The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog
Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785).
We try very hard to make sense of Kant’s major ethical principle, the Categorical Imperative, wherein you should only do what you’d will that EVERYONE do, so, for instance, you should not will to eat pie, because then everyone would eat it and there would be none left for you, so too bad.
End song: “Stop” by Madison Lint (2003).
Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).
Discussing Leibniz’s Monodology. Have some tasty metaphysics, in mono!
Leibniz thinks that the world is ultimately made up of monads, which are like atoms except nothing at all like atoms, because they’re alive, and mindful, and eternal, and windowless, placed in the best kind of harmony at the beginning of time by God. Is there a concept album in all of this?
Plus, does reading philosophy make you a better conversationalist, or just get you ostracized?
End song: The soothing “Healthy Song” by The MayTricks, from the 1994 album Happy Songs Will Bring You Down.
Discussing Liebniz’s Monadology.
Discussing Books 1 and 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics.
What is virtue, and how can I eat it? Do not enjoy this episode too much, or too little, but just the right amount. Apparently, if you haven’t already have been brought up with the right habits, you may as well give up. Plus, is Michael Jackson the Aristotelian ideal?
End song: A newly recorded cover of Billie Jean by Mark Lint and the TransAmerikanishers.
Discussing Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Books I and II.
Discussing Camus’s “An Absurd Reasoning” and “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942).
Does our eventual death mean that life has no meaning and we might as well end it all? Camus starts to address this question, then gets distracted and talks about a bunch of phenomenologists until he dies unreconciled. Also, let’s all push a rock up a hill and like it, okay? Plus, the fellas dwell on genius and throw down re. the Beatles, the beloved Robert C. Solomon and Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers.
End song: “My Friends” by Mark Lint and the Simulacra (2000).
Discussing Camus’s “An Absurd Reasoning” and “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942).
On Descartes’s Meditations 1 and 2.
More discussion of Plato’s “Apology.”
Discussing Plato’s “Apology.” Does studying philosophy make you a better person? No.
What are we trying to do here? Why should you bother to listen to us?
