patially examined life episodes

Discussing books 1 and 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics.

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?

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Aristotle on Virtue - Partially Examined Life

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.

Bentham and Mill on Utilitarianism - Partially Examined Life

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?

Kant on Ethics - Partially Examined Life

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 stories  about about the transition from master to slave morality and the origin of bad conscience. Why does he diss Christianity? Is he an anti-semite? Was he a lazy, arrogant bastard? What does he actually recommend that we do?

Nietzsche's Immoralism - Partially Examined Life

Discussing parts of David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1740) and Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).

This is a 33-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 46-minute episode which you can buy at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get it for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase the full episode in the iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Hume Smith" and look under "Albums."

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 how we and others (including imaginary, hypothesized others) in turn judge those judgments. Mark, Wes, Seth, and guest Getty Lustila, a phil grad student at Georgia State University, hash through the Scottish stoicism to lay out the differences between these two gents and whether their views constitute an actual moral theory or just a descriptive enterprise.

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PREVIEW Hume and Smith on Moral Sense - Partially Examined Life

On G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica, ch. 1 (1903); Charles Leslie Stevenson’s “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms” (1937), and Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, ch. 1-2.

Is there such a thing as moral intuition? Is “good” a simple property that we all recognize but can’t explain like yellow? G.E. Moore thinks that any attempt to define good in terms of properties like “pleasure,” “interest,” or “happiness” are doomed. Even if all pleasurable things were good, the word “good” still wouldn’t mean “pleasant;” you could always sensibly ask, “but are those pleasant things really good?” This is Moore’s “open question” argument, which expresses his objection to the “naturalistic fallacy,” i.e. deriving an “ought” from an “is.”

Moore on Grounding Ethical Claims - Partially Examined Life

On Buber’s 1923 book about the fundamental human position: As children, and historically (this is his version of social contract theory), we start fully absorbed in relation with another person (like, say, mom). Before that point, we have no self-consciousness, no “self” at all, really. It’s only by having these consuming “encounters” that we gradually distinguish ourselves from other people, and can then engage in what we’d normally consider “experience,” which Buber calls “the I-It relation,” wherein we can reflect on and manipulate the world.

Buber thinks that unless we can keep connected to this “I-Thou” phenomenon, through real, mature relationships (dialogue!), and maybe also through art and the appreciation of nature (we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how, as he says, you can really have an I-Thou encounter with a tree), you’re spiritually dead, treating everyone as objects and sporting a thin, pissy sense of self to boot. If you get get in the groove, on the other hand, you’ll come off all shiny and ethical and ready to transform the world. Sweet! Oh, and by the way, the “Thou,” every thou, ends up also being a direct line to God, so all you “spiritual but not religious” folks are theists after all. Nyah nyah!

Mark, Seth, and Wes are rejoined by verbose lawyer Daniel Horne to hash through this difficult and possibly mystical text.

Martin Buber's I and Thou - Partially Examined Life

"On 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) right that we need to reject “metaphysical realism” based on this very well established scientific framework? The discussion ranges over the uncertainty principle, relativity, wave/particle duality, Pre-Socratic metaphysics, why Kant is wrong about space, and lots of very weird things."

Metaphysical Implications of Quantum Mechanics - Partially Examined Life

Discussing Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s “Primacy of Perception” (1946) and The World of Perception (1948).

This is a 33-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 42-minute episode which you can buy at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get it for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase the full episode in the iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Merleau-Ponty" and look under "Albums."

What is the relation of perception to knowledge? In M-P’s phenomenology, perception is primary: even our knowledge of mathematical truths is in some way conditioned by and dependent on the fact that we are creatures with bodies and senses that work the way they do. Science is great, but it doesn’t discover the truth of things hiding behind perception: it is an abstraction from certain kinds of perceptions. Other modes of approaching things, e.g. art, can equally well give us knowledge, though of a different kind.

Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan argue over whether this thesis is just a bunch of truisms and despair over not having read The Phenomenology of Perception, the longer work which what we did read was meant to summarize. Is M-P just saying that scientific knowledge is defeasible, which scientists already believe?

PREVIEW Merleau-Ponty on Perception and Knowledge - Partially Examined Life

Discussing Edmund Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations (1931).

This is a 32-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 50-minute episode which you can buy at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase the full episode in the music section of theiTunes Store: Search for "Partially Examined Husserl's" and look under "Albums."

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. Husserl recommends we “bracket” the question of whether the external world exists and just focus on the contents of our consciousness (the “cogito”). He thinks that with good, theory-free observations (meaning very difficult, unnatural language), we can give an account of the essential structures of experience, which will include truth, certainty, and objectivity (intersubjective verifiability): all that science needs. We’ll find that we don’t need to ground the existence of objects in space and other minds, because our entire experience presupposes them; they’re already indubitable.

PREVIEW Husserl's Phenomenology - Partially Examined Life

On The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published mostly in 1962.

Does scientific knowledge simply accumulate as we learn more and more, coming closer and closer to a full and truthful picture of the world? Kuhn says no! Instead, each scientific sub-culture has its own “paradigm,” or model for what constitutes legitimate science, which includes what problems to study, what to counts as a result, some background assumptions, and other things nebulous enough that you really can’t enumerate them. While Kuhn still believes that the movement to a new paradigm constitutes progress in a sense, the traditional picture of progressive science is still wrong.

Dylan enthuses at a weary Mark, Wes, and Seth over this fast and furious book, which is chock full of stories about phlogiston and all things mechanico-corpuscular.

Thomas Kuhn on Scientific Progress - Partially Examined Life

On Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” lecture (1837) and his essays “Self-Reliance” and “Circles” (1841).

How should we live? Emerson thinks that conformity, which includes most of what passes for ethics, jobs, and scholarship, makes us less than truly human. Be true to yourself! But since we’re all ever-changing, that’s a moving target, right? But Emerson thinks that when you get really truly honest about what you think and feel, it turns out that you’ve tapped into something universal, something beyond just you, something eternal.

But don’t expect Emerson to really explain that part; the upshot of these essays is primarily social, not religious, much less metaphysical. Trust yourself, stop bullshitting, stop living according to others’ expectations! Mark, Wes, and Dylan argue over whether this is tired cliche or acutely perceptive, and whether Emerson’s poetic language provides helps or distracts.

Emerson on Wisdom

On Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854).

What is the appropriate life for a truly thoughtful person? Thoreau warns against getting ensnared by social bullshit like jobs and charity, and instead living simply, in direct contact with nature, relying as much as possible only on your own effort. His time in the woods on Walden pond was meant to be an experiment to see what life lived this way really has to offer.

Mark, Wes, and Dylan argue about how to best take Thoreau’s brand of opinionating, and what the ethical upshot of the attempt to live naturally is supposed to be. Read more about the topic and get the book.

End song: “Green Song” by Mark Linsenmayer, originally released on The MayTricks (1992), newly remixed.

Thoreau on Living Deliberately

On How to Do Things with Words, a lecture series delivered in 1955.

What's the relationship between language and the world? According to Austin, philosophers have generally taken language as providing descriptions: A sentence is true if it correctly describes some state of affairs. But what about sentences like "I promise…"? Austin says that when you say that, you're not describing your inner state or predicting your future behavior, but performing a verbal action, a ritual that relies for its success on the circumstances of your utterance. For instance, you can't legitimately promise something beyond your control, can't really make a promise to a non-person, aren't really making a promise if you're saying it as a line in a play you're acting in, etc. And yes, if you have no intention of keeping the promise, that's another way in which it can "go wrong," though in that case you really have made a promise (unless, arguably, you had your fingers crossed, but that's just your bad excuse!).

Austin calls promising, betting, apologizing, issuing a verdict, and similar verbal actions performatives, to contrast them to descriptive statements, and uses this kind of sentence to turn around our whole way of looking at language. These aren't just fringe cases in our language, he thinks, but actually, descriptions will end up being performatives too: "The dog is here" is really "I hereby state that the dog is here." Or is it? What's added in the second formulation is some kind of picture of the circumstance of utterance. My action could be merely one of stating, but it could also be one of warning ("The dog is here!"), concluding, complaining, etc. For Austin, analyzing the truth or falsity of a sentence doesn't get much of what's interesting about activity: You need to look at the whole speech act.

You might recall Wittgenstein's doctrine in the Investigations (see our episode 55) that "meaning is use." The meaning of "I promise…" is only understood if you understand the social convention of promising. Austin makes this more precise, and I'll give you some of his terminology here. Every successful utterance can be analyzed in terms of its locution (the actual sentence uttered along with its dictionary meaning and what specifically in the world it is allegedly about); its illocution (how is it meant to work as a performative?); and its perlocution (what intended effects not dictated by convention, i.e., by its illocutionary aspect, does the utterance achieve?). This analysis is supposed to allow us to, for instance, banish as pseudo-problems significant questions in philosophy, including perhaps all of ethics.

So simple and clear, right? OK, not so simple and clear, and Seth is back to join Mark, Wes, and Dylan to try to explain it all.

Austin image by Charles Valsechi.

The Partially Examined Life

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J.L. Austin on Doing Things with Words (Part One)

On The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind (2020). What is it to be nonviolent in political activity? Most ethics allow for self-defense, but Judith has a problem with defining "self" as well as "violence," and offers a full critique of the individualism that underlies typical Western approaches to both ethics and politics. Mark, Seth, and Wes interview Judith about these issues and the connection to . End song: "Dancing with Death," discussed on  with Marty Willson-Piper. Sponsor: Visit  for a free month of The Great Courses Plus. Get this episode ad-free with a .

Ep. 236: Judith Butler Interview: "The Force of Nonviolence"

How should we think politically about the current global crisis? Do extreme circumstances reveal truths of political philosophy or do they reinforce whatever it is we already believe? Mark, Wes, Seth, and Dylan talk about applying philosophical insights to real-life situations rife with unknowns, John Rawls' veil of ignorance and Adam Smith on our interconnectedness, utilitarianism, libertarianism, and more. A source we used was " by John Authers. For an ad-free version of this episode, .  End song: "Date of Grace" by Rob Picott, as discussed on . Sponsor: Visit  for a free trial of unlimited learning at $10/month w/ a quarterly plan.

Ep. 241: Political Philosophy and the Pandemic

On Albert Camus' existentialist novel The Plague. How shall we face adversity? Camus gives us colorful characters that embody various approaches. Yes, the plague is an extreme situation, but we're all dying all the time anyway, right? Join Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth to tease out Camus' positions from this bleak yet colorful text. Don't wait for part two; get the unbroken  now.

patially examined life episodes

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