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Philosophy of History, Part III: Voltaire and the Age of Reason

July 30, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

History should be written as philosophy. –Voltaire Voltaire, in many ways the paradigmatic Enlightenment intellectual, had a lifelong interest in history. And here, as in other fields, he was a severe critic of traditional ways of thinking. He wrote in response to at least two important strains of pre-Enlightenment historical writing. The first was the Augustinian  Continue Reading …

Beware of Philosophical Trick Questions

October 11, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer

A friendly listener, Alicia S., submitted this note to us: I was asked this question and had no idea how to respond to it... This is the question: "Would you rather never be able to answer a question or never be able to ask a question"? The point of the question is to tease out whether philosophy (or rather, what you see as valuable in doing philosophy) is a matter of the  Continue Reading …

Voltaire and Evolutionary Biology

September 22, 2012 by Adam Arnold 2 Comments

[From friend of the podcast Adam Arnold] In regards to the latest episode on Candide and the continuing discussion of scientism and evolution on the blog, it is interesting to look back on the classic article by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin on the "adaptationist programme" in evolutionary biology. In "The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a  Continue Reading …

New York Public Library Colloquium on Candide

September 18, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

The New York Public Library hosts regular live events (details here), and one of these was held in April 2010 to celebrate Candide's 250th Anniversary. Read about it, watch/listen to it, and get the transcript here. Here's the video (95 min): You can also download just the audio from iTunes U. Though some parts of this are simply librarians getting much too excited about  Continue Reading …

Universal Salvation: One Hell of a Question

September 17, 2012 by Mark Satta 43 Comments

In the recent Candide episode we saw how Voltaire satirized Leibniz’s solution to the Problem of Evil. The Problem of Evil is still a popular topic in contemporary philosophy of religion. One twist on the traditional problem of evil comes from philosopher and theologian, Marilyn McCord Adams, who suggests that for Christians the principal problem of evil is the compatibility of  Continue Reading …

PREVIEW-Episode 62: Voltaire’s Novel “Candide”

September 5, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 24 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 62: Voltaire’s Novel “Candide” (Citizens Only)

September 5, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Candide: or, Optimism, the novel by Voltaire (1759). Is life good? Popular Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz argued that it's good by definition. God is perfectly good and all-powerful, so whatever he created must have been as good as it can be; we live in the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire loads this satirical adventure story up with horrific violence to  Continue Reading …

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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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