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 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. 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 …
PREVIEW-Ep. 295: Kant on Preventing War (Part Three
Subscribe to get Part 3 of this episode in its entirety. 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 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 …
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 (Part One for Supporters)
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 One for Supporters)
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 …
Ep. 291: Cassirer and Langer on Myth and Ritual (Part One for Supporters)
On Ernst Cassirer's his An Essay on Man (1944), ch. 6-7, and Susanne Langer's Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 6-7. This discussion featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth follows the introduction of these books and the argument that we are primarily symbolic creatures in ep. 290. Why do people produce ritual, mythology, and religion? According to Cassirer and his follower Langer, Continue Reading …
Ep. 290: Susanne Langer on Our Symbol-Making Nature (Part One for Supporters)
On Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 1-5, plus as background most of us looked at Langer's main influence Ernst Cassirer via his An Essay on Man (1944), ch. 1-5. Featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. What is human nature, and why does natural science have such trouble studying it? Cassirer's massive, three-volume Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923-1929) provides the Continue Reading …
Ep. 289: Aesthetic Sense Theory: Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume (Part One for Supporters)
On David Hume's "The Standard of Taste" (1760) and its two main influences: The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody (1709) by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, aka the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Part III section 2 "Beauty," and An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design (1725) by Francis Hutcheson. Featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. How do we know what opinions about Continue Reading …
Ep. 288: Scruton on Ethical Art (Part One for Supporters)
On Roger Scruton's Beauty (2009), ch. 5-9, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. The latter half of the book completes the survey of types of beauty that we discussed last episode by considering issues in our appreciation of artworks, and then develops a moral and political argument for why relativism about taste, i.e. the "democracy of tastes" that says that all aesthetic Continue Reading …
Ep. 287: Roger Scruton on Beauty (Part One for Supporters)
On Beauty (2009), ch. 1-4, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Scruton just died in Dec. 2020; he had taught aesthetics for more than 30 years, and this book provides an overview of issues in the philosophy of art. The chapters we read this time include an overview chapter, then treatments of human beauty, beauty in nature, and everyday beauty (e.g. decorations, fashion, Continue Reading …
PEL Nightcap New Year’s Party to Welcome 2022
Welcome to an extra special, intentionally public edition of Nightcap to catch you up on what Mark, Wes, Seth, and Dylan are all up to personally and intellectually and hash out what we want to potentially cover on the show over the next year. Thanks so much for being a PEL supporter. We really appreciate you and hope that your 2022 makes you happier and wiser. The next Continue Reading …
Ep. 284: Mark Twain’s Philosophy of Human Nature (Part One for Supporters)
On "What Is Man" (1905) by Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth. This rare bit of philosophy wasn't published until after Twain's death (maybe because it was too bleak?), but apparently reflects the mechanistic, cynical take on humanity that informed his literary works. Twain was a tech guy; he was interested in the machines of his age, and he Continue Reading …
Ep. 283: Alain Badiou on Love (Part One for Supporters)
On "What Is Love," which is ch. 11 of Conditions (1992), supplemented by In Praise of Love (2009 with Nicolas Truong), with Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth. In our episode introducing Badiou, we said that love is a "truth procedure," and here we see (sort of) what this means. Love is about gaining a new vantagepoint the world: seeing it through the eyes of the Two. It is not a Continue Reading …
Ep. 282: Alain Badiou: What Is Philosophy? (Part One for Supporters)
On Conditions (1992), Ch. 1 "The (Re)turn of Philosophy Itself," featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Badiou is arguing against contemporary post-structuralist French philosophers like Derrida and Foucault whom he characterizes as denying the existence of truth. Philosophy as a profession has consequently devolved into just being a history of philosophy. Continue Reading …
Ep. 281: Paul Feyerabend’s Anarchist Philosophy of Science (Part One for Supporters)
On Against Method (1975), the introduction through ch. 5 and ch. 15-16, featuring Dylan, Wes, and Seth. This book that began as a joint call-and-response project with our last author Imre Lakatos, but then Lakatos died and couldn't respond to what Feyerabend explicitly wrote roughly in the form of a series of letters to a friend. Feyerabend agreed with much of Lakatos' Continue Reading …
Ep. 280: Imre Lakatos on Scientific Progress (Part One for Supporters)
On "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" (1970), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. In what way is scientific progress rational? To understand the state of the debate by Lakatos' time, let's run quickly through some history of the philosophy of science: Early scientists like Francis Bacon saw science as providing certainty in the Continue Reading …
Ep. 279: Aristotle’s “Categories” of Being (Part One for Supporters)
On the Categories (ca. 350 BCE), which purports to describe all the types of entities that exist. The participants are Mark, Wes, and Dylan. The most important of these Categories is substance, a term which primarily picks out individual natural things (a particular person, animal, plant, or material) and secondarily picks out the kinds that group those things (e.g. the Continue Reading …