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Ep. 224: Kierkegaard Critiques the Present Age (Part One)

August 26, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

On Soren Kierkegaard's essay "The Present Age" (1846) and Hubert Dreyfus’s "Nihilism on the Information Highway: Anonymity vs. Commitment in the Present Age" (2004). What's wrong with our society? Kierkegaard saw the advent of the press and gossip culture as engendering a systematic passivity and shallowness in his fellows, and Dreyfus thinks this is an even more apt  Continue Reading …

Ep. 224: Kierkegaard Critiques the Present Age (Citizen Edition)

August 26, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 5 Comments

On Soren Kierkegaard's essay "The Present Age" (1846) and Hubert Dreyfus’s "Nihilism on the Information Highway: Anonymity vs. Commitment in the Present Age" (2004). What's wrong with our society? Kierkegaard saw the advent of the press and gossip culture as engendering a systematic passivity and shallowness in his fellows, and Dreyfus thinks this is an even more apt  Continue Reading …

Authentically Connect: An Author Interview with Dr. Gordon Marino

June 27, 2019 by Natalie Kopp 1 Comment

Kierkegaard instead of Prozac? That is the suggestion of Dr. Gordon Marino—leading Kierkegaard scholar, professional boxing coach, and author of The Existentialist's Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age (Harper Collins, 2018). Marino is no stranger to the wicked twists and pulls of anxiety and depression, and neither, he argues, were the  Continue Reading …

Ep. 212: Sartre on Literature (Part One)

April 1, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

On Jean-Paul Sartre's What is Literature? (1948), ch. 1 and 2. What's the purpose of literature? Why write prose as opposed to poetry? Sartre was fending off criticism that his prose was too overtly political. Kant's view of art was still dominant, according to which good art is "disinterested," i.e., the spectator is supposed to appreciate the pure play of form. So if an  Continue Reading …

Episode 212: Sartre on Literature (Citizen Edition)

April 1, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Jean-Paul Sartre's What is Literature? (1948), chs. 1 and 2. What's the purpose of literature? Why write prose as opposed to poetry? Sartre was fending off criticism that his prose was too overtly political. Kant's view of art was still dominant, according to which good art is "disinterested," i.e., the spectator is supposed to appreciate the pure play of form. So if an  Continue Reading …

Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part Three)

March 25, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Moving finally on to Jean-Paul Sartre's "Black Orpheus" (1948), where he introduces a book of black poetry by praising its revolutionary spirit as embodied in "negritude." This continues our discussion from Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew (parts one and two), which criticized Jews whose reactions to racism he deemed inauthentic. "Black Orpheus" presents a similar story, but put  Continue Reading …

Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part Two)

March 18, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

Continuing on Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and "Black Orpheus" (1948). We move into the latter half of the book, which deals with the Jews themselves. Though Sartre stresses that inauthenticity is more common among the majority protestant population of France, the persecuted Jews are not immune, and their persecuted  Continue Reading …

Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part One)

March 11, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

On Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and "Black Orpheus" (1948). These are the essays that Frantz Fanon (see ep. 210) was most responding to, and they address the same question: How can we best psychologically understand racism and reactions to it? Sartre's chief analytical tool is the accusation of inauthenticity: The  Continue Reading …

Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Citizen Edition)

March 10, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

On Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and "Black Orpheus" (1948). These are the essays that Frantz Fanon (see ep. 210) was most responding to, and they address the same question: How can we best psychologically understand racism and reactions to it? Sartre's chief analytical tool is the accusation of inauthenticity: The  Continue Reading …

Ep. 210: Frantz Fanon’s Black Existentialism (Citizen Edition)

February 24, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Black Skin White Masks (1952). How does growing up in a racist society mess people up? Fanon was born in the French-colonized Martinique and educated as a psychoanalyst in France where he studied under Merleau-Ponty, among others. The book was proposed (and rejected) as Fanon's dissertation, and claims to be a "clinical study," though it explicitly avoids spelling out its  Continue Reading …

Ep. 205: Suicide with Dr. Drew (Durkheim et al) (Citizen Edition)

December 16, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer 12 Comments

We are rejoined by Drew Pinsky to discuss philosophical, psychological, and sociological readings on suicide. Is suicide ever morally permissible? If it's a symptom of mental illness rather than a chosen behavior, is it even appropriate to morally evaluate it? Last time Drew joined us, he helped us add clinical depth to an area that we'd already talked about  Continue Reading …

Episode 164: Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” on Perfection (Part Two)

May 22, 2017 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

More on the novel with guest Corey Mohler, considering Dostoyevsky explicitly as an existentialist in terms of his analysis of the crisis of meaning and his consequent views on religion. Listen to part 1 first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. End song: "Don Quixote" (acoustic, 2010) by Nik Kershaw, as interviewed on the Nakedly Examined Music podcast #37.  Continue Reading …

Episode 164: Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” on Perfection (Part One)

May 15, 2017 by Mark Linsenmayer 10 Comments

On Fyodor Dostoyevsky's philosophical novel from 1869. Could a morally perfect person survive in the modern world? Is all this "modernity," which so efficiently computes our desires and provides mechanisms to fulfill them, actually suited to achieve human flourishing? Dostoyevsky (whose name, incidentally, can correctly be spelled with either one "y" or two... the  Continue Reading …

Ep. 164: Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” on Perfection (Citizen Edition)

May 14, 2017 by Mark Linsenmayer 6 Comments

On Fyodor Dostoyevsky's philosophical novel from 1869. Could a morally perfect person survive in the modern world? Is all this "modernity," which so efficiently computes our desires and provides mechanisms to fulfill them, actually suited to achieve human flourishing? Dostoyevsky (whose name, incidentally can correctly be spelled with either one "y" or two... the translation  Continue Reading …

Bojack Horseman and Aristotelian Self-Love

November 1, 2016 by reqdevtest 1 Comment

The latest Wisecrack philosophy video takes on one of my favorite shows of all time: Bojack Horseman. Under the pretext of comedy, colorful animation, and talking animals, the Netflix original sneaks in heartbreaking moments of raw human vulnerability. Its main character—the eponymous Bojack Horseman—is a charismatic, depressed, washed-out actor who in his chaotic search for  Continue Reading …

Episode 146: Emmanuel Levinas on Overcoming Solitude

September 5, 2016 by Mark Linsenmayer 11 Comments

More Levinas, working this time through Time and the Other (1948). What is it for a person to exist? What individuates one person from another, making us into selves instead of just part of the causal net of events? Why would someone possibly think that these are real, non-obvious questions that need to be addressed? Levinas gives us a phenomenological progression from the  Continue Reading …

Ep. 146: Emmanuel Levinas on Overcoming Solitude (Citizen Edition)

September 4, 2016 by Mark Linsenmayer 5 Comments

More Levinas, working this time through Time and the Other (1948). What is it for a person to exist? What individuates one person from another, making us into selves instead of just part of the causal net of events? Why would someone possibly think that these are real, non-obvious questions that need to be addressed? Levinas gives us a phenomenological progression from the  Continue Reading …

Episode 145: Emmanuel Levinas: Why Be Ethical?

August 22, 2016 by Mark Linsenmayer 8 Comments

On "Ethics as First Philosophy" (1984). More existentialist ethics, with a Jewish twist this time! Seth rejoins Mark and Wes to discuss this difficult essay, with a bit of "Time and the Other" (1948) and "There Is: Existence Without Existents" (1946) thrown in, too. Levinas thinks that the whole train of Western thought with the advance of science and all has left us too  Continue Reading …

Ep. 145: Emmanuel Levinas: Why Be Ethical? (Citizen Edition)

August 19, 2016 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

On "Ethics as First Philosophy" (1984). More existentialist ethics, with a Jewish twist this time! Seth rejoins Mark and Wes to discuss this difficult essay, with a bit of "Time and the Other" (1948) and "There Is: Existence Without Existents" (1946) thrown in, too. Levinas thinks that the whole train of Western thought with the advance of science and all has left us too  Continue Reading …

Not School Intro Group: Camus’s “Myth of Sisyphus”

August 19, 2016 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Brian Wilson leads a seminar on Albert Camus's essay "The Myth of Sissyphus," deepening our look into Camus following PEL ep. 4. With Jim Rice and Preston Price. Recorded 8/8/16.  Continue Reading …

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