There's quite the smorgasbord for Uber-Mensches (and Uber-Mensch-ladies) this March for folks considering a Not School experience. Sign up and come on into the Citizens' Forum for proposals, and check out the already-established Not School groups. #leviathan #topical #besticandowithcreativecommonsphotos You want Thomas Hobbes? You get Thomas Hobbes. Keegan Venzomeran Continue Reading …
New in Not School: Niebuhr, Kant, Zizek, Lovecraft
Hey everyone, Nathan Hanks here with an update from the Partially Examined Life's Not School. Just sign up for PEL Citizenship and you'll be able to access all the group pages and weigh in on new proposals. You'll find other members in the Citizen's Forum with these new group proposals to join in October: The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr Critique of Pure Continue Reading …
New from Not School this September
Hey everyone, Nathan Hanks here with the latest from Not School for listeners and members this September. Anyone can listen to this new highlight from Philosophical Fiction #15 on "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov. And Members, we have a bunch of new group proposals to join, several confirmed groups to check out, and plenty of time to propose your own Continue Reading …
Our New Citizen Feed, August Not School Doings, and a New Mayor of Not School
[Editor's Note: Thanks very much to everyone who's become a PEL Citizen. Your support has made our ongoing ambitions to produce this podcast viable, now with more frequent episodes, with a live show coming up in Pittsburgh in September, and we were able last week to send Seth to a big podcasting conference last week (we were nominated for but did not win an award). We've also Continue Reading …
Not School Fiction Group: Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer” (Phi-Fi #14)
Featuring Nathan Hanks, Daniel, Cezary, Laura, and Mary, on Walter Percy's novel The Moviegoer about "existential crisis in beautiful language... with Southern charm." Mentionables: "I wish I could marry Walker Percy," The Windup Bird Chronicles, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and "How the movies mess it up." Join the group to participate in future discussions! Continue Reading …
Not School Fiction Group: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (Phi-Fi #13)
Featuring Nathan Hanks, Daniel, Laura, and Mary. The story is about one special day in an American "village" that turns horrific and ends with, as was said, "the most perfect last line." We partially spoil the story, use adult language, and wander into politics and religion. Recorded July 19, 2015. "Bill," Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box and felt Continue Reading …
Not School: C. S. Peirce’s “The Fixation of Belief”
Featuring David Prentiss, Tim Clarke, Peter Oppenheim. Recorded July 19, 2015. "The Fixation of Belief" was the first of four essays he wrote for Popular Science Monthly in 1877-8. In the essay, Peirce introduces his concepts of belief, doubt, and inquiry. He also proposes four types of intellectual activity that result in fixed beliefs. His purpose in this is to show that Continue Reading …
Listen to Phi-Fi Discuss ‘The Lottery’ Sunday, July 19th
Our Philosophical Fiction group in PEL's Not School are getting together this Sunday to discuss Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." You can ask questions and listen live, July 19th at 12pm(cst), via Google Hangouts: https://plus.google.com/events/cacpmko958gpvg1ejapacp25roc?authkey=CKCSpKumwPXn9wE Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her Continue Reading …
Not School Fiction Group: Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” (Phi-Fi #12)
Featuring Nathan Hanks, Daniel, Cezary, Laura, and Mary. Recorded May 31, 2015. The story is about a traveler visiting a penal colony who meets the officer in charge of a justice system. It's tense, violent, surprising, and "kind of like a Tarantino movie." Read more about it. Join the Philosophical Fiction group! Continue Reading …
Not School: Thomas Sheehan’s Historical Jesus Stanford Lectures
Featuring Mark Linsenmayer, Michael Burgess, Tara Leigh Bell, John Ludders, Chris Eyre, Benjamin Feddersen. Recorded April 26, 2015, 1 hr., 50 min. The conversation had three parts, covering the following questions: 1. Does Sheehan represent a legitimate academic consensus? His story is pretty damning re. the historical accuracy of the traditional Jesus story, and he Continue Reading …
Not School Theater Group: Philip Auslander on Post-Modern Theater
Discussing the first three essays in From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism. The conversation touches on the therapeutic value of catharsis, deconstruction in theater, and Willem Dafoe's acting methods. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, Carlos Franke. Recorded April 19, 2015. As the back of the book says, these essays map a "transition from the Continue Reading …
Not School Fiction Group: Virginia Woolf’s “To The Lighthouse” (Phi-Fi #11)
Featuring Nathan Hanks, Daniel, Cezary, Laura, and Dan J. Recorded April 5, 2015. Talking about time, beauty, and life in Woolf's 1927 novel. Read more about it. Join the Philosophical Fiction group! 'And that's the end,' she said, and she saw in his eyes, as the interest in the story died away in them, something else take its place; something wondering, pale, like the Continue Reading …
Not School: Karl Jaspers’s “Truth and Symbol”
Featuring Mark Linsenmayer, Michael Burgess, Tara Leigh Bell, John Ludders, Chris Eyre, Benjamin Feddersen. Recorded April 26, 2015, 1 hr., 50 min. Jaspers thinks that we should neither live as if the objective world the sole object of real knowledge (per natural science) or to act like all we can know is ourselves (per Cartesian doubt) but to acknowledge that both are part Continue Reading …
Not School Theater Group: Jerzy Grotowski’s Sourcebook
The first of two discussions on Jerzy Grotowski, the famous Polish director whose productions first stunned audiences in the 1960s with their distinctive physicality. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, Carlos Franke. Recorded January 4, 2015. Studying philosophy in theater primarily through texts is obviously somewhat indelicate. Plays are meant to be experienced Continue Reading …
Not School Theater Group: Jerzy Grotowski’s “Akropolis”
Concluding the Philosophy and Theater Group's two-month foray into the Polish director's work; listen to part one first. Covering the play Akropolis, which was based on Stanisław Wyspiański’s dramatic epic poem, as well as more of the Grotowski Sourcebook. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, and Carlos Franke. Recorded January 4, 2015. Read more about the play. You can Continue Reading …
Not School Fiction Group: Michel Houellebecq’s “The Map and the Territory” (Phi-Fi #10)
Featuring Nathan Hanks, Daniel, and Kimberly. Recorded December 12, 2014. We discuss the story of Jed Martin, a man at the “at the beginning of the third millenium” whose successful life as an artist pales against his lonely life as a human. "You can work alone for years, it's actually the only way to work, truth be told; but there always comes a moment when you feel the Continue Reading …
Not School Fiction Group: James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (Phi-Fi #4)
Featuring Nathan Hanks, Daniel, Philip and Laura. Recorded Mar. 9, 2014. Not everyone had finished the book, but we all got a sense of the richness and depth of Joyce's expanding story of the phenomena of a single day. There are Irish folk songs, stunning prose, a style weaving between the inner-thoughts of characters, and content considered blasphemous and obscene in its Continue Reading …
Not School Fiction Group: Roberto Bolano’s “Distant Star” (Phi-Fi #9)
Featuring Nathan Hanks, Philip, Daniel, Dan J., Kimberly, and Cezary. Recorded November 9, 2014. A novel about Chile, Art, and literally killer poets. That is how [Carlos Wieder, the sky-writing murderer poet] was; he believed that Nature intervenes actively in history, shaping it, buffeting our lives, although in our pitiful ignorance we usually attribute these blows to Continue Reading …
Not School Theater Group: Victor Turner’s “From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play”
Victor Turner was a true inter-disciplinarian, and this book draws from his own work in anthropology, as well as philosophy, drama, and sociology. Turner believed that acting out the rituals of other cultures provides a rich, sympathetic connection to them that can't be accessed from detached observation or the perusal of data. Turner saw drama and ritual all over the place in Continue Reading …
Not School Theater Group: Antonin Artaud’s “The Theater and Its Double”
Two discussions are combined here about theater and consciousness. Artaud's views are deeply metaphysical yet rooted in the carnality and cruelty of material life. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, and Carlos Franke. Recorded August 17 and 31, 2014. Without an element of cruelty at the foundation of every spectacle, the theater is not possible. In the state of degeneracy Continue Reading …