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

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Continuing on “The Present Age” (1846), plus Hubert Dreyfus’s “Nihilism on the Information Highway: Anonymity vs. Commitment in the Present Age” (2004) with guest John Ganz.

Does K’s critique actually apply to our present age? We address K’s view of humor, romance, authenticity, actual community vs. “the public,” the leveling that occurs without anyone specific actually doing it, and the virtue of silence.

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End song: “Wry Observer” by Aaron David Gleason, as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #71.

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

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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 description of the Internet Age. With guest John Ganz.

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

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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 description of the Internet Age. With guest John Ganz.

End song: “Wry Observer” by Aaron David Gleason, as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #71.

Foucault and Heidegger

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So there was a longish (8 minutes) bit that I cut from the episode where I asked Katie whether Foucault’s notions of Power and Knowledge correlated in some way with Heidegger’s notions of Being and Truth.  I was incoherent and Katie understandably treated the question as the nonsense that it was.  She has since addressed the Heidegger/Foucault connection in the Continue Reading …

Dreyfus on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Artificial Intelligence

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[Brad is a frequent contributor to our Facebook page, so we invited him to post on the blog – welcome him!] I found this to be an interesting video which relates to both the Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty episodes. In the video, Hubert Dreyfus discusses Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and the philosophical implications for artificial intelligence. Dreyfus has long been a critic of Continue Reading …

Science Proves Heidegger (Partially) Correct?

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Irony so overwhelming I want to tweet about it with a #Heidegger hashtag: A scientific study recently found empirical support for Heidegger’s concept of zuhanden, which was discussed in the Being and Time podcast.* Wired Science covered the story last year, but the study itself is short enough that you can get through it during a lunch break. To quote the summary Continue Reading …

Dreyfus on Heidegger

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The preeminent Heidegger scholar in the US (and perhaps in the English language), is Hubert Dreyfus at the University of Berkeley.  Daniel did a post for the Husserl podcast linking to a series of videos of him being interviewed by Bryan McGee here.  In that series he actually talks more about Heidegger, so it’s worth revisiting for the Heidegger episode Continue Reading …

Episode 32: Heidegger: What is “Being?” (Citizens Only)

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Discussing Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), mostly the intro and ch. 1 and 2 of Part 1.

When philosophers try to figure out what really exists (God? matter? numbers?), Heidegger thinks they’ve forgotten a question that really should come first: what is it to exist? He thinks that instead of asking “What is Being?” we ask, as in a scientific context, “what is this thing?” This approach then poisons our ability to understand ourselves or the world that we as human beings actually inhabit, as opposed to the abstraction that science makes out of this.

End song: “Find You Out” by New People. Download the album.

PREVIEW-Episode 32: Heidegger: What is “Being?”

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Discussing Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), mostly the intro and ch. 1 and 2 of Part 1.

When philosophers try to figure out what really exists (God? matter? numbers?), Heidegger thinks they’ve forgotten a question that really should come first: what is it to exist? He thinks that instead of asking “What is Being?” we ask, as in a scientific context, “what is this thing?” This approach then poisons our ability to understand ourselves or the world that we as human beings actually inhabit, as opposed to the abstraction that science makes out of this.

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About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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