Guest Seth Benzell outlines Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945) and Sen's On Ethics and Economics (1987). Listen to this before jumping into the full discussion. Read more about the topic and get the texts. Continue Reading …
Episode 122: Augustine on Mind and Metaphysics (Citizen Edition)
A second discussion on The Confessions (400 CE), this time on books 10–13. What is memory and how does it relate to time and being? Augustine thinks that memory is a storehouse, but it contains not just the sensations we put in it, but also (à la Plato's theory of recollection) really all legitimate knowledge. It's our route to God, to real Being. Memory also solves the Continue Reading …
Episode 121: Augustine on Being Good (Citizen Edition)
On The Confessions (400 CE), books 1–9. The question is not "What is virtue?" because knowing what virtue is isn't enough. The problem, for Aurelius Augustinus, aka St. Augustine of Hippo, is doing what you know to be right. However, we shouldn't expect our capacity to know to be operating well unless we're already oriented correctly, which for Augustine means toward God. Continue Reading …
Episode 120: A History of “Will” with Guest Eva Brann (Citizen Edition)
We discuss Un-Willing: An Inquiry into the Rise of Will's Power and an Attempt to Undo It (2014) with the author, covering Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Sartre, compatibilism, the neurologists' critque of free will, and more. What is the will? Is it an obvious thing that we all can see in ourselves when introspecting? If so, then why is there so much Continue Reading …
Episode 119: Nietzsche on Tragedy and the Psychology of Art (Citizen Edition)
On Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1872), which was his first book. What's the connection between art and society? Nietzsche thought that you could tell how vital or decadent a civilization was by its art, and said that ancient Greek tragedy (like Antigone) was so great because it was a perfect synthesis of something highly formal/orderly/beautiful with the Continue Reading …
Episode 118: The Musical Life with Camper van Beethoven (Citizen Edition)
Why write songs? What is it to have "integrity" as a musician? To be "authentic?" Is there anything wrong with playing pure pop songs, or aping styles created by those now dead? Our guests Victor Krummenacher and Jonathan Segel (of the famed indie band Camper van Beethoven) have a beef with the Internet society where music and other trappings of identity are now available Continue Reading …
Episode 117: Sophocles’s “Antigone” (Citizen Edition)
About that ancient Greek tragedy (441 BCE)... What can we learn from it? Are its literary tropes and ethical conflicts so far removed from us that the best we can do is marvel at it? Heck, no! Classic literature is great fodder for philosophical discussion, and the doings of the play can be fruitfully related to our modern troubles with ethics and the state. Mark, Wes, and Continue Reading …
Not Ep 117: “Antigone” Full-Cast Audioplay (Citizen Edition)
As a study aid for our episode 117, here's an unrehearsed, dramatic read-through of the text we'll be discussing, a Greek tragedy written around 441 BCE, telling the myth of the cursed line of Oedipus, mother-f*#king king of Thebes. It features Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan, plus special guest starts Lucy Lawless as Antigone, Paul Provenza as Creon, Alice Sinclair as Ismene, and Continue Reading …
Episode 116: Freud on Dreams (Citizen Edition)
On Sigmund Freud's On Dreams (1902), a bit of The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), and the lecture, “Revision of the Theory of Dreams” (1933). For Wes Alwan's Freud summaries, go here: https://www.philosophysummaries.com. Are dreams just a bunch of random crap? Freud says, no, they're actually the first and best way to figure out the structure of the mind, which Continue Reading …
Episode 115: Schopenhauer on Music with Guest Jonathan Segel (Citizen Edition)
On Arthur Schopenhauer's The World As Will and Representation (1818), vol. 1, book 3, sections 34, 38-39, 40, 45, and focusing on 51 and 52, plus chapters 34 and 39 from vol. 3 (1844). This continues our previous discussion of book 2 and the beginning of book 3. Is music just pleasing, structured sound? Schopenhauer thinks it's much more than that: it's our way of Continue Reading …
Episode 114: Schopenhauer: “The World Is Will” (Citizen Edition)
On Arthur Schopenhauer's The World As Will and Representation (1818), book 2. Sure, we know from our senses and science what the world looks like to creatures like us, but if you buy Kant's view that this "world as appearance" is a construct of our minds, what's the reality behind the appearance? Schopenhauer thinks that we can know this: The world is what he calls Continue Reading …
Episode 113: Jesus’s Parables (Citizen Edition)
Drawing on John Dominic Crossan's The Power of Parable, mainly ch. 3 (2012), Paul Ricoeur's "Listening to the Parables of Jesus" (1974), and Paul Tillich's The New Being, ch. 1: "To Whom Much Is Forgiven..." (1955). Are these weird stories riddles, where if you figure out what they mean you get salvation? Are they homilies, telling you to go be like the Good Samaritan? Continue Reading …
Episode 112: Ricoeur on Interpreting Religion (Citizen Edition)
On Paul Ricoeur's "The Critique of Religion" and "The Language of Faith" (1973). Last episode taught us about hermeneutics, but how can this best be applied to the text for which hermeneutics was originally developed, i.e. the Bible? For Ricoeur, it's a two-way street: We need to change our understanding of the text (i.e. read it historically, recognizing for example that it Continue Reading …
Episode 111: Gadamer’s Hermeneutics (Citizen Edition)
On Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960, ch. 4), "Aesthetics and Hermeneutics" (1964), "The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem" (1966), and "Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy" (1972). Hermeneutics is all about interpretation, primarily of texts, but of other things too, and Gadamer thinks that even if we learn all about the history and customs and probable Continue Reading …
Episode 110: Alfred North Whitehead: What Is Nature? (Citizen Edition)
On The Concept of Nature (1920). Whitehead thinks that old-timey metaphysics wrongly insists that what's fundamental in the world to be studied by science is things (substance) moving around in space and time. We don't actually experience any such thing as "substance," so on this view we end up with an uncrossable gap between the world of our experience and that of science. Continue Reading …
Precognition of Ep. 110: Whitehead
Mark Linsenmayer outlines Alfred North Whitehead's book The Concept of Nature (1920) on the relation between experience and science, and how to think about space, time, and objects. After listening to this, get the full discussion. Read more about the topic and get the text. Read a transcript. Continue Reading …
Episode 109: Jaspers’s Existentialism with Paul Provenza (Citizen Edition)
On Karl Jaspers's "On My Philosophy" (1941), featuring comedian/actor/director/author Paul Provenza. What's the relationship between science and philosophy? What about religion? Jaspers thinks that science gives you facts, but for an overarching world-view, you need philosophy. Living such a world-view requires Existenz, or a leap towards transcendence, which is of course Continue Reading …
Precognition of Ep. 109: Karl Jaspers
Mark Linsenmayer introduces Jaspers's essay, "On My Philosophy" (1941) on Existenz and the difference between philosophy, science, and religion. After you listen to this, get the full PEL discussion. Read more about the topic and get the text. Read a transcript. Continue Reading …
Episode 108: Dangers of A.I. with Guest Nick Bostrom (Citizen Edition)
On Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) with author Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at Oxford. Just grant the hypothetical that machine intelligence advances will eventually produce a machine capable of further improving itself, and becoming much smarter than we are. Put aside the question of whether such a being could in principle be conscious or Continue Reading …
Episode 107: Edmund Burke on the Sublime (Citizen Edition)
On A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), parts I, II, and his later intro essay, "On Taste." Are people's tastes basically the same? Burke says yes: they're rooted in our common reactions to pain and pleasure, those two are not opposites, but simply quite different properties, each associated with a different set of Continue Reading …