Not School Digest #3: The Future of Work, Blood Meridian, Embodied Mind, and Heidegger
Summary: Excerpts of discussions about <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/08/01/listen-to-the-not-school-discussion-on-f-bergmanns-new-work/" target="_blank">Frithjof Bergmann's New Work, New Culture</a>, <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/06/30/not-school-fiction-talks-about-blood-meridian/" target="_blank">Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian</a>, <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/08/24/filet-of-flesh-extra-cheesy-not-school-discussion-on-embodied-cognition-now-available/" target="_blank">Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson</a>, and <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/03/21/the-not-school-discussion-of-heideggers-letter-on-humanism/" target="_blank">Martin Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism."</a><br> 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.<br> Did you like <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/09/21/ep63-cormac-mccarthy/" target="_blank">our episode on Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men?</a> 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.<br> 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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465056741/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0465056741&linkCode=as2&tag=theparexalif-20">Amazon</a>:<br> 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.<br> Finally, Seth Paskin led a discussion back in March on Heidegger in preparation for <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/08/08/ep80-heidegger/" target="_blank">episode 80</a>, so you can hear some cool additional perspectives on that puzzling text. <br> <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/pel-not-school-introduction/" target="_blank">Not School</a> is free with your $5/month <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/10/06/introducing-the-pel-citizen-commons-and-not-school-study-groups/" target="_blank">PEL Citizenship</a>. <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership-options/" target="_blank">Go sign up</a> 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). <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/06/30/quick-citizen-site-video-demo/" target="_blank">Take the video tour</a>. Hey, and don't forget to buy your Amazon schoolbooks and things <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/s/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&keywords=philosophy%20books&linkCode=ur2&qid=1319562535&rh=n%3A21%2Ck%3Aphilosophy%20books&tag=theparexalif-20">through our site.</a><br>
