The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog
On Albert Camus’s existentialist novel The Plague. How shall we face adversity? Camus gives us colorful characters that embody various approaches. Yes, the plague is an extreme situation, but we’re all dying all the time anyway, right?
End song: “You Will Kill the One You Love” by Jack Hues, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #122.
These notes from 335 BCE are still used in screenwriting classes. Aristotle presents a formula for what will move us, derived from Sophocles’s tragedies.
What is art? A. describes it as memesis (imitation), and tragedy imitates human action in a way that shows us what it is to be human. A. has lots of advice about how to structure a plot optimized to our sensibilities. Join Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth to see if you think he’s right.
End song: “Structure of a Tragedy” by Mark Lint (2020).
On Cavell’s essay “The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear” (1969).
Can money buy you love? What is tragedy? With guest Erin O’Luanaigh.
End song: “Out of Your Hands” by Gretchen’s Wheel, per Nakedly Examined Music #81.
How should we think politically about the current global crisis? Do extreme circumstances reveal truths of political philosophy or do they reinforce whatever it is we already believe? Mark, Wes, Seth, and Dylan talk about applying philosophical insights to real-life situations rife with unknowns, John Rawls’s veil of ignorance and Adam Smith on our interconnectedness, utilitarianism, libertarianism, and more. A source we used was “How Coronavirus Is Shaking Up the Moral Universe” by John Authers.
End song: “Date of Grace” by Rob Picott, as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #80.
On Ch. 4 of Lewis’s book Counterfactuals (1973) and the essays “Scorekeeping in a Language Game” (1979) and “Truth in Fiction” (1978).
What makes a sentence about possibility true? Lewis thinks that we need possible worlds that really exist in order to make sense of our modal intuitions. He uses this possible-world talk to make sense of conversations and the worlds created by fiction writers. With guest Matt Teichman from Elucidations.
End song: “Real Life” by Matt Wilson, as interviewed for Nakedly Examined Music #118.
On The Spirit of the Laws (1748) by Charles Louis de Secondat, aka Baron de Montesquieu.
What keeps a society functioning? Montesquieu, though of course not the first political philosopher, was perhaps the first to systematically explore correlations between characteristics of a government, its people, its climate, dominant industries, religion, and other factors. Some of his ideas directly influenced the American Constitution, and some of them are very very weird.
End song: “King of the Hill” by MINUTEMEN. Listen to Mark interview Mike Watt on Nakedly Examined Music #108.
Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth summarize thoughts about our recent series on social construction, gender and sex, and Judith Butler’s notion of “grievable lives.” Should we stop covering so much contemporary work and/or political topics?
End song: “The Size of Luv” by Mark Lint from Mark Lint’s Dry Folk (2018).
On “Critique of Violence” (1921). What is violence? Benjamin gives us a taxonomy: law-creating, law-preserving, mythological, and divine. Then he deconstructs his own distinctions to demonstrate that all state power is rotten through its being founded on and continually re-established by violence or the threat of it.
End song: “Jericho” from hackedepiciotto, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #116.
On The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind (2020).
What is it to be nonviolent in political activity? Most ethics allow for self-defense, but Judith has a problem with defining “self” as well as “violence,” and offers a full critique of the individualism that underlies typical Western approaches to both ethics and politics. Mark, Seth, and Wes interview Judith about these issues and the connection to Gender Trouble.
End song: “Dancing with Death,” discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #111 with Marty Willson-Piper.
On Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). Is gender socially constructed, and if so, how?
Butler describes gender not as an essential quality of a person, but as “performed,” as habits of acting in certain ways in accordance with customs. Her idea of social construction is so totalizing that even biological sex itself is constructed. With guest Jennifer Hansen.
End song: “I’m a Boy” by Lys Guillorn as interviewed for Nakedly Examined Music #44.
On Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949): “The Woman in Love” and “Myths” with guest Jennifer Hansen. We explore the maladies of love, try to figure how B’s picture relates to modern romance and what her positive prescription for good love is, and use the recent film A Marriage Story as a case study.
End song: “Easier than Leaving” by Michaela Anne, interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #114.
On the Platonic dialogue written around 380 BCE about an encounter between Socrates and one of the leading Sophists of his day.
What is virtue (“the political art” according to Protagoras), and can it be taught? What are the relations of the various virtues to each other? Do they really amount ultimately to one and the same thing, i.e., wisdom? In this entertaining dialogue, Socrates and Protagoras swap positions, and Socrates seems to parody the Sophists’ style.
End song: “Make It Clear” by Feelies; Mark interviewed Glenn Mercer on Nakedly Examined Music #41.
On Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949): the intro, conclusion, “Woman’s Situation and Character” and parts of “Lived Experience,” with guest Jennifer Hansen.
According to Beauvoir, Woman is historically conceived of by society (and herself) as “Other,” as not a Subject who creates and makes decisions. Her life is predetermined, revolving around marriage and child-bearing, and is so deformed by this situation.
End song: “Wrong Side of Gone” by Beth Kille as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #13.
On René Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637), an overview of his work that distills his method, outlines his famous Meditations, presents a provisional (Stoic) ethics, and considers whether he wants to be a public intellectual. This is all meant as a preface to scientific publications on geometry, optics, and meteors.
End song: “My Real Fantasy” By Joe Louis Walker, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #110.
On Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1993) with guest Lynda Olman.
What’s the “modern” ideology of science, and is there something we should critique about it? Latour wants us to think about science not abstractly through the eternal truths it supposedly discovers, but through the concrete practices of scientists. He investigates the Modern Constitution by which science and politics are kept conceptually separate, a myth that he claims we’ve never fully bought into.
End song: “Mono No Aware” by Guy Sigsworth, as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #109.
On René Descartes’s Rules for Direction of the Mind (1628).
Is there a careful way to approach problems that will ensure that you’ll always be right? What if you just never assert anything you can’t be sure of? This is Descartes’s strategy, modeled on mathematics. We likewise carefully move step-by-step through this text.
End song: “Perfect Design” by Ian Moore, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #94.
On Kwame Anthony Appiah’s “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections” (1994), Charles Mills’s “But What Are You Really?, The Metaphysics of Race” (1998), and Neven Sesardic’s “Race: A Social Destruction of a Biological Concept” (2010). With guest Coleman Hughes.
End song: “Tired Skin” by Alejandro Escovedo, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #60.
On Ian Hacking’s The Social Construction of What (1999) and Peter Berger’s “Religion and World Construction” (1967).
Guest Coleman Hughes from Dilemma joins us to survey the types of social construction arguments: the “culture wars” (e.g., race, gender) and the “science wars” (scientific findings are not read off the world but emerge from history). Something can be constructed, yet still be an objective truth we have to deal with.
End song: “The ConstruKction of Light, Part 1” by King Crimson; listen to Mark with Trey Gunn on Nakedly Examined Music #21.
On Sir Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620).
Bacon claims to have developed a new toolset that will open up nature to inquiry in a way that wasn’t possible for ancient and modern natural philosophy. Mark, Wes, and Dylan consider how much what Bacon describes resembles modern scientific method, talk through Bacon’s “four idols” that interfere with impartial inquiry, and consider how Bacon’s method fits in with his larger political-ethical-religious views.
End song: “Stuck in a Cave” by Chrome Cranks; hear Mark talk to Peter Aaron on Nakedly Examined Music #93.
On Simone Weil’s essays “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force” (1939) and “Analysis of Oppression” (1934).
How do circumstances oppress and dehumanize us? Weil describes the mechanisms that keep people at war and maintain oppression even through revolutions as inherent to the logic of power. With guest Corey Mohler.
End song: “Throw Down the Sword” from Wishbone Ash; hear Andy Powell on Nakedly Examined Music #51.
