Continuing our performance from part one of William Shakespeare's play, finishing things up with acts 4 and 5 plus some post-performance discussion with the cast. This is the part of the play where Timon either has gone crazy or become enlightened, such that he's trying to out-cynic the cynic philosopher Apemantus. Meanwhile, Socrates' former admirer Alcibiades has been Continue Reading …
Citizen Feed Episodes: Paywalled and Ad-Free
Available only to PEL Citizens: All of our paywalled and ad-free regular episodes in a single feed. That includes paywalled full episodes from the back catalogue, Nightcap and (Starting in September 2020) Part 2 of all episodes. You can add this feed to the podcast app of your choice by following the instructions here. You can download them, listen to them here, or get them on the podcast app of your choice by following the instructions here. Not a Citizen? Join here.
Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens” Audioplay Feat. Jay O. Sanders, Michael Ian Black, and Michael Tow (Part One for Supporters)
The PEL Players are back, with more players than ever, doing an unrehearsed reading of William Shakespeare's least popular play, co-written with Thomas Middleton in Shakespeare's later years, probably around 1605. The play is about money and cynicism, where a man gets to see where his friends go when his money runs out and let's say doesn't react well. This is our largest Continue Reading …
PEL Ficino-Flavored Nightcap Early August 2022
On 7/11/22, Mark and Wes first discuss a few more passages from Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love, including one on five types of desire: How the two most extreme ones are "daemons," i.e. primal urges (one towards procreation, one towards God), and in the incarnation of these in human psychology, we have to have a desire that's a compromise between the two: Continue Reading …
Ep. 298: Marsilio Ficino on Love (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love (1475), with guest Peter Adamson. Peter gives us some context in terms of other Renaissance theories of love, and then we're back to the text, considering the role of beauty in the theory and how this connects to our recent coverage of various thinkers on aesthetics. We also fill out Ficino's neo-Platonic Continue Reading …
Ep. 298: Marsilio Ficino on Love (Part One for Supporters)
On Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love (1475), with guest Peter Adamson from the History of Philosophy podcast joining Mark, Wes, and Seth. Attention: We'll be live-streaming video for our big ep. 300 on Friday, Aug. 19 at 8pm ET. More info at partiallyexaminedlife.com/pel-live. Leading up to that episode, we're continuing to revisit some classic themes, and this Continue Reading …
Ep. 297: Heidegger on the Human Condition (Part Three for Supporters)
Concluding our close reading for the moment of Heidegger's Being and Time, now up to chapter 3, sections 15 and 16. These sections are entirely focused on H's primordial ontological category of Being: "ready to hand," or equipment. Since we are primarily action-oriented beings, then (as discussed in part two), the world is not a set of present-at-hand objects all laid out Continue Reading …
Ep. 297: Heidegger on the Human Condition (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Being and Time, now up to Ch. 2, sec. 12 on what our "being-in-the-world" amounts to. According to H, we are not in the world like a shoe is in a shoebox. Rather, the world is part of our existential structure, providing a background for our actions. Our primary relation to it is not knowing, as if we were a subject beholding a painting, but more Continue Reading …
Ep. 297: Heidegger on the Human Condition (Part One for Supporters)
We continue from ep. 296 with our close reading on Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927), covering in this part of the discussion chapter 1. Featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. This selection (aka section 9) covers existence (in German, Existenz) vs. existentia. The former is Dasein's (humanity's) specific way of being, which involves possibility and thus choice. H was Continue Reading …
PEL Nightcap July 2022
Recorded 6/20/22. Mark and Seth consider the close reading format as evinced in our new Heidegger episodes and get side-tracked into talking about Dr. Drew and vaccine hesitancy. Here he is answering questions about it, and I see he just had an AMA that includes talk about the infant version. I guess the main hubbub surrounded a tweet from April 21, 2021 about vaccine Continue Reading …
Ep. 296: Heidegger Questions Being (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing our close reading of selections of Being and Time from part one, we come back on a different day without Wes and focus on two parts from the Introduction 2, sec. 7: Sec. 5, where Heidegger says why time has to be the focus of the ontological analysis of Dasein (i.e. his description of the essential human condition).Part A, on what are phenomena, according to Continue Reading …
Ep. 296: Heidegger Questions Being (Part One for Supporters)
This close reading of sections near the beginning of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1926) is a direct sequel to ep. 32, which provides an overview of his project. We re-introduced that episode in our most recent PEL Nightcap. In this episode and 297, we read and discuss particular textual passages, so you can experience along with us what it's like to read this text with Continue Reading …
PEL Nightcap June 2022
Recorded 6/3/22. First we re-introduce episode 32 on Heidegger's Being and Time in preparation for a two episode run doing a close reading of sections of that. Next, we brainstorm about what to discuss on our tentatively planned ep. 300 live-stream. What's the most famous, self-contained and entertaining work that we haven't yet covered? Reach out to us and weigh in! Continue Reading …
Ep. 295: Kant on Preventing War (Part Three for Supporters)
Concluding on Kant's "Perpetual Peace," plus Jurgen Habermas' "Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years' Hindsight." Start with part one. We talk about the two appendices to Kant's essay: first about "realpolitik," the idea that because other states will act immorally, then the wise politician must also act immorally. As you might predict, Kant Continue Reading …
Ep. 295: Kant on Preventing War (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Immanuel Kant's essay "Perpetual Peace," we go further into how Kant's politics relate to his ethics and consider his actual policy proposals: each state must be a republic, i.e. somehow representative with separation of powers, and countries should join in a confederation. Kant also spells out the new idea of "cosmopolitan right," which only entails Continue Reading …
Ep. 295: Kant on Preventing War (Part One for Supporters)
On Immanuel Kant's essay "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch" (1795). Do nations have the "right" to go to war? What principles ground just international relations, and are there structures and agreements that we can embrace to prevent prevent future wars? Naturally, we consider the current conflict in Ukraine as well as other recent wars. Kant's essay reads like a Continue Reading …
BONUS: Reading and Discussing “Philosophy for Teens,” Session One (A Gift to You from Philosophy vs. Improv)
There are a few things to explain here. First, I (Mark) wrote a book. It's not the PEL book you've always wanted; instead, it's something I was commissioned to do, using a publisher's title, structure, and tone. It's called Philosophy for Teens, and it compresses a huge number of ideas and thinkers into an impossibly tight word count, delivered as a series of questions. The Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Three for Supporters)
Concluding on W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. Start with part one. We take one more stab at making sense of the indeterminacy of translation that is part of Quine's holism about linguistic meaning. Then we turn to more implications about Quine's attempt to turn epistemology into psychology. Is Quine a behaviorist? (Was Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), we work further through the text, getting into what this new psychology-rooted epistemology might look like. Quine remains an empiricist in that he agrees that whatever evidence there is for science must be sensory, and that we learn language through the medium of our senses (i.e. no innate knowledge). However, this Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part One for Supporters)
On W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. What justifies scientific theory? The classical epistemological project found in figures like Descartes and Locke seeks to find basic, indubitable premises that serve to ground the rest of our theorizing. Quine begins by considering Hume's attempt to do this by claiming that all we ever Continue Reading …
Ep. 293: Donna Haraway on Feminist Science (Tiny Part Three for Supporters)
What? More Haraway? Yes! More Lynda? No, this is Mark, Seth, and Dylan on a later day, returning to the Haraway's "Situated Knowledges" with some second thoughts... at least for 20 minutes until Dylan's network crapped out, so we wrapped up. We try our best to make her actual argument clear and give you a better sense of her language. How does an "agenda" in Haraway's sense Continue Reading …