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Episode 84: Netzsche’s “Gay Science” (Citizens Only)

November 11, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

Friedrich Niezsche

On Friedrich Nietzsche's The Gay Science (1882, with book 5 added 1887). What is wisdom? Nietzsche gives us an updated take on the Socratic project of challenging your most deeply held beliefs. Challenge not just your belief in God ("God is dead!") but uncover all your habits of thinking in terms of the divine. Question the motives behind relentless inquiry: the "will to  Continue Reading …

Episode 82: Karl Popper on Science (Citizens Only)

September 24, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Conjectures and Refutations (1963), the first three essays. What is science, and how is it different than pseudo-science? From philosophy? Is philosophy just pseudo-science, or proto-science, or what? Popper thinks that all legitimate inquiry is about solving real problems, and scientific theories are those that are potentially falsifiable: they make definitely  Continue Reading …

Episode 81: Jung on the Psyche and Dreams (Citizens Only)

August 29, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Carl Jung's "Approaching the Unconscious" from Man and His Symbols, written in 1961. What's the structure of the mind? Jung followed Freud in positing an unconscious distinct from the conscious ego, but Jung's picture has the unconscious much more stuffed full of all sorts of stuff from who knows where, including instincts (the archetypes) that tend to give rise to  Continue Reading …

Episode 80: Heidegger on Our Existential Situation (Citizens Only)

August 8, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Martin Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" (1949). What's our place in the world? What is it, really, to be human? Heidegger thought that being human hinges on having a proper relationship to Being. What is Being? Well, it's something more basic than particular beings like people and tables and such, yet it being so close, Heidegger thinks it's hardest to see, and that we  Continue Reading …

Episode 79: Heraclitus on Understanding the World (Citizens Only)

July 15, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Eva Brann discusses her book The Logos of Heraclitus (2011). What is the world like, and how can we understand it? Heraclitus thinks that the answer to both questions is found in "the logos," which is a Greek word with multiple meanings: it can be an explanation, a word or linguistic meaning, science, rationality (the Latin word is "ratio"), the principle of exchange between  Continue Reading …

Episode 78: Ayn Rand on Living Rationally (Citizens Only)

July 1, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Ayn Rand

On Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967) and "The Objectivist Ethics" (1961). First Rand grounds everyday human knowledge, largely by dismissing the concerns of other philosophers (even those whom she unknowingly parrots) as absurd. Then she uses this certainty to argue for her semi-Nietzschean vision of Great Men who master their emotions and rely only on  Continue Reading …

Episode 77: Santayana on the Appreciation of Beauty (Citizens Only)

June 9, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On George Santayana's The Sense of Beauty (1896). What are we saying when we call something "beautiful?" Are we pointing out an objective quality that other people (anyone?) can ferret out, or just essentially saying "yay!" without any logic necessarily behind our exclamation? The poet and philosopher Santayana thought that while aesthetic appreciation is an immediate  Continue Reading …

Episode 76: Deleuze on What Philosophy Is (Citizens Only)

May 14, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

On Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's What Is Philosophy? (1991). How is philosophy different from science and art? What's the relationship between different philosophies? Is better pursued solo, or in a group? Deleuze described philosophy as the creation of new concepts, whereas science is about functions that map observed regularities and art is about creating percepts  Continue Reading …

Episode 75: Lacan & Derrida Criticize Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” (Citizens Only)

April 19, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Edgar Allen Poe

On Jacques Lacan's "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'" (1956), Jacques Derrida's "The Purveyor of Truth" (1975), and other essays in the collection The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading. How should philosophers approach literature? Lacan read Edgar Allen Poe's story about a sleuth who outthinks a devious Minister as an illustration of his model of the  Continue Reading …

Episode 74: Jacques Lacan’s Psychology (Citizens Only)

April 3, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Bruce Fink's The Lacanian Subject (1996) and Lacan's "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience" (1949). What is the self? Is that the same as the experiencing subject? Lacan says no: while the self (the ego) is an imaginative creation, cemented by language, the subject is something else, something split (at least  Continue Reading …

Episode 73: Why Do Philosophy? (And What Is It?) (Citizens Only)

March 22, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan share what drove them into philosophy and keeps them there. How is philosophy different than (or similar to) science? Than religion? Art? The consensus seems that philosophy, to us, is inevitable for the curious. It's just inquiry, unbounded (in principle at least) by any fixed assumptions. While scientific and religious endeavors can be  Continue Reading …

Episode 72: Terrorism with Jonathan R. White (Citizens Only)

March 9, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

We're joined by an international terrorism expert to discuss how to define terrorism and whether it can ever be ethical. We read: -Donald Black's "The Geometry of Terrorism" (2004) -J. Angelo Corlett's "Can Terrorism be Morally Justified?" (1996) -Igor Primoratz's article on terrorism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007, revised 2011) -Karl Heinzen's Murder  Continue Reading …

Episode 71: Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” (Citizens Only)

February 15, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Buber's 1923 book about the fundamental human position: As children, and historically (this is his version of social contract theory), we start fully absorbed in relation with another person (like, say, mom). Before that point, we have no self-consciousness, no "self" at all, really. It's only by having these consuming "encounters" that we gradually distinguish ourselves  Continue Reading …

Episode 70: Marx on the Human Condition (Citizens Only)

January 30, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

Karl Marx

On Karl Marx's The German Ideology, Part I, an early, unpublished work from 1846. What is human nature? What drives history? How can we improve our situation? Marx thought that fundamentally, you are what you do: you are your job, your means of subsistence. All the rest, this culture, this religion, this philosophy, is just a thin layer over our basic situation. Ideas are  Continue Reading …

Episode 69: Plato on Rhetoric vs. Philosophy (Citizens Only)

January 12, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Plato

On Plato's Dialogue, "Gorgias" (380 BCE or so). Why philosophize? Isn't it better to know how to persuade people in practical matters, like a successful lawyer or business leader? Plato (speaking as usual through Socrates) thinks that the "art" of rhetoric (persuasive speeches) isn't an art at all, in the sense of something that requires an understanding of one's subject  Continue Reading …

Episode 68: David Chalmers Interview on the Scrutability of the World (Citizens Only)

December 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On his book Constructing the World (2012). How are all the various truths about the world related to each other? David Chalmers, famous for advocating a scientifically respectable form of brain-consciousness dualism, advocates a framework of scrutability: if one knew some set of base truths, then the rest would be knowable from them. What sort of base? Well, there may be  Continue Reading …

Episode 67: Carnap on Logic and Science (Citizens Only)

December 7, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Rudolph Carnap

On Rudolph Carnap's The Logical Structure of the World (1928). What can we know? Carnap thinks that all the various spheres of knowledge (e.g. particle physics, attributions of mental states, moral claims, the economy) are logically interrelated, that you can in fact translate sentences about any of these into sentences about sets of basic, momentary experiences. This book,  Continue Reading …

Episode 66: Quine on Linguistic Meaning and Science (Citizens Only)

November 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On W.V.O. Quine's "On What There Is" (1948) and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951). What kind of metaphysics is compatible with science? Quine sees science and philosophy as one and the same enterprise, and he objects to ontologies that include types of entities that science can't, even in principle, study. In these two highly influential essays, he first tells how to  Continue Reading …

Episode 65: The Federalist Papers (Citizens Only)

October 27, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

James Madison and Alexander Hamilton

On Alexander Hamilton/James Madison's Federalist Papers (1, 10-12, 14-17, 39, 47-51), published as newspaper editorials 1787-8, plus Letters III and IV from Brutus, an Anti-Federalist. What constitutes good government? These founding fathers argued that the proposed Constitution, with its newly centralized--yet also separated-by-branch--powers would be a significant  Continue Reading …

Episode 64: Celebrity, with guest Lucy Lawless (Citizens Only)

October 6, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Fame: What the Classics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebrity by Tom Payne (2010). What's the deal with our f'ed up relationship with celebrities? Payne says that celebrities serve a social need that's equal parts religion and and aggression. TV's Lucy Lawless (Xena, Spartacus, Battlestar Galactica) joins us to discuss the accuracy of this thesis, along with her obsession  Continue Reading …

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