The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

An introduction to Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols, read by Wes Alwan. After you listen to this, listen to the full episode. Read more about the topic. Get Wes's transcript.

Excerpts of discussions about Frithjof Bergmann's New Work, New Culture, Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and Martin Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism." Given rising economic productivity, we should all be working less, but we're not, and the job system is not healthy for our souls. U. of Michigan prof (scholar of Hegel, Nietzsche, et al) Frithjof Bergmann has been actually doing things for decades to try to bring about the transition to a post-job world. Mark led a group in discussing this text, which will be covered in a future PEL episode. Did you like our episode on Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men? Well, Blood Meridian is more notoriously philosophical than that, with an existentialist landscape of despair and a Nietzsche-spouting brute called The Judge. Dylan Casey participated in this discussion with our continuing Philosophical Fiction group. Our Philosophy of Mind group covered a work by a philosopher and a cognitive scientist discussing how philosophy in coming up with its concepts has generally overlooked the obvious yet profound truth that we are embodied beings. To quote the book summary at Amazon: The Cartesian person, with a mind wholly separate from the body, does not exist. The Kantian person, capable of moral action according to the dictates of a universal reason, does not exist. The phenomenological person, capable of knowing his or her mind entirely through introspection alone, does not exist. The utilitarian person, the Chomskian person, the poststructuralist person, the computational person, and the person defined by analytic philosophy all do not exist. Then what does? Lakoff and Johnson show that a philosophy responsible to the science of mind offers radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is. Finally, Seth Paskin led a discussion back in March on Heidegger in preparation for episode 80, so you can hear some cool additional perspectives on that puzzling text. Not School is free with your $5/month PEL Citizenship. Go sign up at partiallyexaminedlife.com to hear the full-length discussions of these as well as many others, plus you can participate in groups yourself (no, you don't have to be on a recording). Take the video tour. Hey, and don't forget to buy your Amazon schoolbooks and things through our site.

On Martin Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" (1949). What's our place in the world? What is it, really, to be human? Heidegger thought that being human hinges on having a proper relationship to Being. What is Being? Well, it's something more basic than particular beings like people and tables and such, yet it being so close, Heidegger thinks it's hardest to see, and that we too often get sucked exclusively into engagement with particular beings: into worldly goals and temptations. He wrote this essay as a response to a question about whether his philosophy was a type of humanism, meaning an ethics based on relieving suffering and other evidently human interests. He responds that humanism is based on bad metaphysics that ignores Being in favor of beings, and it's in fact that humanistic viewpoint that enables so much inhumanity in the first place. If you'd just get right with Being, you'd have wisdom and ethics and the rest of it would come naturally to you. But of course, most of us won't do that, because we're too corrupted by modern society and philosophical history starting with Plato to even understand what in blazes he's talking about. Bah! Read more about the topic and get the text. Listen to Seth's introduction. End song: "Into the World" by the MayTricks (1993). Read about it. Please support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. Citizens can listen to a whole extra discussion of this text by Seth and some smart PEL listeners.

A short summary of Heidegger's "Essay on Humanism," read by Seth Paskin. After you listen to this, listen to the full episode. This is a new kind of mini-episode for us, and you should tell us at partiallyexaminedlife.com whether we should keep recording them. Our hope is that this will encourage more people to want to read the text in advance of our full-length discussions, and that it also might be less confusing for some folks than our usual multi-voiced presentation. Read more about the topic. Support the podcast!

Eva Brann discusses her book The Logos of Heraclitus (2011). What is the world like, and how can we understand it? Heraclitus thinks that the answer to both questions is found in "the logos," which is a Greek word with multiple meanings: it can be an explanation, a word or linguistic meaning, science, rationality (the Latin word is "ratio"), the principle of exchange between things... So the world is logos, in that it behaves in a lawlike manner so that mathematics and science can describe it. His physics imagined a basic material (he calls it fire, but clearly doesn't mean the same thing as ordinary, visible fire) that transforms in lawlike ways (in definite ratios) into all the different parts of the world, and that it's these cycles of transformation, driven by the logos itself, that make the world the moving system it is. The world's intelligibility--its singular logos--doesn't mean it's peaceful, though. The world is held together by tension; the logos is force. Confusingly to modern readers, Heraclitus believes that paradoxes really exist, that what in this discussion we call "stable ambivalences" hold, e.g. that relationships are made up of both love and strife, not in alternation but both, essentially, at the same time. Should this "logos" be thought of as God? Does it have a personality, a will? Is it immanent in the world or a transcendent force shaping the world? Heraclitus says that the logos "is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus." It's a stable ambivalence! Is your MIND BLOWN YET? Read more about the topic. End song: "Trading Away" by New People, from Impossible Things (2011), written by Matt Ackerman. Why this song? Because fire is traded/transforms into everything else, and Heraclitus was a misanthrope. Please support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. Go to pauldrybooks.com and enter the code PEL when you buy 2+ items (like Eva's book!) to get 20% off and free shipping in the US/discounted shipping elsewhere. Support this awesome small publisher and help us prove that PEL sponsorships pay!

On Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967) and "The Objectivist Ethics" (1961). First Rand grounds everyday human knowledge, largely by dismissing the concerns of other philosophers (even those whom she unknowingly parrots) as absurd. Then she uses this certainty to argue for her semi-Nietzschean vision of Great Men who master their emotions and rely only on themselves. Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth are satisfied with neither effort. Warning: This attempt to make sense of Rand's texts will likely offend any Randians out there, and our reading numerous passages from her alleged "texts" may offend the rest of you. When in doubt, curl up in the fetal position and moan "A=A!" over and over again until the bad sounds stop. Correction: The movie Atlas Shrugged actually got 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Part II getting 5%, both greater than L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth's 2%. So sorry. Read more about topic and get the texts (and check out the comments to see me debate a real-life Randian). End song: "Things We Should Do" by Mark Lint featuring Lucy Lawless (2013). Read about it. This episode is sponsored by Audible. Go get your free audiobook today at www.audiblepodcast.com/PEL. Please support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation.

On George Santayana's The Sense of Beauty (1896). What are we saying when we call something "beautiful?" Are we pointing out an objective quality that other people (anyone?) can ferret out, or just essentially saying "yay!" without any logic necessarily behind our exclamation? The poet and philosopher Santayana thought that while aesthetic appreciation is an immediate experience--we don't "infer" the beauty of something by recognizing some natural qualities that it has--we can nonetheless analyze the experience after the fact to uncover a number of grounds on which we might appreciate something. He divides these into areas of matter (e.g. the pretty color or texture), form (the relations between perceived parts), and expression (what external to the work itself does it bring to mind?) and ends up being able to distinguish high art (form-centric) from more savage forms (centered on matter or expression) while distinguishing real appreciation (which can include any of the three elements) from mere pretension (when you don't really have an immediate experience at all but merely recognize that you're supposed to think that this is good). The regular foursome talk through Santayana's theory with regard to expressionist painting, rock 'n roll, beautiful landscapes, abstract expressionism, and more. Read more about the topic and get the book. End song: "Sense of Beauty" by Mark Lint with help from some PEL listeners. Read about it. Please go to partiallyexaminedlife.com/donate to help support our efforts. A recurring gift will gain you all the benefits of PEL Citizenship. Thanks!

On Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's What Is Philosophy? (1991). How is philosophy different from science and art? What's the relationship between different philosophies? Is better pursued solo, or in a group? Deleuze described philosophy as the creation of new concepts, whereas science is about functions that map observed regularities and art is about creating percepts and affects. Just reading or writing about past philosophers is not enough; you have to actually create concepts, and to create or understand a concept requires a "plane of immanence," which is something like a set of background intuitions that is not private to a particular mind. Such a plane constitutes an image of what thought is and determines what questions will be considered legitimate, so trying to evaluate a past philosophy without grappling with the plane means you'll inevitably misunderstand the philosopher and your critiques will just talk past him or her. Likewise, if you yank a philosophical concept out of its plane and try to turn it into a proposition that you can evaluate, it's inevitably going to seem weak, like "just an opinion," because propositions are not what philosophy creates. As for a pragmatist, "truth" for Deleuze is something defined within a plane, not some transcendental standard used to judge planes or concepts. Mark, Seth, and Dylan are joined by "sophist" (PhD in rhetoric) Daniel Coffeen to try to figure this out. Read more about the topic and get the book. End song: "Tolerated" by New People, the new album Might Get It Right. Read about it. Please go to partiallyexaminedlife.com/donate to help support our efforts. A recurring donation will gain you all the benefits of PEL Citizenship, including another Deleuze discussion.

On Jacques Lacan's "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'" (1956), Jacques Derrida's "The Purveyor of Truth" (1975), and other essays in the collection The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading. How should philosophers approach literature? Lacan read Edgar Allen Poe's story about a sleuth who outthinks a devious Minister as an illustration of his model of the psyche, and why we persist in self-destructive patterns: we are driven by "the symbolic order," which tells us our place. The letter, which in the story is an embarrassing but unspecified message to the Queen that has been stolen by the Minister and used to blackmail her, is for Lacan a symbol for the power of the signifier, which dictates the roles of the various characters in the story, as first one then another is pushed into a passive, vulnerable state by gaining possession of it, driven by the logic that moves the letter inexorably back to its "rightful place." Derrida thought this reading not only imposed a bunch of psychobabble onto the story, but demonstrated that Lacan just didn't know how to read a text. Per Derrida's deconstruction, you have to look at not only the themes the author presents, but at the technical aspects of the work and how they betray the author to serve up a different message. Lacan thinks he's getting at the meaning of the text, but Derrida disavows the whole picture whereby such a meaning, or truth, can be revealed in this way. As both essays are tremendously obscure, who the hell knows if Derrida's assessment of Lacan even gets Lacan right, and the other authors in the collection have different takes on whose interpretation holds water, whether the Jacques are really more similar than they admit, and about how weird it is to be pouring criticism onto criticism of criticism. Mark, Seth, and Dylan do their best to wade through this morass and eke out a bit more understanding of Lacan (building on ep. 74), Derrida's view of language (see ep. 51), and how not to read a text. Read more about the topic and get the book. End song: "Came Round" by Mark Linsenmayer, from 2010. Read about it. Please go to partiallyexaminedlife.com/donate to help support our efforts. A recurring gift will gain you all the benefits of PEL Citizenship. This episode is sponsored by Zero Books: Check out their many titles in critical theory and related endeavors at zero-books.net.

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 initially) between consciousness and the unconscious. Lacan mixes this Freudian picture with semiotics--an emphasis on systems of linguistic symbols--using this to both create his picture of the psyche and explain how psychological disorders arise. The regular PEL foursome (with Wes acting much like a guest due to his formal study of psychoanalysis) try to make sense of this complex picture as presented by American psychoanalyst Fink and complain about Lacan's language as they wade into the nearly impenetrable writing of the Frenchman himself. Featuring the alienation of language! Eruptions into consciousness! Undifferentiated needs! "The Real" opposing "reality!" A baby preening in front of a mirror! Castration! And introducing the mysterious "object a!" Read more about the topic and get the texts. End song: "Something Else" by Madison Lint, recorded mostly in late 2002 with vocals added just now; written by Jim Low and Mark Linsenmayer. Please go to partiallyexaminedlife.com/donate to help support our efforts. A recurring gift will gain you all the benefits of PEL Citizenship. Thanks!

Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan share what drove them into philosophy and keeps them there. How is philosophy different than (or similar to) science? Than religion? Art? The consensus seems that philosophy, to us, is inevitable for the curious. It's just inquiry, unbounded (in principle at least) by any fixed assumptions. While scientific and religious endeavors can be self-questioning as well, there's a limit to that self-questioning; you have to grant some foundational principles as true (e.g. about natural laws or the existence of God) as true before you can get far enough into your inquiry to figure out what questions are still to be answered. The same is true, of course, of particular philosophic inquiries (arguably, particular sciences are just more narrowly focussed, empirical strains of philosophy; that's certainly how the creation of sciences has played out historically), but for philosophy as a whole, nothing is off limits to questioning. So if the philosopher is ever questioning him or herself, how could that be pleasurable? How is it not nauseating? One solution: The Partially Examined Life, where you follow your intellectual conscience as best you can while accepting that you're probably still wrong about something you're taking for granted, and maybe you'll figure that bit out next week. We did no formal reading for this discussion, but did tell each other to keep in mind Plato's "Apology." For more information, look here. End song: "Wake Me" by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000). Download it free. Please go to partiallyexaminedlife.com/donate to help support our efforts. Thanks!

We're joined by an international terrorism expert to discuss how to define terrorism and whether it can ever be ethical. We read: -Donald Black's "The Geometry of Terrorism" (2004) -J. Angelo Corlett's "Can Terrorism be Morally Justified?" (1996) -Igor Primoratz's article on terrorism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007, revised 2011) -Karl Heinzen's Murder and Freedom (1853) -Bhagat Singh's "The Philosophy of the Bomb: A Brief Response to Gandhi" (1930) -Carl von Clausewitz's On War (introduction) (1816ish) Jon advises the U.S. government and has written textbooks on terrorism. He puts al-Qaeda in historical perspective, helps work through definitions from Black's "pure terrorism" (which has an "upwards" social geometry requiring both geographic access and cultural difference) to Corlett's attempt to construct a definition that doesn't automatically rig the moral question. Primoratz helps us ask whether harming innocents (e.g. in a war where you're threatened with extinction) is ever justified, and Heinzen and Singh preach violence against violence, where the state itself, being founded on violence, can't be effectively fought through "soul force" alone. We also discuss how the philosophical questions relate to the practical ones: do we even need a definition, or is a practical scheme of classification sufficient for all practical purposes? Plus, a bit on gun control and the state's monopoly on force. Read more about the topic and get the readings. End song: "1000 Points of Light" by The MayTricks (1992). Read about it. Please support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation.

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 from other people, and can then engage in what we'd normally consider "experience," which Buber calls "the I-It relation," wherein we can reflect on and manipulate the world. Buber thinks that unless we can keep connected to this "I-Thou" phenomenon, through real, mature relationships (dialogue!), and maybe also through art and the appreciation of nature (we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how, as he says, you can really have an I-Thou encounter with a tree), you're spiritually dead, treating everyone as objects and sporting a thin, pissy sense of self to boot. If you get get in the groove, on the other hand, you'll come off all shiny and ethical and ready to transform the world. Sweet! Oh, and by the way, the "Thou," every thou, ends up also being a direct line to God, so all you "spiritual but not religious" folks are theists after all. Nyah nyah! Mark, Seth, and Wes are rejoined by verbose lawyer Daniel Horne to hash through this difficult and possibly mystical text. Read more about it and get the book. End song: "Luscious You" by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000). Download it free. Please support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation.

On Karl Marx's The German Ideology, Part I, an early, unpublished work from 1846. What is human nature? What drives history? How can we improve our situation? Marx thought that fundamentally, you are what you do: you are your job, your means of subsistence. All the rest, this culture, this religion, this philosophy, is just a thin layer over our basic situation. Ideas are not primarily what changes the world; it's economics. In fact, you can't even have an idea that doesn't end up being in some way a product of your economic situation, and any given culture inevitably reflects and reinforces the interests of the rich within that culture. Marx saw history as following an inevitable progression driven by the division of labor and development of technology, which would inevitably lead to a situation so awful for the vast majority that we'll have no choice but revolution leading to Communist paradise. OK, so that last part is a pretty big stretch, but some of Marx's diagnoses seem on point: our alienation from our jobs, the fact that our opinions really do more often than not reflect our situation and are not therefore the product of a wholly free intellectual choice, the fact that a lot of philosophy ignores our practical situation to its detriment (Marx really rips into the "Young Heglians" that were dominating German thought at the time), our general lack of self-knowledge (this idea among others being lifted from Hegel), and some of his analysis of past cultural advances (mostly lifted from Adam Smith). The original threesome of Mark, Seth, and Wes are back to hack into these issues and more. Read more about the topic and get the book. End song: "Job" by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000). Download it free. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider a donation. This episode is sponsored by Zero Books: Check out their many titles in critical theory and related endeavors at zero-books.net.

Excerpts of discussions about Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, an article on emergence called "More Is Different" by Nobel Prize Winning physicist P.W. Anderson, John Searle's Mind: A Brief Introduction, and Italo Calvino's trippy science fantasy novel Cosmicomics. How does the world fit together, with its different layers of organization, each with its different science? What's the relationship between lower layers like particle physics, and biology, and consciousness? Are the higher layers all reducible to the lower ones, or what? What about the different epochs where these layers were built up through cosmological and biological evolution of various sorts? All these discussions strangely fit together around this same ground explored a bit in our recent David Chalmers and Carnap episodes, with Anderson claiming that you can't even given infinite computing power predict the behavior of a higher level given a lower, John Searle claiming that the mental is causally but not ontologically reducible to the physical (and don't you dare call him a property dualist!), Deleuze putting forth a whole new metaphor (the "rhizome!") for thinking about these multiplicities instead of "layers," and Calvino putting us in the shoes of a cosmic being named Qfwfq who lives and loves through the progression through history all the way back to before the existence of space and matter. Read more and sign up at www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/pel-not-school-introduction. This will give you access to the full-length (ca. 90 min) recordings of these, plus lots of supporting forum posts on these readings. All of these groups and many more will be available for you to join as well. Jump in and propose a cooperative learning effort yourself! If you're already a member or just don't have time, you can make a targeted donation to buy a spot for someone else who's hard up for cash. Correlatively, if you're in need of a not-scholarship, we'll be giving out a few every month, so tell us who you are and what you'll bring to the discussion. We're posting these quasisodes to the full blog because we think they're cool, even (especially?) in such small doses, but they do take work to edit together, so come to partiallyexaminedlife.com and tell us if you want to hear more of them.