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PREVIEW-Ep 202 Follow-Up: Close Reading of Kristeva’s “Approaching Abjection”

November 18, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Mark takes a very close look at pages 1–4 of the first chapter of On Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980) as a supplement to episode 202. This was a hard reading, and we disagreed in the discussion about some of what it meant. So hear her words for yourself and decide! Get the full, 55-minute experience here by becoming a PEL Citizen. This has also been made  Continue Reading …

Ep. 202 Follow-Up: Close Reading of Kristeva’s “Approaching Abjection” (Citizens Only)

November 10, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Mark takes a very close look at pages 1–4 of the first chapter of On Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980). This close reading assumes that you've listened to our episode 202. Read along: Buy the book or try this online version. You may also want to consult this wiki page on object relations theory. Note that there's nothing in there to indicate that "object"  Continue Reading …

Episode 180: More James’s Psychology: Self and Will (Part One)

January 1, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer 8 Comments

On Psychology, the Briefer Course (1892), chapters on "The Self," "Will," and "Emotions." Continuing from ep. 179, we talk about the various aspects of self: The "Me" (the part of me that I know) that's divided into physical, social, and spiritual aspects, and the "I" (the part of me that has experiences), which is pretty problematic, but which we need not posit as a "soul,"  Continue Reading …

Ep. 180: More James’s Psychology: Self and Will (Citizen Edition)

January 1, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Psychology, the Briefer Course (1892), chapters on "The Self," "Will," and "Emotions." Continuing from ep. 179, we talk about the various aspects of self: The "Me" (the part of me that I know) that's divided into physical, social, and spiritual aspects, and the "I" (the part of me that has experiences), which is pretty problematic, but which we need not posit as a "soul,"  Continue Reading …

The Self and Selfishness (and Aesthetics and “The Fountainhead”)

June 2, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 23 Comments

I'm continuing to try to get some Rand thoughts related to The Fountainhead out of my system so that I won't feel the need to bring them up while on the episode devoted to her more straightforwardly philosophical works. I also feel the periodic need for synthesis, to try to recap some ongoing themes in our episodes in a way that would require an overly long monologue if I tried  Continue Reading …

Douglas Hofstadter’s “I Am a Strange Loop” on the Self

April 9, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 9 Comments

From our Lacan episode and my comparison of Lacan with Sartre, you might think that this "no self" deal was just a Continental idea. If you remember back to our Owen Flanagan interview, however, you'll know that (besides this being a doctrine in Buddhsim) this is also one of the main positions within the analytic philosophy of mind, due perhaps largely to Derek Parfit, though  Continue Reading …

Fink on the Split Subject (Lacan vs. Sartre)

April 8, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 10 Comments

I ended our episode bemoaning that I feel like I still don't understand this talk of "subject" as opposed to "self." A few of you have made some good comments on this, but I'm still not satisfied. Let me pull a few things out of the Fink book: 1. In chapter 2 about "The Nature of Unconscious Thought," he concludes (on p. 22) by saying, "Now this way of conceptualizing the  Continue Reading …

PREVIEW-Episode 74: Jacques Lacan’s Psychology

April 3, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 92 Comments

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 74: Jacques Lacan’s Psychology (Citizens Only)

April 3, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Bruce Fink's The Lacanian Subject (1996) and Lacan's "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience" (1949). What is the self? Is that the same as the experiencing subject? Lacan says no: while the self (the ego) is an imaginative creation, cemented by language, the subject is something else, something split (at least  Continue Reading …

Topic for #74: Lacan on the Self/Subject

March 18, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 34 Comments

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 relations with others, but that  Continue Reading …

PREVIEW-Episode 71: Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”

February 15, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 35 Comments

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 71: Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” (Citizens Only)

February 15, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Buber's 1923 book about the fundamental human position: As children, and historically (this is his version of social contract theory), we start fully absorbed in relation with another person (like, say, mom). Before that point, we have no self-consciousness, no "self" at all, really. It's only by having these consuming "encounters" that we gradually distinguish ourselves  Continue Reading …

Topic for #71: Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”

February 1, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 16 Comments

On Feb. 1 we up again with previous guest and PEL blogger (and Twitter/YouTube master) Daniel Horne to discuss Martin Buber. Listen to the episode. Buber is known as a religious existentialist, much like Kierkegaard, which means he's concerned with our fundamental relation to reality, and thinks that our individual attitude has some impact on our being, on whether we're living  Continue Reading …

Theistic Objectivism (more on Dallas Willard)

September 7, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 9 Comments

This post is a follow-up on my Dallas Willard post from a few days ago. A couple of reader comments on that (on the blog and Facebook) shamed me into re-listening to the second half of Willard's lecture and newly listen to the Q&A afterwards. I can now say that his positive story is not anywhere as oversimplistic as I was implying, and in fact I agree with several of his main  Continue Reading …

Name-Dropping: An Apologetic (Mead and the Intersubjective Self)

August 31, 2012 by Adam Arnold 13 Comments

[Editor's Note: Today's post is a listener submission by Adam Arnold, graduate student at the University of Warwick. You too can be a guest blogger.] During the Buddhism Naturalized episode, the guest Owen Flanagan (as well as Mark, not unusually for him) may have dropped more names than in any other podcast. I have this same tendency in everyday life. I add footnotes and  Continue Reading …

The DharmaRealm Podcast: Hanging Out With Karma (and Other Topics)

April 25, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Back in December or so when we were originally prepping for the date we thought Owen would be joining us, I listened to several episodes of the DharmaRealm podcast, which is a series of discussions based out of Berkeley, CA between Harry Bridge, a Jōdo Shinshū (i.e. Shin, a popular form of Buddhism from Japan similar to Zen) minister (with a masters in Buddhist studies) and  Continue Reading …

Episode 47: Sartre on Consciousness and the Self (Citizens Only)

November 30, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

Discussing Jean-Paul Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego (written in 1934). What is consciousness, and does it necessarily involve an "I" who is conscious of things? Sartre says no: typical experience is consciousness of some object and doesn't involve the experience of myself as someone having this consciousness. It's only when we reflect on our own conscious experiences  Continue Reading …

PREVIEW-Episode 47: Sartre on Consciousness and the Self

November 30, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 36 Comments

This is a 31-minute preview of a 2 hr, 1-minute 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  Continue Reading …

Topic for #47: Sartre on the Self

November 11, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

Jean-Paul Sartre is best known for his 1960's existentialism and Marxist activism, but before he was a big celebrity, he was a phenomenologist who spent a lot of time grappling with Heidegger (his book Being and Nothingnessis an homage in part to Heidegger's Being and Time, but more importantly (to this topic) with Edmund Husserl. Part of Husserl's analysis of experience  Continue Reading …

The Sickness Unto Death, the PowerPoint!

December 2, 2010 by Daniel Horne 1 Comment

I mentioned on the Kierkegaard episode having prepared a PowerPoint on The Sickness Unto Death, so I submit to you, the morbidly curious, TSUD: The PowerPoint! (Warning, it's over 700KB, and might take a while to download on slower connections.) I believe Seth made some minor corrections and improvements, but any errors in spelling, interpretation, or insight are mine. Feel  Continue Reading …

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