Here are the most recent comments on our blog posts, i.e. the active discussions at this time. Jump into a thread and say your peace! If you want to start a conversation yourself, join our Facebook Group and/or our subreddit, and go right ahead. Also, if you're a Partially Examined Life Citizen, you can initiate discussions at the Citizens' Forum; this is especially useful if you'd like to use that to initiate an ongoing reading/discussion group with other members, which can have its own dedicated forum. This is called a Not School group.
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- Dec 18, 9:25 am - Episode 205: Suicide with Dr. Drew (Durkheim et al) (Citizen Edition)
Early on you guys talked about what is and isn't suicide, and needing to make a distinction for things like doctor assisted death. I thought that was pretty interesting, especially if you start considering cases like elderly men having a tendency to pass shortly after their spouses do. This seems be related to a lack of will to live yet I imagine very few people would consider it a suicide in the way they would consider a doctor assisted death a suicide. Something similar can be said for people with terminal diseases who decide to no longer take treatments. Later on, when the conversation moved towards existentialism, you guys discussed the fact that these issues with our existence and finding a meaning in life seem to only arise when we're free or bored enough to think about them. I completely agree with that, but I don't think that makes the questions any less valid. In a sense, this seems to me to be the distinction between living an examined and unexamined life. Sure, making yourself busy can get the question off your mind, but is that really something we should do? Lastly, maybe it's because of my own ignorance of... - Dec 18, 9:04 am - Episode 205: Suicide with Dr. Drew (Durkheim et al) (Citizen Edition)
You can actually listen to them if you use the player on the Dr Drew website https://drdrew.com/player/dr-drew-podcast/ - Dec 17, 8:46 pm - Episode 205: Suicide with Dr. Drew (Durkheim et al) (Citizen Edition)
Perhaps it will be inevitable after 200+ episodes of PEL,, but I feel like this podcast is getting more and more specialized with every new reading. And I'm a little bit ambivalent about as much. On the one hand, the consistently in-depth and discursive nature of the conversation is what keeps me coming back to fresh recordings. On the other, the more frequent intellectual detours seem to require (of the listener) a broader 'initiation' into the PEL's total (almost 10 years' now) story. That is to say, even after having listened to a very handsome portion of your content (over an extended stretch of time), the internal references sometimes do a number on me to but vaguely recall. Well, maybe I'm just tired and cranky (after a long day) as I draft this, but I surmise that I will inevitably have to just block out the time, and read every syllable and letter you guys do, if I'm not to totally and finally lose the plot. Modestly dejected, but not in melancholia. - Dec 17, 2:22 pm - Episode 205: Suicide with Dr. Drew (Durkheim et al) (Citizen Edition)
Also - big bummer that I can't get the dr. drew episode for Wes and I saw one for Mark too! Please make them available! - Dec 17, 2:12 pm - Episode 205: Suicide with Dr. Drew (Durkheim et al) (Citizen Edition)
WHAT?! You give tutoring?! I would not ever have the whatever-it-takes to actually take up, even paid for, time to talk to you about such things but I would definitely pay extra to be a fly on the wall of that conversation for whomever it's with! That's very cool. What a great episode. Thanks to dr. drew for the idea of suicide as a symptom. That's very helpful and it actually took me a lot of actual paid for therapy to understand that! My experience is that you can get to the other side of suicidal ideation but that it seems the only way is therapy and it's so unfortunate how expensive it is for most people to get the kind of therapy that is actually helpful for a problem like this. - Dec 17, 9:33 am - Episode 205: Suicide with Dr. Drew (Durkheim et al) (Part One)
I believe that this topic should be explored further by looki g at the writings of psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. He wrote two books on the subject, Fatal Freedom and The Shame of Medicine. Here is a quote from the beginning of Fatal Freedom: “Let us remember that not long ago the right-thinking person believed that masturbation, homosexuality, oral sex, and other "unnatural acts" were medical problems whose solutions were delegated to doctors. It took us a surprisingly long time to take these behaviors back from physicians-to cians-to accept them comfortably, to speak about them calmly, and to distinguish tinguish clearly between phenomena and judgments, descriptions and denunciations. One of my aims in this book is to help us accept suicide comfortably, fortably, to enable us to speak about it calmly, and to distinguish clearly between tween describing and condemning (or recommending) dying voluntarily. To accomplish this, we must demedicalize and destigmatize voluntary death and accept it as a behavior that has always been and will always be a part of the human condition. Wanting to die or killing oneself is sometimes blameworthy, sometimes praiseworthy, and sometimes neither; it is not a disease and it cannot be a bona fide medical... - Dec 17, 8:55 am - Episode 205: Suicide with Dr. Drew (Durkheim et al) (Part One)
Here is another really thoughtful conversation about suicide = https://onbeing.org/programs/jennifer-michael-hecht-suicide-and-hope-for-our-future-selves/ - Dec 16, 2:06 pm - NEM #31: Michael Manring's Limitless Bass Guitar
Thanks, Sebastian! We have discussed practical wisdom in Aristotle, but did not think to apply this to improv. Interesting idea! - Dec 13, 6:06 pm - NEM #31: Michael Manring's Limitless Bass Guitar
Thank you so much for doing this episode. I first discovered Manring's work on Jeff Loomis' solo record where he did a bass solo on "Cashmere Shiv' (my favorite on the record). I then found a recording of him performing 'The Enormous Room' live and immediately connected with the idea and, probably even more, the sensibility of the composition. I really enjoyed hearing his thoughts on composing as a quasi-classical throwback, i.e. pure art with the limitations of appealing to a broad audience (probably my taste in most anything), and improvisation as a contextual, feeling-type judgment. I don't remember you guys discussing practical wisdom in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics VI, but it might be worth reading that part with some other peaces to take about things like improvisation, or contextual/expert behavior. I remember taking a seminar on Action Theory and contemporary Naturalism in Analytic Ethics a couple of years ago when I was an undergrad, and most of our discussion came back to this particular issue about practical wisdom being either based on a perception of appropriateness in context, or in some sense being based on knowledge of rules. If not a PEL episode, maybe you can do an episode on... - Dec 11, 7:12 pm - Episode 204: The Bhagavad Gita's Hindu Theology (Part Two)
St. Fish thinks that our moralities choose us rather than we choose them, philosophical karma? https://soundcloud.com/instituteofartandideas/e125-does-universal-morality-exist-roger-bolton-stanley-fish-myriam-francois-phillip-collins - Dec 10, 4:11 pm - Episode 204: The Bhagavad Gita's Hindu Theology (Citizen Edition)
Is it just me, or does the description of Krishna sound rather Lovecraftian (following the recent episode...)? - Dec 09, 11:32 pm - Episode 204: The Bhagavad Gita's Hindu Theology (Citizen Edition)
I think the no-self vs many particulars is kind of phenomenology vs realism. Our experience is all at once, but analysis requires distinction(s). - Dec 07, 2:24 am - The Personal Philosophy of (i.e. for) Audiobook Narrator Scott Brick
Scott Brick is known for his great audiobook narration. I heard some of his great narration shared by my colleague. I loved it so well. His high toned voice really fits on an audiobook. - Dec 06, 6:23 pm - The Karaoke Dilemma: A White Guy Wants to Sing His Favorite Hip-Hop Songs
Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rwnIqRl4gc - Dec 05, 4:52 am - Episode 139: bell hooks on Racism/Sexism
Is your point something to the effect of "just because someone's aversion to trait X can be conditioned/unconditioned doesn't mean trait X isn't objectively bad"? - Dec 04, 11:31 pm - Episode 204: The Bhagavad Gita's Hindu Theology (Part One)
my old anthro prof on Hinduism and philosophical 'therapy' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjeVJiEqZoE - Dec 03, 11:29 pm - Episode 204: The Bhagavad Gita's Hindu Theology (Part One)
Really enjoyed the episode! Thanks, all. When Mark made the comparative remarks with the Gita and Hegel I was snickering at the Seth in my head calling a name-dropping foul. - Nov 28, 10:55 pm - Combat & Classics #26: Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"
Matt, thanks so much for letting us know! - Nov 28, 10:17 pm - Combat & Classics #26: Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"
I wanted to say thank you for your participation the guys at Salvation Army Rehab really enjoy this networks contributions. - Nov 26, 3:52 pm - Episode 203: Kristeva vs. Lovecraft on Horror and Abjection (Part Two)
might be hard to grasp Kristeva on these matters without some sense of Andre Green, Artaud, and Bataille. be cool if you folks could get Eugene Thacker on to discuss philo and horror or at least read some of his work. http://www.boundary2.org/2017/06/eugene-thacker-weird-eerie-and-monstrous-a-review-of-the-weird-and-the-eerie-by-mark-fisher/ - Nov 26, 1:05 am - Phi Fic #0 "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy
Though the ending is uncertain, to me it seems a finish with a tortured whimper at the whim of self contained Chaos. - Nov 25, 5:22 am - Blaming Buried Prejudice: Neil Levy on implicit bias and moral responsibility
iIf the story of the police officer is set today, then she should at least know that such a thing as racist policing exists and represents a real social problem, that it is causing harm That makes her at least partially responsible for the harm done by her community, and makes her responsible for exploring whether her own attitudes or actions contribute to that harm, If she has not taken the trouble to examine her open implicit bias, then that is a decision she made, and for which she has responsibility. (In this comment, I'm parroting Larry May's book on social existentialism, Sharing Responsibility. But only because it makes sense to me.) - Nov 24, 3:17 pm - Episode 130: Aristotle's "De Anima": What Is Life?
I think you guys are doing great. I am a woman and I find it sickening when feminists make those dumb comments about identity politics, as if women have any different insight into reality than men. We are all humans! Philosophy seeks to understand the soul of the subject and doesn't just look at the surface; neither is it historicist and concerned with race/class/gender. Philosophy delves into the perennial questions. If people want to talk about irrelevant things, they can just read CNN. - Nov 20, 5:02 pm - Episode 203: Kristeva vs. Lovecraft on Horror and Abjection (Part One)
just a head's up for folks who don't know nick is a dark enlightenment sith lord.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAT14h5_lMo - Nov 20, 3:08 pm - Episode 203: Kristeva vs. Lovecraft on Horror and Abjection (Part One)
This was so good. This and the enlightenment episode have been something I've been craving for years. If you wanna read more on this lovecraftian horror/sublime stuff. That's exactly where Nick Land is helpful and fun! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6S-SU0OS_M
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