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Episode 10: Kantian Ethics: What Should We Do?

October 19, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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).

Episode 10: Kantian Ethics: What Should We Do?

October 19, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 52 Comments

Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).

Episode 6: Leibniz’s Monadology: What Is There?

July 31, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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.

Episode 6: Leibniz’s Monadology: What Is There?

July 31, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 29 Comments

Discussing Liebniz’s Monadology.

Episode 5: Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics

July 16, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

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.

Episode 5: Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics

July 16, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 27 Comments

Discussing Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Books I and II.

Episode 4: Camus and the Absurd

June 22, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

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).

Episode 4: Camus and the Absurd

June 22, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 47 Comments

Discussing Camus’s “An Absurd Reasoning” and “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942).

Episode 2: Descartes’s Meditations: What Can We Know?

May 13, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 71 Comments

On Descartes’s Meditations 1 and 2.

Part 2 of Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.”

May 13, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 25 Comments

Plato

More discussion of Plato’s “Apology.”

Part 1 of Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.”

May 12, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 34 Comments

Socrates

Discussing Plato’s “Apology.” Does studying philosophy make you a better person? No.

Episode 0: Introduction to the Podcast

May 11, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 20 Comments

What are we trying to do here? Why should you bother to listen to us?

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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

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