The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog
Mark and Wes discuss Durkheim’s Suicide (1897), getting into more of the details of his account and exploring comparative modes of explanation: Are there really “sociological facts” distinct from mere generalizations about psychological facts?
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More on philosophical and psychological interpretations of and judgments about suicide with guest Drew Pinsky.
Is suicide an epidemic or a choice? Could it be both? Socrates didn’t fear death and inspired Stoics and others to see suicide in some circumstances as brave. Or is it always cowardly? Does meaninglessness motivate suicide?
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End song: “Disappear” by Chris Cacavas as heard on Nakedly Examined Music #87. Please support PEL!
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We are rejoined by Drew Pinsky to discuss philosophical and psychological readings on suicide by Seneca, Arthur Schopenhauer, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Albert Camus, plus some 2017 survey papers on the state of research into predictors of suicide.
Is suicide ever morally permissible? If it’s a symptom of mental illness rather than a chosen behavior, is it even appropriate to morally evaluate it?
End song: “Disappear” by Chris Cacavas as heard on Nakedly Examined Music #87.
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I and four Citizens took a first crack at discussing The Year of Dreaming Dangerously yesterday (read more about our Not School group here). Since Freud and Jung, psychotherapy has been used to try to make sense of group behavior, and Lacan himself applied his insights to the political realm (among other places). Zizek follows in that tradition, doing a Continue Reading …
On Carl Jung’s “Approaching the Unconscious” from Man and His Symbols, written in 1961. What’s the structure of the mind? Jung followed Freud in positing an unconscious distinct from the conscious ego, but Jung’s picture has the unconscious much more stuffed full of all sorts of stuff from who knows where, including instincts (the archetypes) that tend to give rise to behavior and dream imagery that we’d have to call religious. We neglect this part of ourselves at our psychological peril!
End song: “Bedlam” by Mark Lint and the Simulacra.
Listen to the episode. What is that thing I call “I?” While most of your grade-A philosophers of the past hundred years or so agree that it’s not a Cartesian Cogito, i.e. an immortal soul characterized by continuous consciousness, the alternatives are many and varied. With Hegel, we got the idea that the self is built, and this through our Continue Reading …
We mentioned on the episode Gilligan’s opposition to Freud. In this clip, Gilligan discusses a methodological difference in analyzing women’s self-reporting (much of the content of In a Different Voice): Watch on YouTube. She claims that rather than imposing your theory (in this case that the patient knows more than she is willing or able to say) on the patient, Continue Reading …
Having recorded our discussion on Buddhism but still feeling obligated here to plumb the depths of the web further for Freud-related material, I did a search for “Buddhist Psychotherapy” and came up with this site (part of “the complementary health information service at Metta.org.uk”) that demonstrates that, as Wes said, all of your talking cures come out approximately the same Continue Reading …
