Phi Fic means Philosophical Fiction. Each episode, we have a candid dicussion on a heady work of of fiction, full of SPOILERS. Join host Nathan Hanks and readers Cezary Baraniecki, Daniel St. Pierre, Laura Davis, and Mary Claire, plus the occasional guest.
In 1911, the great writer Thomas Mann (1875–1955) went on vacation with his family to a seaside resort in Venice, Italy. There, he came across a beautiful 14-year-old boy and it inspired his great novella Death in Venice. This experience sets up the central struggle in the story: where eros—or erotic love as seen in Plato’s dialogue Symposium—can lead one to recognize beauty in Continue Reading …
How Plato’s “Phaedrus” Influenced Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”
Death in Venice is one complex piece of writing. Besides dealing with homoeroticism (in 1911) and approaching complex questions of ethics, psychology, and aesthetics, the novella also manages to reference Nietzsche and Plato while making us empathize with someone who some might (crudely) just call a pedophile. Gustave Von Aschenbach, the protagonist, is an aging, famous Continue Reading …
Art and Beauty: A Marital History
Art and beauty have a peculiar kind of relationship and have been uneasily coupled since perhaps the beginning of human history. This close relationship received its most formal expression with the 18th century aestheticians. But art and beauty have always been separable, as the 20th century demonstrated, even if the extent of their separability has been exaggerated. Art always Continue Reading …
The Aesthetics of Football
I was a painfully unathletic child, more likely to be found in a ballet class than on a baseball diamond. I could neither dribble nor shoot a basketball, an especially excruciating deficiency for a black kid growing up in the inner city. Football (the American version) was my particular nemesis. Not was the game itself frightening and dangerous, but the rules and scoring were Continue Reading …
Soul Dust: A Well Supported Stab At The “Why” Of Consciousness.
Nicholas Humphrey, professor of psychology at The London School Of Economics, is a leading investigator of what philosopher David Chalmers dubbed the “hard problem” of consciousness. His Recent book Soul Dust approaches the second part of the Hard Problem: why human beings have consciousness, and why consciousness should have evolved at all. It is an excellent read for Continue Reading …
Episode 105: Kant: What Is Beauty? (Citizen Edition)
On Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790), Pt. 1, Book 1. Kant thinks that finding something beautiful is different than merely liking it. It's a certain kind of liking, not dependent on your idiosyncratic tastes (like your preference for one color or flavor or tone over another) or on your moral opinions. He wants these judgments to be subjective in the sense that Continue Reading …
Episode 105: Kant: What Is Beauty?
On Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790), Pt. 1, Book 1. Kant thinks that finding something beautiful is different than merely liking it. It's a certain kind of liking, not dependent on your idiosyncratic tastes (like your preference for one color or flavor or tone over another) or on your moral opinions. He wants these judgments to be subjective in the sense that Continue Reading …
Episode 77: Santayana on the Appreciation of Beauty (Citizens Only)
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 …
PREVIEW-Episode 77: Santayana on the Appreciation of Beauty
This is a short preview of the full episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more Continue Reading …
Topic for #77: Santayana on the Appreciation of Beauty
On 5/16 the regular foursome recorded a discussion of The Sense of Beauty (1896) by George Santayana. What is "the beautiful?" Do we have a "sense" by which we grasp it comparable to what Hume describes as the moral sense? Listen to the episode. Where most pre-Humean philosophers considered beauty an objective quality in objects that people then can grasp (think about Continue Reading …
Science Determines Beauty
This Reuters video (and I'm sorry about the 30 second commercial that you have to sit through to get to it) depicts "Britain's Most Natural Beauty," where the contest "wasn't just a matter of subjective beauty, but settled with science. Researchers said that the distance between facial features, and the width and length of the face are deciding factors for perfection." Some of Continue Reading …