Posts Tagged philosophy
Episode 14: Machiavelli on Politics
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on February 7th, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:33:23 — 85.6MB)
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? Should you keep that fortress or sell it for scrap? If you conquer, say, Iraq, do you have to then go and live there for the occupation to work out? Is it OK to display the heads of your enemies on spikes, or should you opt for a respectful diorama?
Besides the famous Prince, Mr. M. wrote, at about the same time, the Discourses on Livy which focus on republics instead of princedoms, so the combined picture is less out of sync with our time than you might think, meaning we talk about G.W. Bush for a bit (sorry).
Plus: An inspirational speech to play at middle school assemblies across the land!
Skim the texts at http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm and maybe at http://www.constitution.org/mac/disclivy_.htm.
The Isaiah Berlin article we talk about a bit is “The Originality of Machiavelli,” which you read most of if you search for the essay title in this book preview: http://books.google.com/books?id=Zjv9fBU-YRoC&dq=berlin+the+proper+study+of+mankind&source=gbs_navlinks_s
End song: “Se Piangi, Se Ridi” (Mogol/Marchetti/Satti), recorded by Mark Lint in 2000.
Episode 10: Kantian Ethics: What Should We Do?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on October 19th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05:03 — 114.6MB)
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, for instance, you should not will to eat pie, because then everyone would eat it and there would be none left for you, so too bad.
Also, Kant on free will, “things in themselves,” our duties to animals, and prostitution! Plus: Should you go to grad school?
The Kant reading can be found at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5682. The Allen Wood article “Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature” is here: http://www.stanford.edu/~allenw/papers/Nonrational.doc.
End song: “Stop” by Madison Lint (2003).
Episode 9: Utilitarian Ethics: What Should We Do?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on September 18th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:59:04 — 109.1MB)
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.”)
Going full tilt on the Greatest Happiness principle, with talk of gladiators, consensual cannibalism, and illegal downloads. How many Pleetons were in your last orgasm? Should animals count in the utilitarian calculus? What is Bentham’s skull up to nowadays? This extra long episode (patched together from two recording sessions, as Seth’s audio track got toasted for most of the first one) is disgustingly thorough and only occasionally internally redundant.
Read along at http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/bentham01.htm, http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill1.htm, and http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1972—-.htm (Also, for some more information on Singer’s view of animal liberation, see http://www.utilitarian.org/texts/alm.html.)
End song: “So Whaddaya Think?” by Mark Lint and the Fake (2000).
Episode 7: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: What Is There and Can We Talk About It?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on August 19th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:27:08 — 79.8MB)
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, but then refused to give even one example to help us understand what the hell he’s talking about, and so Wes and Mark argue about it per usual while Seth corrects our German pronunciation. The first 3/4 of this episode was recorded off-site from our regular equipment, making the audio quality relatively sucky. Enjoy!
One online place to find the reading is http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~luke_manning/tractatus/tractatus-jsnav.html.
For a clearer explanation of fact-based ontology, see this short introduction by Bertrand Russell to his lectures on logical atomism: http://www.hist-analytic.org/RussellLAfacts.pdf.
End song: “Facts for a Moment (What You Are to Me),” recorded in 1992 and released on the Mark Linsenmayer album Spanish Armada, Songs of Love and Related Neuroses.
Episode 6: Leibniz’s Monadology: What Is There?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on July 31st, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:03 — 90.7MB)
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, placed in the best kind of harmony at the beginning of time by God. Is there a concept album in all of this?
Plus, does reading philosophy make you a better conversationalist, or just get you ostracized?
Get the reading at http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/hmp/texts/modern/leibniz/monadology/monadology.html
End song: The soothing “Healthy Song” by The MayTricks, from the 1994 album Happy Songs Will Bring You Down.
Episode 0: Introduction to the Podcast
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on July 25th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:06 — 9.3MB)
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? Why shouldn’t you just go listen to some philosophy lectures posted by university professors instead of this thing? Do you need to listen to the episodes in order? Do you need to already know a lot about philosophy to get anything out of this podcast? Should you listen to it while pleasuring yourself? Most of these questions will be answered here!
End song: “New People” by New People.
Episode 5: Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on July 16th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:41:17 — 0.0KB)
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. Plus, is Michael Jackson the Aristotelian ideal?
You can read the text discussed at http://www.constitution.org/ari/ethic_00.htm.
End song: A newly recorded cover of Billie Jean by Mark Lint and the TransAmerikanishers. (Hear it by itself here.)
Episode 4: Camus and the Absurd
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on June 22nd, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:37:18 — 89.2MB)
Discussing Camus’s “An Absurd Reasoning” and ”The Myth of Sisyphus.”
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 of phenomenologists until he dies unreconciled. Also, let’s all push a rock up a hill and like it, okay? Plus, the fellas dwell on genius and throw down re. the Beatles, the beloved Robert C. Solomon and Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers.
An abridged version of the reading covered with most of the good stuff in it is here: http://www.humboldt.edu/~jwp2/sisyphus.htm. An unabridged version of “An Absurd Reasoning” is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/3223928/Albert-Camus-The-Myth-Of-Sisyphus.
End song: “My Friends” by Mark Lint and the Simulacra (2000).
Episode 3: Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Social Contract
Posted by admin in Podcast Episodes on June 7th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:38:15 — 90.0MB)
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. Constitution and makes Wes nauseous. Plus: Star Trek and the Bible!
You can get the reading from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-c.html
End song: “The Villa” by Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio (1998).
Episode 2: Descartes’s Meditations: What Can We Know?
Posted by admin in Podcast Episodes on May 13th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:04 — 90.7MB)
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, we discuss what Descartes thinks he knows with certainty (hint: it is not you), the Matrix, and burning-at-the-stake.com. Mark and Wes agree to disagree about agreeing that they disagree. Seth had a long day and is very tired. Plus: Some listener feedback; whom is this here podcast aimed at? Why, you, of course!
To increase your enjoyment, download and read Descartes Meditations 1 and 2.
Here, also, is the Descartes chunk of Philosophy and the Matrix that Seth refers to.
End song: “Axiomatic” by New People (2009)
Part 1 of Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.”
Posted by admin in Podcast Episodes on May 12th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:11 — 38.6MB)
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, and Wes talk about how philosophers are arrogant bastards who neglect their children, how people of all political stripes don’t usually examine their fundamental beliefs (but probably should), why it might be better to know you know nothing than to only think that you know nothing, and how Plato was a super genius all of whose texts you should worship uncritically. Plus : podcaster philosophical origin stories, like when Wes was bitten by a radioactive Anaxagoras.
To increase your enjoyment, download and read Plato’s Apology.
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 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. Discuss episodes and provide feedback here or via our Facebook group. You can also e-mail comments to mark@marklint.com.
Episode 16: Danto on Art
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on March 4th, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:13:28 — 122.3MB)
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, “The Appreciation and Interpretation of Works of Art,” and “The End of Art.”
I understand you may not have heard of Danto, and you may think modern art is goofy, but you’ll definitely enjoy this discussion and the reading anyway. Danto gives a picture of philosophy and art at war throughout history: philosophy says that art can’t get at truth and is otherwise useless, yet philosophers like Plato seem afraid of the power of art to corrupt. What’s the deal?
Also, Danto claims that art is over; the end of art has happened. So suck it, artists. (Actually, artists can keep on doing what they’re doing; they’re fine, yet art is still over.) Plus, can you stare at a urinal and thereby make it art? What if it’s in a museum? Danto loves them crazy ass post-modern artists, and thinks that their work shows that art was not what we thought it was.
Plus, Seth talks about the plane crashing into the IRS building near his house, and we respond some listener postings.
This work is unfortunately not available free on the Internet, but is worth your purchase. Try Amazon or your preferred bookseller. We also refer heavily to Calvin Tomkins’s “The Bride and the Bachelors.” For a summary of “The End of Art,” you can read this excerpt from one of Danto’s later books: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s5911.html. You could also check out the Amazon preview of Danto’s book “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace,” which we refer to a bit.
End song: “This Night Before the End,” by Mark Lint and the Simulacra, recorded mostly in 2000 but finished just now.
academia, aesthetics, Amy Bishop, Andy Warhol, art, art-world, Arthur Danto, avant-garde, Avatar, DVD commentary tracks, G.W.F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, iPAD, Jessica Berry, John Cage, Joseph Andrew Stack, Karl Marx, Lord of the Rings, Marcel Duchamp, Perseopolis, philosophy, philosophy of history, Picasso, Plato, ready-mades, relativism, religion-bashing, smell-o-vision, The Bride & the Bachelors, University of Texas, virtual reality, Vogon poetry
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