The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast show

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Summary: 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 short 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. For links to the texts we discuss and other info, check out www.partiallyexaminedlife.com.

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Podcasts:

 REISSUE-Ep. 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:49:14

On Baruch Spinoza's Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2. Time warp to 2010 when Mark, Seth, and Wes recorded this lo-fi burst of energy, made available to you now to kick of our June Spinoza-fest, with two full discussions coming out over the next four weeks on Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Dylan and Mark have recorded a new introduction connecting the two works. Our main focus Spinoza's weird, immanent, non-personal conception of God: God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, namely insofar as one of his aspects is infinite space (extension, i.e. matter) and insofar as one of his aspects is mind (our minds being chunks or "modes" of the big God mind). Also, if you're not going to sell out and go for a university position in philosophy, should you instead grind lenses in your attic without adequate ventilation? (Hint: no) Plus, the Amsterdam of yesterday, whose heady aroma drove people to write like Euclid, property dualism rears its ugly head, and Mel Gibson as Rousseau! Read a free version online or buy the book. One place to read the earlier Spinoza book Mark refers to, A Short Treatise on God, Man, and his Well-Being (1660), is here. The Karen Armstrong book referred to is The Case for God, and at the end Wes recommends Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. Seth also brings up Giles Deluze's Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. The dumbed down, non-geometric presentation of the Ethics that I talk about is here. Ep. 25 which continues this discussion is now available for $1 Patreon subscribers: Visit patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife. Or publicly share this post from our Facebook page that links to this episode before 6/5 and we'll send you the link to ep. 25 via FB messenger (be sure to check "message requests"). PEL Citizens get all of our behind-the-firewall offerings, so that's definitely your best bet. Please support PEL! End song: "Spiritual Insect," by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000).

 Nakedly Examined Music: Steve Hackett, Nik Kershaw, Ken Stringfellow, Robbie Fulks | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:14:46

PEL Network crossover magic, with spring highlights from Mark's other podcast, featuring one song with interview/explanation each from four of our biggest guests: * Robbie Fulks, our "ambassador of country," meaning that he's a highly literate northerner who belies any preconceptions you might have about the genre. We discuss "America Is a Hard Religion" from his current album Upland Stories. Hear the full interview on NEM #36. * Nik Kershaw, best known for his 80s hits including "Wouldn't It Be Good." We discuss his highly textured (and in 6/4 time!) yet very accessible "These Tears" from his most recent album Ei8gt. Hear more on NEM #37. * Ken Stringfellow, half of the two-headed, ultra-melodic Seattleish grungeish band The Posies, who also made up half of the re-constituted Big Star and was a touring member of R.E.M. We discuss "The Sound of Clouds" by the Posies from Solid States (2016). Hear the rest on NEM #39. * Steve Hackett, incredible guitar player and since leaving Genesis in 1977 a lead singer and brilliant painter of deep sonic landscapes over 25 solo albums. We discuss "In the Skeleton Gallery" from his new album The Night Siren. Hear more about this song and two others on NEM #45. If you enjoy these clips, hear more at nakedlyexaminedmusic.com. You can also follow NEM on Facebook, subscribe on iTunes, or check out the NEM Spotify playlist. Read the NEM FAQ.

 Episode 164: Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” on Perfection (Part Two) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:24:27

More on the novel with guest Corey Mohler, considering Dostoyevsky explicitly as an existentialist in terms of his analysis of the crisis of meaning and his consequent views on religion. Listen to part 1 first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. End song: "Don Quixote" (acoustic, 2010) by Nik Kershaw, as interviewed on the Nakedly Examined Music podcast #37. Don Quixote is Myshkin's literary forebear. Get a Dostoyevsky T-shirt! Watch for the new episode of Phi Fic on D's House of the Dead. Sponsors: Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy. Go to blueapron.com/PEL for three free meals with free shipping.

 Episode 164: Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” on Perfection (Part One) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 59:49

On Fyodor Dostoyevsky's philosophical novel from 1869. Could a morally perfect person survive in the modern world? Is all this "modernity," which so efficiently computes our desires and provides mechanisms to fulfill them, actually suited to achieve human flourishing? Dostoyevsky (whose name, incidentally, can correctly be spelled with either one "y" or two... the translation from the Russian alphabet means that that there's no standard spelling for any of his characters either) says no on both counts. Typical Russian existentialist! So, in the line of D's great string of philosophical novels, The Idiot comes after Crime and Punishment (1866) (and his great appetizer-novella Notes from Underground, 1864) but before The Brothers Karamazov (1880), and its philosophical purpose is largely to raise questions that it does not answer. In the novel's "hero" Myshkin, D. intended to present a morally perfect human being, but Myshkin's open-heartedness leads to disaster for both him (nothing unexpected in that, given his status as Christ figure) and those around him: People are not psychologically constituted to handle true goodness. We are a paradox, because (contra Plato) our freedom often necessitates that we turn away from "the good" that is set before us. This explains a lot of self-destructive behavior, and it means that utilitarian attempts to calculate what makes us happy and institute that as social policy will inevitably fail. Mark, Wes, and Dylan are joined by Corey Mohler, author of Existential Comics and artist for our 2017 wall calendar (only a few copies left!). We talk through the various characters (lest you get lost just as readers of D. often do, here's a reference list) and D's implicit and explicit claims about psychology, ethics, religion, and how our inevitable death affects all of us. D's concern is that society and modernity have undermined the machinery of our motivations, which is supposed to work through the naturalness of human contact, which D. thinks that traditional, peasant-based Russian Christianity facilitated (as opposed to Catholicism, which he declaims as a political enterprise). Modern culture directs us to pursue social status and money, which is so obviously empty that it then tends to push us toward nihilism, which is D's great fear: Without a firm foundation for values, we do things out of spite, or for no reason, and can rationalize even terrible crimes as being understandable given the criminal's economic or social situation. Of course, as a novelist, Dostoyevsky can create these very different characters with different philosophies, and it's never altogether clear when we're hearing D's actual view as opposed to one he's just playing out the implications of. Like Nietzsche, he certainly had a dim view of ordinariness, and saw the values as exhibited through status assignments in his society as pretty screwed up. But he doesn't start as Nietzsche does with atheism, nor does he address existentialism from a vantage that only makes sense for the religious à la Kierkegaard. We can all relate to the desire to cut through all the bullshit and react lovingly and authentically to people, and we all face the looming specter of death and how that potentially makes all of our projects meaningless.

 Episode 163: Guest Stewart Umphrey on Natural Kinds (Part Two) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:13:14

Continuing our interview about Natural Kinds and Genesis: The Classification of Material Entities. Now we get down to it: Given the argument for continuants in part 1, Stewart talks about how that founds the idea of a natural kind (the nature of a continuant) and considers what might count as one. Should the fact that there are borderline cases, i.e., vagueness in a concept, mean that that concept can't name a natural kind? Can the sciences just tell us what the natural kinds are? Buy Stewart's book at www.rowman.com and use the code LEX30AUTH17 to get 30% off your order. Listen to part 1 first or get the ad-free Citizen Edition. End song: "Destroy the Box" by Wertico, Cain and Gray from Organic Architecture (2014). Hear Paul Wertico and David Cain interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #30. Check out the St. John's College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi. Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy.

 Episode 163: Guest Stewart Umphrey on Natural Kinds (Part One) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 56:49

Dylan goes on location to St. John's College, Annapolis to talk with Stewart Umphrey about his book Natural Kinds and Genesis: The Classification of Material Entities (2016), with Mark and Wes lobbing in questions remotely. Are general terms like "water" or "dog" or even "chair" just things that we made up to order the world we experience? Aristotle thought that some universals (not "chair," but the other two) constitute natural kinds, with an internal structure that explains their behavior. This kind of talk was replaced with the scientific revolution with talk of laws instead of kinds, but Stewart wants to revive this notion, as well as the activity of "natural philosophy," which was what folks like Descartes and Newton considered themselves to be doing, but which subsequently stopped being a thing when the natural sciences broke off from philosophy. We all read chs. 1–5 and the epilogue, and each chapter focuses on a different topic: Ch. 1 covers the preconditions of natural philosophy, which include a rejection (as an assumption for inquiry, not as a final conclusion) of any kind of idealism and acceptance that there really is an external world apart from our cognition. Ch. 2 then covers universals: Stewart thinks it reasonable to hypothesize that these are real contra nominalism that says we just make up all of the concepts we use to organize things. Ch. 3 gets to continuants, which are things that we see as existing over time, even though their location, or many of their properties may change; his example is a particular squirrel, whereas "water" as a mass wouldn't qualify (though a particular water molecule would). Again, after considering the available positions pro and con re. the existence of his subject, he concludes that it's a reasonable bet that there are legitimate continuants. Finally, in ch. 4 he gets to natural kinds, which he argues constitute the essence of a continuant type, e.g., what makes a squirrel or water molecule what it is. His view entails that each continuant can only be one natural kind, so while "squirrel" may end up to be a natural kind, then "animal" or other nested categorizations would not be; those would be just concepts of convenience, not ultimate parts of our ontology. Dylan also read chs. 6 and 7, which bring in concrete examples from biology and physics, so these will be discussed in part 2. The purpose of caring about ontology in this way is to argue against the long-time scientific goal of reducing all of psychology to biology, all of biology to chemistry, and then to physics. Natural kinds would be irreducible elements in the ontology, not just things that came up in the course of the contingent (i.e., could have gone differently) history of science (contra Rorty). This is not to say that we might not be wrong about what we think the natural kinds are, but if there are some in the way that Stewart describes, then we can talk about real emergence in science: how biological organisms exhibit properties that can't be predicted by looking at things on a lower (e.g., chemical) level. This is one of our more difficult episodes, and it would certainly behoove you to listen to some of our previous discussions in metaphysics before tackling this one. For instance, ep. 130 on Aristotle's De Anima, ep. 126 on Saul Kripke, ep.

 PEL Special: Phi Fic on James Baldwin’s Fiction | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:43:55

On the short stories "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" (1960) and "Sonny’s Blues" (1957). To supplement our episode on Baldwin's essays, we're doing a crossover on to the PEL feed here from the Phi Fic podcast, which you should definitely check out and subscribe to at phificpodcast.com. PEL's Mark Linsenmayer joins Phi Fic regulars Nathan, Cezary, Mary, and Laura (read about them all plus the absent Daniel at our new "Meet Phi Fic" page) to discuss these stories that cover much the same ground as his biographical essays. For the first time in my life I felt that no force jeopardized my right, my power, to possess and to protect a woman; for the first time, the first time, felt that the woman was not, in her own eyes or in the eyes of the world, degraded by my presence. So says the narrator in “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon,” reminiscing about the moment he realized that he had truly fallen in love. His life in Paris has allowed him a freedom to live beyond the color of his skin, but now he is returning to the turmoil of the United States with his wife and son. "Sonny's Blues" is about family, responsibility, suffering, race, and freedom. The narrator’s younger brother, Sonny, is a brilliant musician who is imprisoned for selling and using heroin. On his release, he moves in with the narrator and his family, and the brothers struggle to communicate. Sonny’s music finally offers them a way toward understanding and perhaps even a sort of freedom. All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it … But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air … another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours. In our discussion, Mark pinpoints Baldwin’s examination of the psychological internalization of the degradation of racism, with Mary citing the abuse of the narrator’s sister and her friends by the police. Laura delves into the question of the “other” in society, while Cezary posits that racism today seems to be subsumed in discussions of different cultures. Nathan highlights Baldwin’s argument that our understanding and perspectives on racism are influenced by differing realities—which is Baldwin’s reply in his famous debate with William F. Buckley. Buy both stories in the collection Going to Meet the Man, or read them online here and here. Baldwin picture by Solomon Grundy. Check out the St. John's College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi. Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy. And please donate to Turtle Island Research Cooperative at partiallyexaminedlife.com/turtle.

 Episode 162: James Baldwin on Race in America (Part Two) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 58:10

Continuing on I Am Not Your Negro, "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), and The Fire Next Time (1963). We (and Law Ware) discuss Baldwin's critique of the American dream, how to oppose the inhumanity of others without becoming inhuman yourself, and Baldwin's take on religion. Plus, was the the documentary actually good as a film? This continues part 1, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Supplement this with the Phi Fic discussion (featuring Mark!) on Baldwin's short stories “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon” (1960) and “Sonny’s Blues” (1957). End song: "Dawning on Me" by Mark Lint feat. Ken Stringfellow, who was interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music ep. 39. Read about it. Sponsors: Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy. Get a free trial shaving kit (paying only shipping) at harrys.com/pel. Check out partiallyexaminedlife.com/shirts for new T-shirt designs in the PEL store. And please donate to Turtle Island Research Cooperative: info at partiallyexaminedlife.com/turtle.

 Episode 162: James Baldwin on Race in America (Part One) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 47:53

On the film I Am Not Your Negro and the essays "Notes of a Native Son" (1955) and The Fire Next Time (1963). Baldwin is a go-to figure at this point in discussions of race; his essays, stories, and speeches provide a key touchstone in discussing how racism has warped our culture. So, how do we translate his testimony into philosophical theory? When he talks about the psychological/sociological maladies of both black and white folks resulting from the overt racism of his day, to what extent do his insights apply to us now, when racism has become more subtle? The full foursome are rejoined by Law Ware to shed new light on our discussion from ep. 161. We focus on Baldwin's middle way between MLK's love and Malcolm X's rage and his critique of the American dream. How do you oppose the inhumanity of others without demonizing them, and thereby becoming inhuman yourself? Buy the book version of I Am Not Your Negro. Buy the James Baldwin: Collected Essays that includes the rest of our readings. You can also read the essays online: "Notes of a Native Son," and the two essays that make up The Fire Next Time, the shorter “My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation" and the more lengthy "Down at the Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind." You can watch several interviews used in the film or referred to on the episode: This 1963 one with Kenneth Clark is key; the clip is bookmarked at the claim from the film that white people created this despised other category; to fix America, we have to figure out what psychological need drove that creation. The short clip actually used in this episode from a Dick Cavett interview is here and another key point in that interview is here. The 1984 interview Mark refers to where Baldwin reflects on the lack of real progress in addressing the results of racism is here, bookmarked at at the point Mark paraphrased about the the increasing "economic uselessness" of blacks according to establishment. Continued on part 2, or get your full, ad-free Citizen Edition right now with your PEL membership. Please support PEL! Baldwin picture by Solomon Grundy. Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy.

 Episode 161: White Privilege (Peggy McIntosh, Charles Mills, et al) (Part Two) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:21:25

Continuing with guest Law Ware on the philosophical underpinnings of the rhetoric of white privilege, with readings as listed in part 1. Get the Citizen version to hear this without commercials. Please support PEL! For $20 off luggage, visit away.com/PEL. Check out the St. John's College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi. Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy. Mills picture by Olle Halvars. End song: "Power" by Narada Michael Walden from Thunder 2013, as interviewed for Nakedly Examined Music ep. 16.

 Episode 161: White Privilege (Peggy McIntosh, Charles Mills, et al) (Part One) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 55:59

Is the rhetoric of "White Privilege" just the modern way of acknowledging historical and systemic truths of racism, or does it point to a novel way for acknowledging injustice, or does it on the contrary obscure these insights by involving confused claims about group responsibility and guilt? We are rejoined by guest Law Ware to discuss several sources, some less formal than others. Cultural sources included: 1. Peggy McIntosh: "Unpacking the Invisible Backpack" (1989) 2. Tim Wise: "White Like Me" documentary (2016) 3. George Yancy: "Dear White America" (2015 editorial in the NY Times The Stone) 4. John McWhorter: "The Privilege of Checking White Privilege” (2015 editorial in the Daily Beast) Academic articles included: 1. Charles W. Mills: "White Ignorance" (2007) 2. Lewis R. Gordon: "Critical Reflections on Three Popular Tropes in the Study of Whiteness" (2004) (From What White Looks Like, George Yancy, ed) 3. Lawrence Blum: "White privilege: A mild critique" (2008) You may wish to first listen to our initial foray into philosophy and race, where we talked about DuBois, MLK, and others. Continued on part 2, or get your full, ad-free Citizen Edition right now with your PEL membership. Please support PEL! McIntosh picture by Olle Halvars. Check out the St. John's College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi. Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy. Go to audible.com/PEL to listen to those books you've been meaning to read.

 Episode 160: Orwell on Totalitarianism and Language (Part Two) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:15:51

Continuing with 1984. How does the book relate to today's politics, or to the politics of his time? Does Orwell present something that we should actually be afraid our society will turn into? Are people really motivated by power for power's sake as Orwell depicts? Was he predicting history based on current trends, or was it satire, or what? We discuss the relationship between minds: the realms of intimacy vs. surveillance, how a state might "contain" a mind that it controls, and "doublethink," where one mind is split—much like Sartre's "Bad Faith"—to intentionally delude itself. Listen to part 1 first, or get the ad-free Citizen Edition. End song: "Civil Disobedience" by Camper Van Beethoven from New Roman Times (2004), written by Jonathan Segel as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music ep. 38. Sponsors: Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy. Go to blueapron.com/PEL for three free meals with free shipping. Check out this cool lefty podcast: srslywrong.com. (The episode Mark was a guest on is #89.)

 Episode 160: Orwell on Totalitarianism and Language (Part One) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 55:49

On the novel 1984 (1949) and the essays “Politics and the English Language” (1946) and “Notes on Nationalism” (1945). What's the relation between language and totalitarianism? In 1984, Orwell presents us with a society where the ruling powers have mastered the art of retaining power, and one element of this involves "Newspeak," where the vocabulary is purposely limited to the point where subversive sentiments can't be expressed. And if you can't say it, you can't really think it either, so the "thought crime" that begins the protagonist's journey of despair would be impossible. We get some context from the two essays: "Politics and the English Language" tells us that when we parrot metaphors and other phrases given to us ready-made by those in power (or anyone else), we cease to authentically think. "Notes on Nationalism" describes the difference between patriotism, i.e., authentic pride in your locality, and nationalism, which should really be called factionalism, which involves putting all your efforts (à la Beauvoir's "serious man") in the service of country or party or whatever. In 1984, citizens are expected to surrender their individuality to the party (i.e., the state), and the full foursome is here to talk about exactly how that's supposed to work in the story and who counts as a citizen ("outer party") vs. a prole (whom those in power starve of the means to revolt but don't bother to indoctrinate on an individual level). So, was this Orwell's version of Marx's theory of history, i.e., through some kind of Darwinism of ideas, factions that exhibit these kinds of defensive mechanisms will inevitably rise to the top (note that this happens to all three of the world's empires in the story, though each of them had different starting ideologies)? Or was he engaging in satire, or just warning us of where certain tendencies of his day's socialism might lead if left unchecked? (Note that he was a dedicated socialist himself.) Or is this just a thought experiment to show what kind of organization one would need to ensure continuous power? What Orwell describes is extreme: Purposefully and constantly revised history to reflect current party priorities, constant surveillance and even entrapment to "educate" citizens to love the state (which in the case of our protagonist breaks him to the point of his being essentially useless to the state's efforts), the necessity of "double-think" that involves citizens both purposely lying to themselves and then forgetting that they have done so, and finally, the overt avowal by the rulers (the "inner party") that they pursue power purely for power's sake, not for the sake of some good apart from power. Given this extremity, could the depicted society possibly plot out a realistic trajectory from our current one, or even amount to a particularly illuminating thought experiment? Orwell has thankfully helped inoculate against disingenuous political speech, such as calling the Republicans' current plan "The American Health Care Act" when it is in fact designed to undermine care for many (I pick this example only for its recency; there are many others available of various partisan varieties). Does lying by our government in this way, or trying to restrict speech to only "acceptable" modes, or working up fear of an external, mostly illusory threat to keep the citizens in line… Do these measures represent a slippery slope to totalitarianism, to anything like the world that Orwell describes? Or is calling such things "Orwellian" really just a cliché of exactly the sort that Orwell himself would object to? Buy the book or

 Episode 159: Confucius on Virtuous Conduct (Part Two) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:21:16

Continuing on the Analects, now without our guest. We cover every single one of the 500 aphorisms, of course, in great depth, getting at the unambiguous meaning of each and completely reorienting our philosophical viewpoint in consequence. OK, so the interpretive task is a bit more difficult than that, but Mark, Seth, and Wes do our best to figure out Master Kong's words about glibness (his "petty people" are pretty much like the Sophists!), using names properly (is it just a matter of not putting on airs?), putting your heart into ritual (not his words), filial conduct (do you turn your criminal relatives in?), remonstrance (what do you do if your good advice to authority is ignored?), and more. Would Confucius want you to join the Trump administration to improve it, or run to the hills until it collapses? Listen to part 1 first or just get the full, ad-free Citizen Edition. End song: "Please Allow Me to Look at You Again," from The Edge of Heaven (2013) by Gary Lucas, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music ep. 7. Sponsors: Check out the St John's College Summer Classics Program in Santa Fe at partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcsc. Get $50 off any mattress purchase casper.com/pel, promo code pel. Also, visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy.

 Episode 159: Confucius on Virtuous Conduct (Part One) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 54:54

On the Analects, compiled after Confucius's (aka Master Kong's) death in 479 BCE. How should we act? What's the relation between ethics and politics? Can a bunch of aphorisms written in the distant past for an unapologetically hierarchical culture emphasizing traditional rituals actually give us relevant, welcome advice on these matters? Are we even in a position to determine the meaning of these sayings? Mark, Seth, and Wes are joined by Tzuchien Tho, who studies Leibniz but grew up in a household where Confucian texts were revered, to do the best we can in figuring out Confucius's fundamental ethical concepts, trying to make notions like "ritual propriety" and "filial piety" relevant given today's mores, and what to do with all your wisdom given a corrupt political climate. This episode should be understandable to anyone, but we do refer a bit given Confucius's emphasis on tradition to our recent episode on Burke, and compare Confucius to Socrates. You may recall we've ventured once previously into Chinese philosophy with Taoist Chuang Tzu. We used the Ames/Rosemont The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. Here's an "online teaching translation" by Robert Eno. Another commonly used translation is by D.C. Lau. Some of us watched Robert André LaFleur's lecture series "Books That Matter: The Analects of Confucius," part of which is available on YouTube. The Confucius entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is also helpful. Get part 2 or the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! Confucius picture by Solomon Grundy. Check out the St. John's College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi. Also, visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy. Please respond to our quick listener survey, so we can get more advertisers: podsurvey.com/PARTIALLY-EXAMINED-LIFE

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