• Log In

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

Subscribe on Android Spotify Google Podcasts audible patreon
  • Home
  • Podcast
    • PEL Network Episodes
    • Publicly Available PEL Episodes
    • Paywalled and Ad-Free Episodes
    • PEL Episodes by Topic
    • Nightcap
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Pretty Much Pop
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • (sub)Text
    • Phi Fic Podcast
    • Combat & Classics
    • Constellary Tales
  • Blog
  • About
    • PEL FAQ
    • Meet PEL
    • About Pretty Much Pop
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • Meet Phi Fic
    • Listener Feedback
    • Links
  • Join
    • Become a Citizen
    • Join Our Mailing List
    • Log In
  • Donate
  • Store
    • Episodes
    • Swag
    • Everything Else
    • Cart
    • Checkout
    • My Account
  • Contact
  • Mailing List

Ep. 300: Nietzsche on Relating to History (Part Two)

September 19, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Subscribe to get Parts 1 and 2 ad-free, plus a supporter exclusive Part 3, which you can preview. Continuing from part one on “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874), we get into the antiquarian use of history and the critical approach to history and Nietzsche's humanistic goals in his essay. One surprising notion that Nietzsche throws in is that even  Continue Reading …

Ep. 300: Nietzsche on Relating to History (Part Three for Supporters)

September 17, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

Concluding on “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874), featuring Mark, Wes, and Dylan. Begin with part one. We talk more about Nietzsche's warning against information overload, where history (including artistic history and philosophic history) can overwhelm current creative capabilities. Half-digested knowledge can just weigh us down, so we want to use  Continue Reading …

Ep. 300: Nietzsche on Relating to History (Part One)

September 12, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free. In this special live-streamed show, we discuss Friedrich Nietzsche's “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874), which is Untimely Meditations #2, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. What is the healthiest way to relate to our history? More generally, should we live lives driven purely by reason,  Continue Reading …

Ep. 300: Nietzsche on Relating to History (Part Two for Supporters)

September 10, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Continuing from part one on “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874), we get into the antiquarian use of history and the critical approach to history and Nietzsche's humanistic goals in his essay. One surprising notion that Nietzsche throws in is that even though we have described him in the past as a defender of human instincts, here he describes our human  Continue Reading …

Ep. 300: Nietzsche on Relating to History (Part One for Supporters)

September 10, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

In this special live-streamed show, we discuss Friedrich Nietzsche's “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874), which is Untimely Meditations #2, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. What is the healthiest way to relate to our history? More generally, should we live lives driven purely by reason, which includes a mature awareness of as much of our culture's  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History Part XXXIII: David Christian, Maps of Time

April 28, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

Of all the patterns that occur at many different scales, the most fundamental is the existence of pattern itself. –David Christian David Christian (1946– ) is an Australian-American historian and public intellectual who is best known for his work on behalf of Big History—a name that is something of an understatement, as Big Historians intend nothing less than a grand synthesis  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History Part XXXII: Peter Novick—That Noble Dream (Part II)

April 21, 2016 by Daniel Halverson Leave a Comment

This article continues an earlier discussion of Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question in the American Historical Profession. If the collapse of liberalism and the Great Depression provided powerful motivations for insurgent historians to question the time-honored ideals of the profession, the moral certainty of the Second World War, and then by (the early  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History Part XXXII: Peter Novick—That Noble Dream

April 14, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 2 Comments

Peter Novick (1934–2012) was an American intellectual historian who is probably best remembered today for That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession (1988.) Though controversial (then and now), it is a standard text for American graduate students in history, and is therefore worth spending some time with, both for its history and its  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History XXXI: Mircea Eliade—Cosmos and History

April 7, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 3 Comments

This mythical drama reminded men that suffering is never final; that death is always followed by resurrection; that every defeat is annulled and transcended by the final victory. –Mircea Eliade Although his legacy has been controversial, Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) was probably the most important historian of religion in the twentieth century. He studied in Bucharest and  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History XXX: William McNeill and World History

March 31, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 5 Comments

Historiography that aspires to get closer and closer to the documents—all the documents and nothing but the documents—is merely moving closer to incoherence, chaos, and meaninglessness. –William McNeill William McNeill (1917– ) is an American historian best known for his books The Rise of the West (1963) and Plagues and Peoples (1977). He spent most of his career at the  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History XXIX: Hayden White: Postmodernism in History

March 24, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 7 Comments

Knowledge is a product of wrestling not only with the 'facts' but with ourselves. Where alternative visions of reality are not entertained as genuine possibilities, the product of thought tends toward blandness and unearned self-confidence. –Hayden White Hayden White (1928– ) is an American literary theorist and historiographer whose work is strongly associated with the  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History XXVIII: Arthur Danto’s Narrative and Knowledge

March 17, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 4 Comments

Narrative structures penetrate our consciousness of events in ways parallel to those in which … theories penetrate observations in science. –Arthur Danto Arthur Danto (1924–2013) was an American artist and analytic philosopher who is best known for his work in the philosophy of aesthetics. He also made an important contribution to the philosophy of history, however, in his  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History Part XXVII: Marshall Hodgson: Conscience in History

March 10, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 3 Comments

If the modern technical age is to remain human, it cannot overlook the truth that our ancestors have left with us. –Marshall G.S. Hodgson Marshall G.S. Hodgson (1922–1968) was a World historian and Islamicist who has had a secondary but persistent and insightful influence on the development of both disciplines. He was a vegetarian, pacifist Quaker from a middle-class  Continue Reading …

Jurgen Habermas and the Public Sphere

March 2, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 5 Comments

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.  Continue Reading …

Carl Becker: The Heavenly City of Eighteenth-Century Philosophers

February 24, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 5 Comments

In a very real sense it may be said of the eighteenth century that it was an age of faith as well as of reason, and of the thirteenth century that it was an age of reason as well as of faith. –Carl Becker In The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (1932) the famous American historian Carl Becker (1873–1945) offered an influential interpretation of the  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History Part XXVI: Will Durant: The Story of Civilization

February 18, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding. –Will Durant Will Durant (1885–1981) was an American philosopher and historian who is best remembered for his still-classic introduction to philosophy, The Story of Philosophy (1926), and an 11-volume history of Eurasia, The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), which he wrote  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History Part XXV: Karl Popper and Prophecy in the Social Sciences

February 11, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 4 Comments

The belief in historical destiny is sheer superstition. There can be no prediction of the course of human history by scientific or any other rational methods. –Karl Popper Karl Popper (1902 – 1994) was one of the most famous, and probably the most influential, philosopher of science of the twentieth century. He grew up in the Vienna of Freud, Wittgenstein, the Logical  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History Part XXIV: Fernand Braudel and the Annales School

February 4, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

I remember a night near Bahia when I was enveloped in a firework display or phosphorescent fireflies; their pale lights glowed, went out, shone again, all without piercing the night with any true illumination. So it is with events; beyond their glow, darkness prevails. –Fernand Braudel Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School (c.  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History Part XXIII: R.G. Collingwood and Neo-Idealism

January 28, 2016 by Daniel Halverson 10 Comments

All history is the history of thought. –R.G. Collingwood R.G. Collingwood (1889–1943) was an English philosopher, archeologist, and historian of Roman Britain whose views, expressed in The Idea of History (1946) have dominated much historical thinking in the twentieth century. Along with his contemporary, Benedetto Croce, and other philosophers of the “Neo-Idealist” school,  Continue Reading …

Philosophy of History Part XXII: Carl Gustav Hempel and the Return of Positivist History

December 17, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 4 Comments

If you cannot predict, you have not explained. –Carl Gustav Hempel Carl Gustav Hempel (1905–1997) was a German-American philosopher of science and a prominent member of the Vienna Circle. These philosophers were called logical positivists—“logical” because they argued that scientific laws could and should be reformulated as logically necessary deductions from a given set of  Continue Reading …

Next Page »

PEL Live Show 2023

Brothers K Live Show

Citizenship has its Benefits

Become a PEL Citizen
Become a PEL Citizen, and get access to all paywalled episodes, early and ad-free, including exclusive Part 2's for episodes starting September 2020; our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more causally; a community of fellow learners, and more.

Rate and Review

Nightcap

Listen to Nightcap
On Nightcap, listen to the guys respond to listener email and chat more casually about their lives, the making of the show, current events and politics, and anything else that happens to come up.

Subscribe to Email Updates

Select list(s):

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Support PEL

Buy stuff through Amazon and send a few shekels our way at no extra cost to you.

Tweets by PartiallyExLife

Recent Comments

  • John Heath on PEL Eulogies Nightcap Late March 2023
  • Randy Strader on Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part Two)
  • Wes Alwan on PEL Nightcap February 2023
  • Kunal on Why Don’t We Like Idealism?
  • Ronald Cogen on Ep. 311: Understanding the Dao De Jing (Part One)

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

Become a PEL Citizen!

As a PEL Citizen, you’ll have access to a private social community of philosophers, thinkers, and other partial examiners where you can join or initiate discussion groups dedicated to particular readings, participate in lively forums, arrange online meet-ups for impromptu seminars, and more. PEL Citizens also have free access to podcast transcripts, guided readings, episode guides, PEL music, and other citizen-exclusive material. Click here to join.

Blog Post Categories

  • (sub)Text
  • Aftershow
  • Announcements
  • Audiobook
  • Book Excerpts
  • Citizen Content
  • Citizen Document
  • Citizen News
  • Close Reading
  • Combat and Classics
  • Constellary Tales
  • Exclude from Newsletter
  • Featured Ad-Free
  • Featured Article
  • General Announcements
  • Interview
  • Letter to the Editor
  • Misc. Philosophical Musings
  • Nakedly Examined Music Podcast
  • Nakedly Self-Examined Music
  • NEM Bonus
  • Not School Recording
  • Not School Report
  • Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts
  • PEL Music
  • PEL Nightcap
  • PEL's Notes
  • Personal Philosophies
  • Phi Fic Podcast
  • Philosophy vs. Improv
  • Podcast Episode (Citizen)
  • Podcast Episodes
  • Pretty Much Pop
  • Reviewage
  • Song Self-Exam
  • Supporter Exclusive
  • Things to Watch
  • Vintage Episode (Citizen)
  • Web Detritus

Follow:

Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Apple Podcasts

Copyright © 2009 - 2023 · The Partially Examined Life, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Copyright Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in