Continuing on Black Skin White Masks (1952) with guest Lawrence Ware. We've reached the most influential chapter (five), "The Fact of Blackness" (also translated as "The Lived Experience of the Black Man"), where Fanon describes how negative images of blackness in society fix the identity of black folks, trapping them in perpetual self-consciousness, and how Fanon himself Continue Reading …
Ep. 210: Frantz Fanon’s Black Existentialism (Part One)
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. 210: Frantz Fanon’s Black Existentialism (Citizen Edition)
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 …
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XIV: Nominalism, Petrarch, and the Renaissance Origins of Humanism
In the last two articles, we explored the origins of nominalism in an obscure medieval controversy, and the sharp break it represented with past traditions in philosophy. The prior model of knowledge had been based on mathematics, where definitions, deduction, and a priori reason yielded certain knowledge. The certainty of knowledge arrived at through these means created secure Continue Reading …
Precognition of Ep. 87: Sartre
Mark Linsenmayer lays out some themes from Jean-Paul Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism" and the "Bad Faith" chapter (Part 1, Ch. 2) of Being & Nothingness. Listen to the full episode. Read a transcript. Continue Reading …
Precognition of Ep. 87: Sartre
Mark Linsenmayer lays out some themes from Jean-Paul Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism" and the "Bad Faith" chapter (Part 1, Ch. 2) of Being & Nothingness. Listen to the full episode. A transcript is available on our Citizen site's Free Stuff page. Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 80: Heidegger on our Existential Situation
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 …
Episode 80: Heidegger on Our Existential Situation (Citizens Only)
On Martin Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" (1949). What's our place in the world? What is it, really, to be human? Heidegger thought that being human hinges on having a proper relationship to Being. What is Being? Well, it's something more basic than particular beings like people and tables and such, yet it being so close, Heidegger thinks it's hardest to see, and that we Continue Reading …
Topic for #80: Heidegger on our Existential Situation
Listen right now to Seth giving a 10-min summary of Heidegger's essay via a new "Precognition" mini-sode. Back in episode 32 (over two years ago!) we covered the project of Martin Heidegger's most famous work, Being and Time, composed early in his career. (Incidentally, I see a new and exciting looking translation of this on Amazon that you may want to pick up.) We'll next Continue Reading …
Not School: Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism”
Featuring Seth Paskin, Rian Mitch, Daniel McKay, Marilynn Lawrence, Alyson Jones. Recorded March 14, 2013. Recorded some months prior to our episode on this text, this discussion works through Heidegger's idea that Humanism as a concept was inextricably tied to the history of Western metaphysics that sees man as a animal rationale, language as techne and understands Being Continue Reading …