Partially examined life

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Partially examined Hannah Arendt

Anthony Robbins - Awaken The Giant Within

On The Human Condition (1958), Prologue and Sections 1 and 2.

How has our distinction between the private and public evolved over time? Arendt uses this history, and chiefly the differences between our time and ancient Athens, to launch a critique of modern society. In thinking about public, practical necessities like the economy, we've lost sight of the distinction between labor (what we need to do to sustain ourselves), work (the creation of things that will last longer than our lifespan), and political action (which needs to involve a real dialogue among equals, not the rote party posturing driven by economic interests that we have now).

We've become a society of laborers, defining ourselves in terms of our jobs and looking at politics as chiefly tasked with economic administration, which is kind of like national housekeeping. ""The social"" has erased the distinction between public and private realms, crushing us with its demands for conformity and leaving the private realm as merely ""the intimate."" We need both robust political engagement and a space for deep, private contemplation in order to live fully and avoid catastrophic political blunders (e.g., creating technologies that will destroy us).

The fab four conducted this podcast live at the Pittsburgh Continental Philosophy Conference.

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Hannah Arendt on the Private and Political (Part One)

Continuing on The Human Condition (1958), focusing on the rise of "the social," how that erodes the private sphere (unless you post it on Facebook, it's not real!), yet leads to feelings of loneliness and meaninglessness.

The audience at this live Pittsburgh event (with a notable lack of input from people watching from around the world on the live feed!) then joins us in the latter of this release to help us try to figure out what Arendt's positive picture is (including conference headliner Fred Evans). What sort of "great deeds" does she have in mind for the political sphere? Where does philosophy fit into this picture of the public and private? Can one of us eventually pronounce "vita contemplativa" correctly?

Hannah Arendt on the Human Condition (Part Two)

On Friedrich Nieztsche's 1888 book summarizing his thought and critiquing the founding myths of his society: traditional morality, free will, Socratic reason, and the idiocy of "Deutschland Uber Alles!"

Nietzsche defends instinct as the source of values, but these instincts must be "spiritualized" into frenzied creativity. Nietzsche as artist is an appealing figure to us, but he also praises Napoleon and says lots of nice things about war as the antidote to a complacent society sliding into decline. He thinks we're all degenerates, but we can't help it. So what does he actually want from us?

Nietzsche wrote this book in just over a week, and it's packed full of juicy quotes (like "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger") and psychological insights (e.g., virtue doesn't make you happy; being happy makes you tend to be virtuous). Wes, Mark, Dylan, and Seth sketch out the best and weirdest parts and try to figure out what Nietzsche would have to say about our world today, from social justice warriors to Louis CK.

If you want to learn more about Nietzsche, or some of what we're saying here sounds mysterious, then you should review our past episodes:

Episode 11 on The Genealogy of Morals (1887)
Episode 61 on his essay "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (1873)
Episode 84 on his essay The Gay Science (1882)
Episode 119 on The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
Nietzsche picture by Genevieve Arnold.

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The Partially Examined Life

Nietzsche as Social Critic: Twilight of the Idols (Part One)

Continuing on Nietzsche's 1888 book. Is there any ground from which we could judge life as a whole to be good or bad? Is N. more about saying "yes" to life or saying "no" to all the numerous things that piss him off? We also talk Becoming, whether producing great art is more important than being nice to everyone, and whether Nietzsche is ultimately someone we'd want to hang around.

End song: "Oblivion," written for this episode by Tyler Hislop. Listen to Tyler on Nakedly Examined Music #24. Hear the track by itself.

Oblivion

Nietzsche as Social Critic: Twilight of the Idols (Part Two)

On The Principles of Psychology (1890) chapters 1 & 7, and Psychology, the Briefer Course (1892), the chapters on "The Stream of Thought," "Habit," and some of "The Self."

Can we talk about the mind in a way that is both scientific and also does justice to our everyday experiences? James thought that previous philosophers talking about the mind weren't accurately reflecting how things actually seem to us when we introspect. The empiricists like Locke thought that the basic unit of mentality was the idea, and that particular mental states were combinations of ideas. Spiritualists like Descartes thought that mental states are faculties of a spirit. James found both of these views overly simplistic and ultimately uninformative. He stressed first and foremost that mental activities are in some way unknown to us correlated with brain activities (whether they literally are brain activities is a metaphysical question that can be set aside during science), and that mentality was an evolutionary development, and so psychological explanations should take into account how the organism engages with its environment. These assumptions persist in modern psychology, but the addition that was very in fashion at the beginning of the 20th century, largely because of James, was introspection. In this way, James presages a lot of the findings of phenomenologists like Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre by being willing to say what experience is really like. James favored direct introspection even while acknowledging that introspective observations, like all observations, are often mistaken. The alternatives as he described them (in Principles Ch. 7) are experimental psychology, which was coming into favor in Germany and bored James to tears, what with the incessant repetition required; and comparative psychology, which would administer surveys to large groups and bring animals, children, and the mentally impaired into their analyses. James thought that we should make use of all of these methods as applicable and not be the servant of any of them.

In "The Stream of Thought" chapter, he reports that consciousness is not a concatenation of discrete ideas, but is a "blooming, buzzing confusion" out of which we make some sort of order, largely through the use of our attention: we pick out some things as salient, and the rest becomes an indistinct fringe. We talk through some of the features of this fringe and the puzzle of what constitutes personal identity, i.e., what makes a particular thought seem owned, what makes it hang together with the rest of the stream of consciousness.

In the second half of the discussion, we turn to habit, which logically comes before all this talk of consciousness, because once something is habitual, you don't need to bring it up before consciousness. James's whole picture of a person's interaction with the outside world is that of a pulse coming in (e.g., through a sense organ), and then a reaction pulse going back out. Sometimes these loops come all the way to consciousness, but sometimes they don't. There are plenty of reactions that are purely reflexes, other more complex ones that are still instinctual, and some that reach all the way into our awareness so that selective attention, deliberation, and/or potentially an effort of will are involved in producing the reaction. Habit is part of that dynamic, where something starts as perhaps a conscious choice or an instinctive reaction, and the more we do it, the more that pulse pathway gets burned into our organism (especially our very plastic brain) so that we're likely to act that same way in the future. James then has a lot of interesting things to say about how best to inculcate good habits and break bad ones.

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

William James's Introspective Psychology (Part One)

Continuing on Psychology, the Briefer Course (1892), completing "The Stream of Thought" and covering the chapter on "Habit."

James thinks that psychologists focus too much on those parts of consciousness that get picked out by substantive words; we neglect those "fringe" parts that are harder to pick out specifically. Do elementary particles have "habits"? James describes habit as part of a general natural pattern in which things that happen once tend to create pathways for themselves in surrounding material to allow the same thing to happen again more easily. Be careful what you do, because your organism is recording all of your bad behavior and corrupting your character!

A Drowning Mind (Feedback Overload)

William James's Psychology (Part Two)

On Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963).

Are we still morally culpable if our entire society is corrupt? Arendt definitely thinks so, but has a number of criticisms of the handling of the 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Israel used the spectacle to remind people of the horrors of the Holocaust, but missed the opportunity to explore what would make a really rather ordinary man a party to such heinous acts. They were committed to the view that he was a monster, when the reality, says Arendt, is more frightening. He was really more of a clown: a status-obsessed, cliche-spouting, self-pitying bureaucrat who, far from having no moral compass, was extremely dedicated to obeying a warped version of the Categorical Imperative: "Act in such a way that the Führer, if he knew your action, would approve it."

She also had problems with the jurisdictional claim of Israel: Eichmann was tried by Israelis for crimes against the Jewish people. She thought that the Holocaust was not just the worst of a history of pogroms, but that genocide constituted a fundamentally new type of crime that needed clear philosophical analysis: The effort to snuff out a whole civilization is a crime against humanity as a whole beyond the individual murders involved. Arendt advocated for a permanent, international criminal court (which didn't materialize until 2002).

This constitutes a test case for our previous discussion of psychological situationism: In a situation where the whole society is oriented toward evil, then the pull of duty runs counter to one's conscience, which is reined in just like in ordinary circumstances one's disruptive impulses are reined in, because conscience is disruptive in that milieu. Eichmann could have chosen not to participate in the way that he did, but considered this unthinkable; abandoning one's duty in that way "just wasn't done." All dissenting voices had been silenced. “It was not his fanaticism but his very conscience that prompted Eichmann to adopt his uncompromising attitude during the last year of the war" (from Ch. 8).

Arendt still thought that he deserved execution, that we are responsible for engaging in concrete moral thinking—grasping other people as real others and not just as labels or roles—no matter what the environment. But she thought it important that we not gloss over factual details for the sake of making a political point: Eichmann was not in a position to have "masterminded" the Holocaust as was alleged, never pulled a trigger himself or directly ordered an execution, though he did order many deportations, even after his immediate superior had ordered that they cease, knowing full well that most of those deported would be killed. She also wants to be realistic about the guilt of those who helped the Nazis either through active cooperation (e.g., Jewish leaders who worked with the Nazis to provide them with information on the Jews in the area and their property, before the Final Solution was in evidence) or through inaction, and describes countries like Denmark where the "machine" didn't work because local officials would not cooperate in handing over their Jews, and troops on the ground didn't have the heart to press through such resistance.

The full foursome tries to figure out why we assigned ourselves such depressing holiday reading and whether we in the modern day might be subject to any kind of comparable moral blindness to what was going on in Nazi Germany. How slippery is the slope when you start considering your main social ill the "problem" of immigrants? Does loyalty to a leader commit one to denying obvious truths that the leader denies?

Hannah Arendt on the Banality of Evil (Part One)

Connecting Our Inner World to the World Around Us

"If the last day of my life came, and people were sitting around me, I would say ‘Smile, because I made it to the other side.’” - Ray Lewis

I constantly think about the fact that the only definite thing in this world is what we leave behind.

Money comes and goes, belongings eventually break or get thrown out, but what people say about you will never change.

This got me thinking about an amazing episode I did with Ray Lewis.

Ray has been leaving a legacy not just in football, but to the world.

On this 5 Minute Friday, we hear some of the most inspirational words about how anyone can leave a legacy and fulfilled life behind when they go on Episode 591.

The School of Greatness

On Apple Podcasts

Leave Your Legacy

Brandon answers a question about a common experience among working adults, wanting to move from less-than-ideal jobs and career conditions to those that are more fulfilling and rewarding, and he touches upon the most challenging aspects of the work and career path that are tied to spirituality, such as dealing with failure, expectations and the power of our creative thought. He also shares a great Eckhart Tolle clip that answers this question as well.

602: Don't define success so narrowly, for you only limit yourself

"Continuing on Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), on how ordinary people can do—or acquiesce to—horrific things. How do people rationalize this? What's required to cut through the environmental haze and have an authentic moral reaction? What can we apply from this story to our present political circumstances? Also, how was genocide a new type of crime, and what's the best rationale for punishing it? We talk justice, revenge, and ways that we too might be morally mass-confused.

Listen to part one first or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

End song: ""Hiding from the Face of God"" from Judybats 2000; listen to me interview singer/songwriter Jeff Heiskell on Nakedly Examined Music eps. 5 and 63."

Hiding from the Face of God

Hannah Arendt on the Banality of Evil (Part Two)

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.