Subscribe to get this recording in its entirety. In this hybrid discussion between Mark and Wes (is it a part three or a Nightcap?), we spent the majority of our time going through some more passages from Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love. Listen to our discussion with Peter Adamson first. This preview presents more thinking about love as reproduction and Continue Reading …
Combat & Classics Ep. 60 Homer’s “Iliad” Book 3
In this episode, Paris and Menelaus duel over Helen and the fate of Troy. Menelaus wins (yeah, he does) -- so why doesn't the war end here? Brian, Shilo, and Jeff discuss what this book of the Iliad teaches us about the difference between Greeks and Trojans: are the Greeks all about anger, and the Trojans all about sex? Also: who is the better leader: Priam, Agamemnon, or Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 297: Heidegger on the Human Condition (Part Three)
Subscribe to get Part 3 of this episode in its entirety. 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, the world is not a set of Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Three)
Subscribe to get Part 3 of this episode in its entirety. Concluding on W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. Start with part one. We consider more implications about Quine's attempt to turn epistemology into psychology. In the full episode, we take one more stab at making sense of the indeterminacy of translation that is Continue Reading …
Ep. 293: Donna Haraway on Feminist Science (Tiny Part Three for Supporters)
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 …
PREVIEW-Ep. 293: Donna Haraway on Feminist Science (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. 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, Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 292: Langer on Symbolic Music (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. 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, Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 291: Cassirer and Langer on Myth and Ritual (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Continuing our discussion from part one on the symbolic value of religion and its antecedents, primary at this point discussing Susanne Langer's Philosophy in a New Key, ch. 7. We start out connecting this to psychoanalysis, and how what Langer calls "fantasies," i.e. symbolic visual Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 290: Susanne Langer on Our Symbol-Making Nature (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Continuing from part one on Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 1-5. We start off by considering whether the hardware-software distinction with regard to our minds can help make sense of what Langer has proposed in saying that symbol-making is basic to us. Is she saying that we're more Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 289: Aesthetic Sense Theory: Hume (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Continuing from part one, we get into more detail on David Hume's "The Standard of Taste" (1760). Hume starts out with a paradox: On the one hand, we believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; it's not a property of objects but of the interaction between an object and an observer. Continue Reading …
Phi Fic #43 Bleak House by Charles Dickens
"What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!” - Bleak House At over 900 pages, 300,000 words, and nearly 50 characters, Charles Dickens’ Bleak House is less a novel and more a temporary hobby. Set in a foggy, dirty Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 288: Scruton on Ethical Art (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Concluding our treatment of Roger's Scruton's Beauty (2009), ch. 5-9, from part one. We consider why we'd really be attracted to something that according to Scruton's account takes a lot of work. Dylan brings in architecture, which Scruton also wrote about, leading us to wonder about the Continue Reading …
(sub)Text: The Power of Calm: Two Wordsworth Sonnets
William Wordsworth wrote no fewer than 523 sonnets over the course of his career. (By comparison, the second most prolific Romantic sonneteer was Keats with a paltry 67.) Two of Wordsworth’s best-loved efforts in the form are both Petrarchan sonnets with the same rhyme scheme, written in the same year, published in the same volume. Yet their messages, at least at first blush, Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 287: Roger Scruton on Beauty (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Continuing from part one on Beauty (2009), ch. 1-4. We critically examine Scruton's claim that apprehending beauty is cognitive and never merely sensory, which would rule out, e.g. there being beautiful smells or tastes. In the full episode, we also go into points from Scruton's chapters Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 286: Malebranche on Causality and Theology (Part Three)
Subscribe to get Part 3 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. We're concluding our treatment of Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (1688) with a full discussion on a different day from parts 1 and 2. In this preview, we focus on dialogue 6 where M. says why a proof of the existence of the external world isn't possible, yet we should believe it Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 286: Malebranche on Causality and Theology (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Continuing from part one on Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (1688), dialogue 7 where he gets into his occasionalist theory of causality. We talk about how this theory relates to mind-body interaction and the student character Aristes argues that there's nothing more intimate than Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 285: Nicolas Malebranche on Knowledge (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Continuing from part one on Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (1688), ch. 1-4. We talk about the character of the intelligible world: It resists certain thoughts, like you can't make 2+2=5. It has the intelligible idea of extension in it, which is what substance in the physical world Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 284: Mark Twain’s Philosophy of Human Nature (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Continuing from part one on "What Is Man" (1905). We work through Twain's metaphors for human nature: We're like engines made out of various materials, and these materials can be refined (through education, which acts to root out prejudice), though the type of material will limit its maximum Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 283: Alain Badiou on Love (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Continuing from part one on "What Is Love?" (1992). We go through Badiou's account of love as the resolution of the paradox that on the one hand, Truth is trans-positional, which means there's no separate "man's truth" and "woman's truth" (or any other division like that), yet the positions Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 282: Alain Badiou: What Is Philosophy? (Part Two)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode in its entirety. Citizens can get it here. Continuing from part one on Conditions (1992), Ch. 1 "The (Re)turn of Philosophy Itself." What makes philosophy possible? Well, there are truths, and these come out of the four "conditions," i.e. mathematics (and science more generally), politics, art, and love. This precludes skepticism Continue Reading …