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Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens” Audioplay (Part Two for Supporters)

August 7, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

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 …

Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens” Audioplay Feat. Jay O. Sanders, Michael Ian Black, and Michael Tow (Part One for Supporters)

August 6, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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 …

Ep. 298: Marsilio Ficino on Love (Part Two for Supporters)

July 22, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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)

July 22, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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)

July 17, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

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)

July 9, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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)

July 9, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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 …

Ep. 296: Heidegger Questions Being (Part Two for Supporters)

June 24, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

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)

June 24, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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 …

Ep. 295: Kant on Preventing War (Part Three for Supporters)

June 11, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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)

June 5, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

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)

June 5, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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 …

Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Three for Supporters)

May 29, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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)

May 22, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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)

May 22, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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)

May 13, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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 …

Ep. 293: Donna Haraway on Feminist Science (Part Two for Supporters)

May 6, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Continuing from part one on "Situated Knowledges" and other essays with guest Lynda Olman. We try to get at the practical import of Olman's scheme and get further into her use of metaphors and what those mean for her critical stance. We also touch on how metaphors relate to myths, feminist sci-fi, how causal and networking language fits into all this, and more. There's  Continue Reading …

Ep. 293: Donna Haraway on Feminist Science (Part One for Supporters)

May 6, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective" (1988), "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" (1985), "A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies" (1994), and "Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin" (2015).  Continue Reading …

Ep. 292: Langer on Symbolic Music (Part Two for Supporters)

April 23, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Concluding from part one on Susanne Langer's Philosophy in a New Key (ch. 8-10). We continue discussion whether and how music is symbolic, contrasting Langer's take with Scruton's on Eduard Hanslick: you can't just consider music as "intransitively referential" or referring only to itself, because that's not reference at all.. Wes brings up Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs.  Continue Reading …

Ep. 292: Langer on Symbolic Music (Part One for Supporters)

April 23, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Susanne Langer's Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 8-10 ("On Significance in Music," "The Genesis of Artistic Import," and "The Fabric of Meaning), plus ch. 7, "The Image of Time," from her Form and Feeling (1953). Is music a language? If it's "expressive," what exactly does it express? Langer focuses on music to get at the sorts of symbolism associated specifically  Continue Reading …

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  • PvI#36: Authentic Snake Oil w/ Skye Cleary on Episode 140: Beauvoir on the Ambiguous Human Condition
  • Daniel Gustafsson on Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens” Audioplay (Part Two for Supporters)
  • B F on Ep. 298: Marsilio Ficino on Love (Part One)
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