The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
By Mark Linsenmayer
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Podcast Description
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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1 |
ExplicitEpisode 57: Henri Bergson on Humor | On Bergson's Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900). - What is humor? Bergson says that, fundamentally, we laugh as a form of social corrective when others are slow to adapt to society's demands. | 5/31/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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2 |
ExplicitEpisode 56: More Wittgenstein on Language | Continuing discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360. - Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Philosophy Bro talk about "family resemblances" in concepts, including the concept "game" as used by Wittgenstein: ... | 5/14/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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3 |
ExplicitEpisode 55: Wittgenstein on Language | On Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360 (written around 1946). - What is linguistic meaning? Wittgenstein argues that it's not some mysterious entity in the mind, | 5/2/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4 |
ExplicitEpisode 54: More Buddhism and Naturalism | Continuing our discussion of Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011). - Are the basic tenets of Buddhism compatible with a respect for science? In episode 53, Owen Flanagan outlined a science-friendly project of comparativ... | 4/6/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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5 |
ExplicitEpisode 53: Buddhism and Naturalism with Guest Owen Flanagan | Discussing The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011) with Owen Flanagan. - What philosophical insights can we modern folks with our science and naturalism (i.e. inclination against super-natural explanations) glean from Buddhisim? | 3/26/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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6 |
ExplicitEpisode 52: Philosophy and Race (DuBois, Martin Luther King, Cornel West) | On W.E.B. DuBois's "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" (1903), Cornel West's "A Genealogy of Modern Racism" (1982), and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963) and "The Black Power Defined" (1967), | 3/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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7 |
ExplicitEpisode 51: Semiotics and Structuralism (Saussure, et al) | On Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) (Part I and Part II, Ch. 4), Claude Levi-Strauss's "The Structural Study of Myth" (1955), and Jacques Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966). - | 2/24/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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8 |
ExplicitEpisode 50: Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” | On Robert M. Pirsig's philosophical, autobiographical novel from 1974. - What's the relationship between science and values? Pirsig thinks that modern rationality, by insisting on the fundamental distinction between objects (matter) and subjects (peop... | 2/3/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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9 |
ExplicitEpisode 49: Foucault on Power and Punishment | Discussing Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975), parts 1, 2 and section 3 of part 3. - Are we really free? Kings no longer exert absolute and arbitrary power over us, but Foucault's picture of the evolution from torture and public executions... | 1/11/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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10 |
ExplicitEpisode 48: Merleau-Ponty on Perception and Knowledge | Discussing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Primacy of Perception" (1946) and The World of Perception (1948). - What is the relation of perception to knowledge? In M-P's phenomenology, perception is primary: even our knowledge of mathematical truths is in som... | 12/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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11 |
ExplicitEpisode 47: Sartre on Consciousness and the Self | Discussing Jean-Paul Sarte's The Transcendence of the Ego (written in 1934). - What is consciousness, and does it necessarily involve an "I" who is conscious of things? Sartre says no: typical experience is consciousness of some object and doesn't inv... | 11/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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12 |
ExplicitEpisode 46: Plato on Ethics & Religion | Discussing Plato's "Euthyphro." - Does morality have to be based on religion? Are good things good just because God says so, or (if there is a God) does God choose to approve of the things He does because he recognizes those things to be already good? | 11/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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13 |
ExplicitEpisode 45: Moral Sense Theory: Hume and Smith | Discussing parts of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1740) and Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). - Where do we get our moral ideas? Hume and Smith both thought that we get them by reflecting on our own moral judgments and on ho.. | 10/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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14 |
ExplicitEpisode 44: New Atheist Critiques of Religion | Discussing selections from Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel C. Dennett. - Should we be religious, or is religion just a bunch of superstitious nonsense that it's past time for us to outgrow? | 10/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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15 |
ExplicitEpisode 43: Arguments for the Existence of God | Discussing the arguments by Descartes, St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, William Paley, Kant, and others, as analyzed in J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1983), chapters 1-3, 5-6, 8, and 11. - | 9/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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16 |
ExplicitEpisode 42: Feminists on Human Nature and Moral Psychology | Discussing Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novel Herland (1915) and psychologist Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1983). - How does human nature, and specifically moral psychology, vary by sex? Charlotte Perkins Gilman claims that when philos.. | 9/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 41: Pat Churchland on the Neurobiology of Morality (Plus Hume’s Ethics) | We spoke with Patricia Churchland after reading her new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. We also discussed David Hume's ethics as foundational to her work, reading his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Book III, | 7/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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18 |
ExplicitEpisode 40: Plato’s Republic: What Is Justice? | Discussing The Republic by Plato, primarily books 1 and 2. - What is justice? What is the ideal type of government? In the dialogue, Socrates argues that justice is real (not just a fiction the strong make up) and that it's not relative to who you are... | 7/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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19 |
ExplicitEpisode 39: Schleiermacher Defends Religion | Discussing Friedrich Schleiermacher's "On Religion; Speeches to its Cultured Despisers" (1799, with notes added 1821), first and second speeches. - Does religion necessarily conflict with science? Schleiermacher says no: the essence of religion is an ... | 6/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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20 |
ExplicitEpisode 38: Bertrand Russell on Math and Logic | Discussing Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), ch. 1-3 and 13-18. - How do mathematical concepts like number relate to the real world? Russell wants to derive math from logic, and identifies a number as a set of similar sets of o... | 5/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 37: Locke on Political Power | Discussing John Locke's Second Treatise on Government (1690). - What makes political power legitimate? Like Hobbes, Locke thinks that things are less than ideal without a society to keep people from killing us, | 5/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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22 |
ExplicitEpisode 36: More Hegel on Self-Consciousness | Part 2 of our discussion of G.F.W. Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit," covering sections 178-230 within section B, "Self-Consciousness." Part 1 is here. - First, Hegel's famous "master and slave" parable, whereby we only become fully self-conscious by ... | 4/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 35: Hegel on Self-Consciousness | Discussing G.F.W. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Part B (aka Ch. 4), "Self-Consciousness," plus recapping the three chapters before that (Part A. "Consciousness"). - This is discussion one of two: here we only get as far as "The Truth of Self... | 4/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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24 |
ExplicitEpisode 34: Frege on the Logic of Language | Discussing Gottlob Frege's "Sense and Reference," "Concept and Object" (both from 1892) and "The Thought" (1918). - What is it about sentences that make them true or false? Frege, the father of analytic philosophy who invented modern symbolic logic, | 3/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 33: Montaigne: What Is the Purpose of Philosophy? | Discussing Michel de Montaigne's Essays: "That to Philosophize is to Learn to Die," "Of Experience," "Of Cannibals," "Of the Education of Children," "Of Solitude," and "Of Solitude" (all from around 1580) with some discussion of "Apology for Raymond Se... | 2/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 32: Heidegger: What is “Being?” | Discussing Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927), mostly the intro and ch. 1 and 2 of Part 1. - When philosophers try to figure out what really exists (God? matter? numbers?), Heidegger thinks they've forgotten a question that really should come fi... | 2/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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27 |
ExplicitEpisode 31: Husserl’s Phenomenology | Discussing Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (1931). - How can we analyze our experience? Husserl thinks that Descartes was right about the need to ground science from the standpoint of our own experience, but wrong about everything else. | 1/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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28 |
ExplicitEpisode 30: Schopenhauer on Explanations and Knowledge | Discussing Arthur Schopenhauer's On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, published in 1847 (as an expansion of his doctoral thesis from 1813). - What kinds of explanations are legitimate? S. | 12/19/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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29 |
ExplicitEpisode 29: Kierkegaard on the Self | Discussing Soren Kierkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death" (1849). - What is the self? For K. we are a tension between opposites: necessity and possibility, the finite and the infinite, soul and body. He thinks we're all in despair, | 11/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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30 |
ExplicitEpisode 28: Nelson Goodman on Art as Epistemology | Discussing Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking (1978). - What's the relationship between art and science? Does understanding works of art constitute "knowledge," and if so, how does this relate to other kinds of knowledge? | 10/31/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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31 |
ExplicitEpisode 27: Nagarjuna on Buddhist “Emptiness” | Primarily discussing "Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas" and "Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas," by the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna. - Is the world of our experience ultimately real? If not, does it have something metaphysically basic underlying it? | 10/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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32 |
ExplicitEpisode 26: Freud on the Human Condition | Discussing Civilization and its Discontents (1930). - What's the meaning of life? Well, for Sigmund Freud, an objective purpose rises or falls with religion, which he thinks a matter of clinging to illusion, so to rephrase: what do we want out of life? | 9/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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33 |
ExplicitEpisode 25: Spinoza on Human Nature | Discussing Books II through V of the Ethics. Continues the discussion from Ep. 24. - What is the relation between mind and body? How do we know things? What are the emotions? Is there an ethical ideal for us to shoot for? | 9/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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34 |
ExplicitEpisode 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics | Discussing Spinoza's Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2. - We mostly discuss his weird, immanent, non-personal conception of God: God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, | 8/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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35 |
ExplicitEpisode 23: Rousseau: Human Nature vs. Culture | Discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse in Inequality and book 1 of The Social Contract. - What's the relationship between culture and nature? Are savages really slavering beasts of unquenchable appetites, or probably more mellow, hangin' about, | 7/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 22: More James’s Pragmatism: Is Faith Justified? What is Truth? | Discussing William James's "The Will to Believe" and continuing our discussion from Episode 20 on James's conception of truth as described in his books Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth, again featuring guest podcaster Dylan Casey. - | 7/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al) | Discussing articles by Alan Turing, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Dan Dennett. - What is this mind stuff, and how can it "be" the brain? Can computers think? No? What if they're really sexified? Then can they think? | 6/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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38 |
ExplicitEpisode 20: Pragmatism – Peirce and James | Reading Pragmatism by William James and "The Fixation of Belief" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" by Charles Sanders Peirce. - Is truth a primitive relation between our representations and things objectively in the world, | 6/9/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 19: Kant: What Can We Know? | Reading Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, which is sort of a post-publication Cliff’s Notes to his Critique of Pure Reason. - Do we have any business doing metaphysics, which is by definition about things that we could not possibl.. | 5/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 18: Plato: What Is Knowledge? | Discussing the Theaetetus and the Meno, two dialogues about knowledge. - We're returning to Plato for a somewhat more thorough treatment than we gave him in Episode 1. This should be considered part two (Hume being #1) of three discussions intended t... | 4/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 17: Hume’s Empiricism: What Can We Know? | Reading David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. - David Hume thinks that all we can know are our own impressions, i.e. what our moment-to-moment experiences tell us. Funny thing, though: he thinks that no experience shows us one event ... | 3/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 16: Danto on Art | What effect should the avant garde have on our understanding of what art is? We read three essays by modern, first-rate American philosopher Arthur Danto, all published in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986): the title essay, | 3/4/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 15: Hegel on History | Discussing G.W.F Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Though he didn't actually write a book with this name, notes on his lectures on this topic were published after his death, and the first chunk of that serves as a good entrance point t... | 2/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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44 |
ExplicitEpisode 14: Machiavelli on Politics | Reading Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince and Ch. 1-20 of The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy. - What's a philosophically astute approach to political matters? What makes a government successful? | 2/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 13: What Are the Metaphysical Implications of Quantum Physics? | Reading Werner Heisenberg’s “Physics and Philosophy" (1958), and talking about it with an actual former particle physicist, Dylan Casey. - What weird stuff about reality does quantum physics imply? Is Heisenberg (of the Uncertainty Principle fame) ri | 1/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 12: Chuang Tzu’s Taoism: What Is Wisdom? | Discussing the "Chuang Tzu," Chapters 2, 3, 6, 18, and 19. - It's the second-most-famous Taoist text and the most humorous, with anecdotes about people singing at funerals and jumping out of moving coaches while drunk. | 12/5/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway? | Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?). - We go through Nietzsche's convoluted and historically improbable... | 11/10/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 10: Kantian Ethics: What Should We Do? | Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysic of Morals. - 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, | 10/19/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 9: Utilitarian Ethics: What Should We Do? | Discussing Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation chapters 1-5, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and modern utilitarian Peter Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality.") - | 9/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 8: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (and Carnap): What Can We Legitimately Talk About? | Continuing last ep's discussion of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with some Rudolph Carnap (a logical positivist from the Vienna Circle: “The Rejection of Metaphysics” from his 1935 book Philosophy and Logical Syntax) about what kind | 9/4/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 7: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: What Is There and Can We Talk About It? | Discussing the beginning (through around 3.1) of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Mr. W. wrote that the world is made up of facts (as opposed to things) and that these facts can be analyzed into atomic facts, | 8/19/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 6: Leibniz’s Monadology: What Is There? | 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, | 7/31/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 0: Introduction to the Podcast | Listen to this here episode first. A priori, that is. Before experiencing the world yourself. - Why should you bother to go through the trouble of downloading and listening to one of the full length episodes? Who are we anyway? | 7/24/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEpisode 5: Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics | Discussing Books 1 and 2. - 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. | 7/16/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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55 |
ExplicitEpisode 4: Camus and the Absurd | 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 o.. | 6/22/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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56 |
ExplicitEpisode 3: Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Social Contract | Discussing Hobbes's Leviathan, Chapters 13-15. - Have we implicitly signed a social contract whereby our native right to punch other people in the face is given to the President? Hobbes does things that eventually result in the U.S. | 6/6/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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57 |
ExplicitEpisode 2: Descartes’s Meditations: What Can We Know? | Discussing Descartes's Meditations 1 and 2. - Descartes engages in the most influential navel gazing ever, and you are there! In this second and superior-to-the-first installment of our lil' philosophy discussion, | 5/13/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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58 |
ExplicitPart 2 of Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.” | More discussion of Plato's "Apology." - Incidentally, the "celibacy society" that Seth refers to at one point in here has a T-shirt. | 5/13/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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59 |
ExplicitPart 1 of Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.” | Discussing Plato's "Apology." - This reading is all about how Socrates is on trial for acting like an ass and proceeds to act like an ass and so is convicted. Big surprise. On this our inaugural discussion, Mark, Seth, | 5/12/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 59 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Intelligent and funny - a rare combo
The best philosophy podcast on iTunes. In fact, one of the best podcasts on iTunes. These guys know their stuff, and importantly, know how to explain obscure philosophical concepts to the uninitiated. The fact that all 3 guys have a sense of humor doesn't hurt, either. Highly recommended. Some of the early episodes suffer from twitchy audio, but they've resolved those problems now. The episodes on Hobbes and Nietzsche are particularly good episodes with which to start.
Seriously fun and informative conversations
Like: Unlike most philosophy podcasts, this one really works. It's a long-form (over an hour, usually) discussion among three former philosophy grad students discussing brief readings from core philosophy. What keeps this show on my subscribe list is that they explain their core arguments in clear English, and don't hesitate to object to it, or each other, in an entertaining and unpretentious way. This is not an abstract discourse on ideas, either; these guys care about how philosophy helps us better undstand what's really going on in our experience. In their own words, they focus on ideas instead of fetishizing dead guys. Further, it's not a contentious-for-the-sake-of-"good radio" show, but a fun and collaborative discussion among people who appear to care about the personal philosophical enterprise. Needs Improvement: They sometimes break one of their self-imposed rules, by assuming that you *do* know some philosophy. For example, in the show on Camus, they just start discussing Existentialism (a term that's taken on all kinds of meanings in the wild) without any introductory definition of what it is or how it arose. So before they get to the text's core argument I would appreciate a bit more stage setting which better indicates who this philosopher was, when they lived, and what they're reacting to. They often get to much of this material, but often much later in the episode. Verdict: If you've been looking for an accessible philosophy podcast, and don't mind the long format, you should try this show. I strongly advise starting with episode 1, as references to previous episodes appear to accrete. Definitely worth listening to.
Really wonderful way to grab and engage your brain for two hours
The chemistry among these three guys is but one of the assets of the listening experience. A lot of good analysis is also delivered of these many classic and contemporary texts, and always leavened with good spirits. Even when the occasionally "stupid" exhortation of one member gets expressed, it inevitably gets caught by one or both of the other two. But such "stupid" exhortations, being also often shared by the listener herself (i.e., ME!!), when taken seriously in the larger discussion, often help work out even more insights that might not have been achievable had the s.e. not been expressed in the first place.
All this is meant to say that I really like the model set up so far for this podcast. So don't tinker with it too much just yet!!
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