The massive flow of immigrants in Europe has led to predictions about future culture clashes because the values and mindsets of mainly Muslim immigrants are said to be incompatible with those of Western Europeans. The fact that most immigrants are religious is a main factor because in secular Europe the firm belief in God or literal interpretations of scriptures tend to be met Continue Reading …
What Do Existentialists Think about Love?
In this video, philosopher Skye Cleary introduces her new book, Existentialism and Romantic Love. If you skip past the rather awkward acting of Simone de Beauvoir’s play Who Shall Die, from about the sixth minute onward things become interesting. In a style that has become her own—treading lightly (and gracefully) between scholarly analysis and a lighter, more popular 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 …
Not School This February
Hey, there. Nathan Hanks here with a February update on the Partially Examined Life's Not School and Citizen's Forum. While the semesters are starting, PEL Members are also meeting and talking with others about whatever is of interest. Currently there is a discussion in the forum on Nietzche's concept of "The Death of God" and a conversation in the group for Consciousness Continue Reading …
Is Morality Ethical?
“Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural." (Nietzsche) Nietzsche and Spinoza both challenged the validity of morality based on transcendent or universal values. They both argued that moral restrictions are based on weakness: Nietzsche via enslavement by harboring vengeance or "resentment" against life ( Genealogy of Morals), Spinoza via enslavement to passive Continue Reading …
Dec. Not School: Sartre, Joyce, Nietzsche, Theater, Natural Law
For this post, I give you some theme music by a very talented musician named Sumner McKane. I chose this nice little tune not for the music itself (deserving though it may be), but for its title: "The Winter I Got Louder than Bombs and Standing on a Beach." I'm going to assume this title reveals that Sumner has memories (and possible nostalgia) for a time in his youth when he Continue Reading …
The Existentialist Self in the World: Doubt, Being and Caring
If from continental philosophy you throw out transcendental phenomenology and older idealist trappings–transcendental subjects and so on–you are left with a system which still has two components: the world and the self. It was the relationship between these two that took hold as the major problem for 20th C. continental philosophy. The upshot of the first phase of the Continue Reading …
Nietzsche the Hydra
[Editor's Note: Thanks to Randall Miron for this post. Randall's a long-time audio editor of ours and has been helping edit blog posts here recently as well.] In his short book Nietzsche, subtitled “Nietzsche’s Voices,” Ronald Hayman argues that, “Like Kierkegaard, who made copious use of pseudonyms and personae, Nietzsche was exploring his ambivalence.” This theme is Continue Reading …
November Not School Groups
Here are the Not School group activities for the month of November for PEL Citizens. Intro Readings in Philosophy: Finally! We have a Nietzsche discussion in Not School. They will be reading the On the Genealogy of Morals. Join up and reduce to sour grapes all of your precious finger wagging. See Hillary Szydlowski's plug here. Philosophy of Mind: We are beginning our Continue Reading …
Is Philosophy Better Than Art?
If you believe Plato, then the answer is "yes". If all of philosophy is a footnote to Plato, then the artists have been subordinated to the philosophers for about 25 centuries. According to Plato's Republic, especially the last section, the artists present a danger to society and to your soul. Two of my favorite thinkers disagree with Plato and Socrates on this point. Friedrich Continue Reading …
Nietzsche and the “Death of God.”
In connection with Episode 61, I submit the following discussion by The Big Ideas podcast concerning Nietsche's famous but often misunderstood claim that "God is dead." The several participants in the discussion each address Nietzsche's pronouncement from different angles. Giles Fraser argues that the "God is dead" revelation is that humanity can only become free if it Continue Reading …
Badiou: Wittgenstein and Nietzsche as Anti-Philosophy
Listening to the guys and Philosophy Bro on the last episode, I want to interject that actually I see Wittgenstein as a bridge between analytic and continental philosophy for reasons beyond his being Austrian. What he brackets out and why is crucial to his project, which does become "anti-philosophical" in a broad sense. Anti-philosophy is defined by both Alain Badiou and Continue Reading …
Foucault Was No Relativist
[Editor's Note: We're pleased to have some more blog input here from Getty, the guest from our Hume/Smith episode, who wrote his undergrad thesis on Foucault and was in line to be a guest on this one himself. You can blame me for the image, which I found here.] Was Foucault a relativist about truth? Truth-relativism is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, only Continue Reading …
In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens
http://youtu.be/p4rF5mspaVk Watch on YouTube. Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday after a punishing bout with cancer, and I'd like to take the liberty of inserting a brief memoriam. I do this in a philosophy blog partially because PEL recently discussed one of his books. But mostly I do it because I would hate to think anyone remembers Hitchens as nothing more than a "New Continue Reading …
Walter Kaufmann Lectures on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre
Via openculture.com, check out these lectures by Walter Kaufmann, who did most of the good Nietzsche translations you'd pick up nowadays and was the teacher of Frithjof Bergmann whose name I drop a lot on the show (who was in turn teacher of Robert Solomon). -Mark Linsenmayer Continue Reading …
What’s at stake in the Heidegger/Nazism debate?
So I have been established, or established myself, as the Heidegger 'guy' on this blog/podcast. Why? I read a bunch of his stuff in grad school, studied with one of his students (at the time a professor) in Germany, and wrote my Master's thesis on "Ereignis". Wes just sent me a link to this review at The Time Higher Education of a new book by Emmanuel Faye on Heidegger Continue Reading …
Episode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway?
Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?). We go through Nietzsche's convoluted and historically improbable stories about about the transition from master to slave morality and the origin of bad conscience. Why does he diss Continue Reading …
Episode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway?
Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?). We go through Nietzsche's convoluted and historically improbable stories about about the transition from master to slave morality and the origin of bad conscience. Why does he diss Continue Reading …
Partially Examined Film Review: “Stupidity”
We are exuberant fellows and have long discussed using this blog as a BLOG and not just as a podcast accompaniment, so I'm going to initiate an idea I've been wanting to try out, sort of... You see, I've wanted to go beyond the bounds of the podcast and tell folks about the philosophy books I've stumbled over of late, largely in trying to figure out things for us to talk Continue Reading …