Read with us, via a nice paper copy I’m sure you can find at your local library, or check out this weird online version, a marked-up PDFed scan:
http://ia340931.us.archive.org/0/items/CivilizationAndItsDiscontents/
freud_civilization_and_its_discontents.pdf

If you previously subscribed to the Partially Examined Life via e-mail, or use a feed reader, or have this feed streaming to your site:

The blog feed address has now changed. It used to be http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePartiallyExaminedLife, but that feed will now have only our podcast episodes.

The new feed, with all the blog content, is http://feeds.feedburner.com/partiallyexaminedlife/blog, so RSS subscribers can go there and add this new stream to your feed.

If you’d like to have blog entries sent to you via e-mail, then go ahead and subscribe by putting your email address into the box on the right side of this page (i.e. http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com). You can then unsubscribe to the old feed (so you don’t get duplicate e-mails about the same podcast episode sent from the two different feeds) using the link at the bottom of your most recent (Episode 24) email.

This was due to my shortsightedness in initially setting our blog and our podcast using one and the same feed, which caused feed size issues that caused our feed to not be updated for the last 5 days or so before this.

Twitter subscribers should be unaffected; everything’s flowing there correctly now.

This will be a direct continuation (well, recorded two weeks later) of episode #24.

You can get the reading at http://frank.mtsu.edu/~rbombard/RB/Spinoza/ethica-front.html.

So, I’m requesting your help in telling us what philosophy blogs out there provide you with some entertainment value, as opposed to self-important Nietzsche-wannabes putting up cryptic treatises that could not stand up to peer review or polemically charged screeds documenting the author’s ongoing battle with the forces of ignorance.

On second thought, go ahead and link me to the terrible blogs you know about as well, so we can all feel uncomfortable together.

Well, we got our own first one-star iTunes rating, though, alas, with no accompanying review. Now, I had thought that this was actually a good thing, that we were finally getting big enough that hostile people were actually getting tuned into us, i.e. no one bothers to rate anything that they don’t care anything about.

However, on further review, I see that a lot of the other podcasts on the “featured” list also have a single one-star rating, with no two-star ratings at all, even “Philosopher’s Zone,” which is a very professional, soothing podcast that could not possibly actually offend anyone (whereas I can at least picture someone being totally turned off by our attitudes).

So, I’m forced to conclude that someone is gaming the iTunes rating system, likely because these determine in no small part which podcasts appear in the “featured” section of the philosophy category in the iTunes store. Now, we’ve been in there quite a bit, and this explains quite a lot of the growth in our listenership (i.e. more people stumble across us on iTunes than via this blog).

The only way to cancel out negative ratings like this is for you, our loyal readers/listeners, to go to our page at the iTunes store and give us a nice (5-star, if you think we deserve it) rating… and a text review wouldn’t hurt either, if you feel so inspired.

So, if you’ve been enjoying multiple hours of us, I ask you to kindly go take the two minutes or less that this will require, and nudge your friends/roommates/spouses/pets to do likewise, and that’ll actually do more to spread the gospel of PEL than nearly anything else. For those of you that don’t use iTunes, if you’re actually motivated to download and install it JUST so you can go to the store and give us a nice rating, well, let us know and we’ll be extra grateful (which along with fifty cents will buy you… well… a gun, I think, but not a very good one).

I see we have a meager 27 total ratings there now; I’ll check back in a few days to see if this here request gets us the goods. Thank y’all for your continued support; the encouragement we’ve gotten from you has determined us to keep doing this and strive to make it at least somewhat listenable, with a minimum of celebrity impersonations and wacky morning-zoo-type sound effects.

Sincerely,

-Mark

Well, I sent him a link to the episode via Facebook, and he not only listened that day to it, but put the link on his page, complimented us there to his many friends, and said it was OK for us to quote his correspondence. His initial response to us was this (edited down a bit):

Dear guys

I was really thrilled by the podcast you sent. It was a unique experience, seeing philosophy living in our culture. I’ve never before heard my work discussed like that, and rarely as intelligently. What was wonderful were all the digressions, but then everyone got back to the issues, and usually you came out right -or right enough, given where I was in the path of my thought when I wrote those essays.

…So thanks for the stupendous honor you have done me here. I enjoyed every minute, including the song at the end.

In a follow-up communication, he gave his this quote:

I think the way you address philosophical issues inspiring, including the kind of horseplay that Plato edited out of the dialogues, which had, after all, to be transcribed by hand.

…And on his FB page he said:

I was pleased and surprised by this discussion. Three former philosophy students took on the task of discussing different texts, and though there is a lot of irreverent comments on professional philosophy, it is very high level. I listened to the whole podcast, and felt exalted afterward.

At my request, he sent us some follow-up readings to consider. Some of the issues we discussed in the podcast, he says, were addressed in “The Abuse of Beauty, my Carus lectures, which were delivered not long after 9/11; the insight is directly connected with 9/11 – argues that beauty is indispensible to human life, but not essential to the concept of art” and also that we might enjoy Lydia Goehr’s book comparing Danto with Theodor Adorno: “She is in music aesthetics, and a lot more continental and at the same time more academic than I ever was, but she is very smart.”

As for future readings that will potentially feed our future episodes, here’s his list of suggestions:

Jerry Levinson writes on music in a highly intelligent way. Stanley Cavell is first rate on movies and literature. I love his book on screwball comedies. Noel Carroll’s book Mass Art raises a lot of important issues. Nelson Goodman was a towering thinker and also an art dealer, and his work is full of challenging ideas, even if stretches of it are highly technical.

Needless to say, we are thrilled and grateful for all of this and will get to more philosophy of art (which according to Danto, we should stop calling “aesthetics,” which has to do specifically and solely with “beauty”) as soon as we can fit it in.

• District 9 and Nietzsche
• Chuang Tzu Pronunciation
• Half examined life
• Partially good life

And last but most:

• did you bullshit today? did you try to bullshit today?

I have known for some time that my voice is at the pitch of ‘background noise’ and that my cadence is, let’s call it, deliberate.  In my professional life I have witnessed on numerous occassions men nodding off during my presentations or while I am talking.  I say “men” on purpose, as oddly, this seems only to apply to men.  In any case, this is what made me very good at delivering bad news to big institutional customers – I know how to bore an angry mob into submission.

So I’m particularly sensitive about how I come off in this podcast and when I edit, I pay particular attention to how I sound and the way I speak.  What I have found is that while ‘on tape’, my voice appears to be substantially less soporific, I am still terribly paced and deliberate in the way I speak.  Worse, I imagined myself as ‘thoughtful’ and coming out with extended but complete and coherent thoughts, which is not the case.  I get lost, go on tangents, restart, “um” and “you know” like everyone else. 

So I’m trying to be more responsive, speak more directly and be more succinct.  Easier said than done, but that’s my commitment to you.  And I highly recommend that you record one of your own conversations or an unrehearsed monologue – it’s an enlightening experience in self-awareness.

If you re-Tweet our episode posts to the millions of Twitter followers you undoubtably have, then you’ll have our eternal gratitude.

While I’m on the subject of spreading the word, why don’t you scroll ALL the way to the bottom of this page and hit the “Stumbleupon” or “Digg” icons at the bottom under “Share with your friends on…” This will nominate our page for wider circulation via those sites and will also make you cool. Note that you can do this with any one of our blog posts here as well; just click on the title of the post, and when a page comes up with just that post on it, then click the sharing icon. You’ll have to sign up for an account with those sites, but they’re kind of cool regardless.

More importantly, if you’ve not already gone onto iTunes and given us a steamin’ hot awesome rating (a review is nice too), go do that! I’m unclear re. what rating resources are available to you Zune users and other non-traditionals, but I encourage you people to do something as well… perhaps just stand in the street holding a sign with our URL on it. …Or better yet, buy a freakin’ T-shirt already!

After listening, however, I have decided to hyperbolically extoll the virtues of PEL.  Please to enjoy…

• All the participants contribute.  We don’t have some random dude who has no apparent connection to the material introduce the discussion and then disappear.  Nor do we have ‘interviewers’ or ‘hosts’ who offer up nothing but a set up questions to guests, allowing them to solliquize.
• We are having a genuine dialogue.  None of us is the acknowledged leader and we each bring both an open mind and unique perspective to the table.  Our purpose isn’t to lecture, educate or browbeat you from a soapbox.  (OK, well maybe Wes has a soapbox…)
• We have focus.  Beyond framing the discussion around an issue, we have textual grounding for the discussion.  This both lessons the likelihood of random stream-of-consciousness rambling and provides an anchor for the discussion when things are in danger of going off the rails.
• We prepare.  None of thinks ourselves so clever, intelligent or well read to come without reading the recommended texts.  Which correlates with,
• We have respect for each other and the texts/subjects.  Regardless of how much fun we make of someone’s ideas (Hegel), writing style (Aristotle) or life (Nietzsche), we take them seriously as thinkers and try to respect the context and goals of their enterprise.
• Authenticity vs. Authority.  We are genuinely interested in the philosophers and their ideas and struggle understanding them.  We don’t represent ourselves as experts or falsely claim insight or entitlement.
• Enough education, but not too much.  We all have the academic background and general smarts to treat the ideas and readings respectably without insulting your intelligence or wringing the life out of them with process, theory, -isms or technical specialization.
• The Real World.  We aren’t just evaluating ideas based on logic, tradition or intuition.  We allow our real life experiences to inform our reading and responses to the texts.
• We have a sense of humor but we aren’t ‘making fun’.   Our goal is to entertain, inspire, enlighten and amuse with a sense of decorum and integrity.  Jokes and humor are integral but not dominant elements in that quest.
• Minimal jargon and fetishism.  While it is *extremely* difficult not to use technical terminology or inside jargon, particularly when one has been “schooled”, we do our best to keep the discussion ‘right down to earth, in a language everyone here can easily understand.’  We also are not in the business of hagiography (I had to find some way to work that word in here.  I love it.)
• Universal approach.  We are performing for anyone interested in the ideas, philosophers or texts that we are discussing.  Our topics are only limited by that – you don’t have to have a certain background, education, geographical location, academic affiliation, gender, race, hair color or other trait to get engaged.
• Production and audio quality.  Hey, we’re not perfect, but we try to maintain a certain level of quality to our podcast, even though we are in three separate cities using Skype and different audio equipment and software.  At the very least we try to clean and equalize tracks so that one person’s volume isn’t radically different from another.   As someone who listens to podcasts at the gym or in a 9-year old car, this is really important to me.
• We edit.  “Um”, “yeah”, “right”, silences…ugh.  We try and get rid of the chaff, keep the wheat and provide an engaging dialogue (I’m sure with more or less success by episode).  We actually record 2 1/2 to 3 hours of stuff to get around 1 1/2 hrs of material, FYI.
• We have fans, ratings & responses.  Check us out on iTunes, Facebook or the PEL web page.  It isn’t American Idol level mania, but people listen and care enough to communicate, review and rate us.
• Better music and logo.  ‘Nuff said.

To be fair, I should point out areas where we are lacking as compared to the other podcasts.

• We don’t know famous people or prominent philosophers we can get for interviews or guest spots. 
• We haven’t been around for years to build up a body of work.
• We don’t have the luxury of time or resources to attend philosophy conferences or festivals.
• We don’t have the luxury of time or resources to produce episodes more frequently than we do.
• Our file sizes are large and our run time varies from episode to episode. 

For your reference, here are a few links to other philosophy podcasts – again, we’d love to hear what you think!

• Three Philosophers – http://www.threephilosophers.net/   (Primarily religious, last updated in August)
• Elucidations – http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/podcasts/index.html  (‘Official’ cast of the dept of Philosophy at U of Chicago)
• Baggini’s Philosophy – http://julianbaggini.blogspot.com/  (out of UK, publishes a monthly magazine as well)
• Bad Philosophy – http://www.badphilosophy.com/blog/  (long running program by students at Texas Tech University)
• Exploring the Mind – http://exploringthemind.com/ (not really Philosophy, the moderator is somehow involved in hypnosis, but the guests are interesting)

This blog post is dedicated to Marvin Levich.  –seth

So my New Year’s resolution is to be more ‘unreasonable’.  By that I mean not only cut down on the rational, analytical approach to things, the measured intake of data and attempt to view things from multiple perspectives, but also to stop being so accomodating to everyone else’s requests – to be a bit ‘unreasonable’.  Open myself to interpersonal energy and the immediate Zeitgeist.  And guess what world, that might mean I take more risks and am a bit more selfish.  I’m 41 and I deserve it, so deal.

A corollary to this is that I am going to start setting unrealistic expectations and goals.  Got this from The 4 Hour Work Week, but it seems to fit.

Unlike Mark, I’m not going to commit to either doing or sharing weekly with y’all.

Cheers, seth

So, here’s my New Year’s resolution: I have a lot of recordings that need finishing, a lot of songs that I’ve never bothered to record decently, or at all, lots of recordings (video and audio) of old live shows and/or significant life events that I should digitize and put in an order such that if I die, then my relatives will be able to find things easily. I hereby resolve to fix, finish, or at least make progress on something 50 times (i.e. approximately once a week) over the course of 2010, and to prove it, I aim to post and possibly analyze to death at least some if this for the amusement of you, the kind readers of the world.

And I’m starting right now.

• Audio-Technica AT2020 USB Condenser USB Microphone
• Samson SP01 Shockmount Spider Mount for Condenser Mics
• On Stage Tripod Microphone Stand (7701B)
• OMNITRONICS EPF-15A Cad Mic Pop Filter

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

We’re mentioned at the end of the first section, then have a couple of paragraphs under “Talk Talk” near the end, plus the “Gallery” includes the excellent caricature that Ken Gerber did for us. (Incidentally, you should check out Ken’s blog at http://cartoonstand.wordpress.com/ if you haven’t already.)