and angst of the characters.

Episode 191: Conceptual Schemes: Donald Davidson & Rudolf Carnap (Part Two)

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Finishing Davidson’s “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (1974) and moving on to Carnap’s “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” (1950).

Carnap claims that we talk about mathematical objects or subatomic particles or whatever, we’re not really (contra Quine) making metaphysical claims. Ontological questions like “Are there really numbers?” are just pretentious nonsense. With guest Dusty Dallman.

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End Song: “Shut Up” by Chandler Travis, as heard on Nakedly Examined Music #46.

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There Is More to Seeing Than Meets the Eye: Rejecting Scruton’s Conception of Photography

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Roger Scruton famously rejected photography as an art form on the grounds that, being causal, photographs cannot represent an artist’s intentions. For Scruton, paintings can enable us to see lines, shapes and colors ‘as’ something other than lines, shapes and colors per se. Photographs cannot do this as they are tied to the visual scene they depict. Wilfrid Sellars’s ideas on the role of phenomenal content in visual perception provide a fruitful approach to questioning Scruton’s thesis.

NEM #74: Colin Moulding (XTC) Kills and Scatters the Editor

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As bassist/co-frontman for XTC, he released around 14 albums between 1978–2000, and for the first time since, he has a new release, the Great Aspirations EP now under the name TC&I.

We discuss “Scatter Me” and “Kenny” from this 2017 release, plus “Say It” an 2002 XTC song, and conclude by listening to “Where Did the Ordinary People Go?” the final 2005 XTC single. Intro music: “Making Plans for Nigel” from Drums and Wires (1979). For more, see facebook.com/tcandimusic.

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Episode 191: Conceptual Schemes: Donald Davidson & Rudolf Carnap (Part One)

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On Davidson’s “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (1974) and Carnap’s “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” (1950).

What does it mean to say that we grasp the world through a conceptual scheme? Are schemes different between cultures or even individuals, such that we can’t really understand each other? Davidson thinks that this doesn’t make sense. With guest Dusty Dallman.

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Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXVIII: Charles Taylor—The Dark Abyss of Time

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In our last article we explored Charles Taylor’s concept of “the buffered self,” a peculiar kind of self-consciousness engendered by Enlightenment rationalism, and which has become customary (at least for educated elites) in our own time. We saw how it can be at once a source of pride, a profound source of accomplishment and self-worth, and also a source of Continue Reading …

Episode 190: Film Analysis: “mother!”

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On Darren Aronofsky’s philosophical 2017 film about humanity’s relationship to nature. We discuss the philosophical content of the film (Gnosticism, anyone?) and explore the relation between meaning and the sensuous aspects of an artwork. Can a work be both allegorical and yet have fully fleshed out characters and the other elements that make a film feel real? This was a very polarizing film; how do the circumstances of viewing affect reception? With guest Tim Nicholas.

End song: “The Day of Wrath, That Day,” by Sarah McQuaid, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #72.

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NEM #73: David J Colors His Poetry

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David J. Haskins gained fame with Bauhaus in the late ’70s/early ’80s, gained more fame with Love and Rockets, and has since 1983 released around ten albums plus several EPs and other collaborations.

We discuss “The Auteur (Redux / Reprise)” a 2018 single (featuring Rose McGowan and Emily Jane White), “Vaudeville Ghost Light” from Carpe Noctem (2016), credited to M.C. Nightshade and the Theatre Bizarre Orchestra, and “Eulogy for Jeff Buckley” from Not Long for This World (2011). End song: “The Day the David Bowie Died” from Vagabond Songs (2017). Opening song: “No New Tale to Tell” by Love and Rockets from Earth, Sun, Moon (1987). For more, see davidjonline.com.

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Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXVII: Charles Taylor—The Malaise of Modernity

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In our last article, we explored Charles Taylor’s discussion of a new religion that took shape in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Providential Deism. Yet, as we saw, it was not entirely new but in many respects a development and expansion of themes already expounded on by the Protestant Reformation. Where the Protestant Reformers accused Catholicism of being authoritarian, superstitious, Continue Reading …

Episode 189: Authorial Intent (Barthes, Foucault, Beardsley, et al) (Part Two)

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Continuing on “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes (1967) and “What Is an Author?” by Michel Foucault (1969), and finally getting to “Against Theory” by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels (1982).

What could it mean to say that a text, once written, speaks itself? We get into Foucault’s critique of the cult of the author and the reader-centric types of analysis he proposes in its place. Plus, Knapp and Michaels’s poem written by natural forces on a rock. Crazy stuff!

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End song: “The Auteur” by David J (2018). Listen to Mark’s interview with him in Nakedly Examined Music #73.

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Episode 189: Authorial Intent (Barthes, Foucault, Beardsley, et al) (Part One)

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On four essays about how to interpret artworks: “The Intentional Fallacy” by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley (1946), “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes (1967), “What Is an Author?” by Michel Foucault (1969), and “Against Theory” by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels (1982). When you’re trying to figure out what, say, a poem means, isn’t the best way to do that to just ask the author? Most of these guys say no, and that’s supposed to reveal something about the nature of meaning.

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NEM#72: Sarah McQuaid Kills Her Darlings

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Sarah has recorded five solo albums since 1997, starting with traditional folk songs, sometimes guitar instrumentals, and now focusing on originals that mix British and American folk in a style influenced by Joni Mitchell, among others. She has lately pared back her songwriting to ensure that every note counts.

We discuss the title track and “The Silence above Us” from If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous (2018) and “Hardwick’s Lofty Towers” from The Plum Tree and the Rose (2012). Closing song: “Yellowstone” from Walking into White (2015). Opening instrumental: “The Day of Wrath, That Day,” also from the new album. For more, see sarahmcquaid.com.

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Episode 188: Discussing “Lysistrata” and Politics with Lucy and Emily (Part Two)

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Concluding our discussion of Aristophanes’s play with Lucy Lawless and Emily Perkins. We focus on trying to connect its lessons to the here and now: Is Lysistrata’s victory properly described as the ascension of some kind of “feminine spirit” over warlike values, and how does that actually relate to women’s struggles now to attain positions of power?

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Episode 188: Discussing “Lysistrata” and Politics with Lucy and Emily (Part One)

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We are rejoined by actresses Lucy Lawless and Emily Perkins to discuss Aristophanes’s bawdy play. Listen to us perform it first.

Supplementary readings included Jeffery Henderson’s introduction to his 1988 translation of the play; “Sexual Humor and Harmony in Lysistrata” by Jay M. Semel (1981); and “The ‘Female Intruder’ Reconsidered: Women in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae” by Helene P. Foley (1982).

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Life-Hack Stoicism—Is It Worth It?

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The Ancient philosophy of Stoicism, as the ultimate life hack, has taken the world by storm. It seems particularly suited to providing pithy quotes for Silicon Valley desktops, doors of CrossFit gyms, and the bedroom walls of disenfranchised youths. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with that. But then again, didn’t the famous Stoic slave Epictetus warn us all about learning just a “little philosophy”?

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

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