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?

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Nietzsche's Immoralism - Partially Examined Life

Discussing Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), mostly the intro and ch. 1 and 2 of Part 1.

This is a 33-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 52-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 iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Heidegger" and look under "Albums."

When philosophers try to figure out what really exists (God? matter? numbers?), Heidegger thinks they’ve forgotten a question that really should come first: what is it to exist? He thinks that instead of asking “What is Being?” we ask, as in a scientific context, “what is this thing?” This approach then poisons our ability to understand ourselves or the world that we as human beings actually inhabit, as opposed to the abstraction that science makes out of this.

This is Seth’s big episode: this was his primary concentration in his later grad school years. Plus: Nazis, trying to figure out things by free associating about their origins in ancient Greek, and whoopee cushion record breaking news!

Buy the full episode

PREVIEW Heidegger on Being - Partially Examined Life

Gemlike Flame (by Balamir Nazlıca)
The song ‘Gemlike’ was intended to be a pure love song.  It started off with the simple object of expressing ones true inner feelings to ones spouse. Although it was simpler in its task of composing, different from the other songs, the lyrics to Gemlike were written over a period of time. While writing I came across several books which were to become my reference points, and it would be meaningful to mention a few of them here. Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley and Neil Gaiman’s Stardust illustrated by Charles Vess were enormous help in fine-tuning my mind. The former being an essay and the latter a novel both were rather peculiar writings, which had a deep impact on this particular song. This is an attempt to explain how this song was written.
Gemlike’s melody was composed instantly. Transforming the inner passions to a meaningful melody happens in the moment. In other words, feeding your inner depths with harmonized melodies is an easier task. At least for me. But putting this in a written context so that it has a logical meaning to it is a more difficult task than one might imagine. Explaining yourself with words, due to the confined structure of lyric writing is a somewhat mind boggling experience. Both books mentioned above came to the rescue at this point.
The magic of the stars, galaxies, supernovas was, and continues to be, an endless area that has always haunted me. Needless to say the vastness of the galaxies and the stars has an epherical feel to it and while reasoning within this surreal context you are confined in the supernatural.  What made Gemlike’s lyric interesting was, before beginning the process of writing, I had a vision or a dreamlike abstract picture of a supernova in my mind. As we all know it, a supernova is a star that explodes causing high levels of luminosity throughout space. Right at the time I was grappling with all of this, I was also reading Neil Gaiman’s novel Stardust. The novel inspired me to repetitively envision stardust traveling through space and finding their way to my studio. Mixing these two words together I came to create in my mind a superstar, not in the sense that we know it, however.  A superstar of its own.A superstar that made no sense scientifically but corresponded to my mind’s visions. An entity of its own.
A superstar as we know it is a celebrity. But here, within the realm of Gemlike, it has a different meaning to it because it only seems to exist in my mind. But listeners and readers can take this form and make what they want of it. If it does exist, if it is real. The abstract is a deep and free world. It is a chaotic place. The probability of you observing one is slim. At this point, bringing the magical world of stars, supernovas and brilliant objects to this love song made sense. And by making my wife a superstar, I made her beam out across space providing her with the tool necessary to travel in the phantoms of the galaxy.
While I had found the chorus of the song, I needed an element that would bring it to the mundane planet. I needed to find an element that would cause such a tremendous visionary experience as my superstar. It had to be a comparison so that we could have a point of return to measure in our mind and make sense of these lyrics.
As mentioned above, during this period I ran across a book called The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. Huxley’s book was an experiment, carried out personally by him, where he acquired certain dosages of mescaline and recorded his experience. Heaven and Hell was a sequel to this. In his attempt to describe the effects of Mescaline he clearly implies how one can transcend into another realm of reality. Huxley attempts to give reason to his visionary experience. By different methods individuals would perceive an external world where the mind would fabricate a completely different contextual vision, place, location or reality. With this daunting experience Huxley comes to a better understanding of what other groups think about cosmological notions.
While reading this odd short essay I came across a paragraph in which, Huxley explains how different religions would use gemstones to try to explain what heaven looks like and the reasons of gemstones relative value. Huxley continues to give us different explanations of the value of gems and how they were used within different centuries for different purposes. Amongst these, what interested me the most was the use of gems transportive power. According to his essay, it is believed that gems have the power to transform the individuals mind to have a visionary experience that would transport you to the other existing worlds. A shuttle in itself. Observed long enough gemstones have the power to transport.
Real or not it made perfect sense to combine the gemstone into bursting stardust. This could have only been a gemlike flame. Once I had settled this the lyrics just poured out. The Gemlike song is a journey of its own. The lyrics are an attempt to catch the extraordinary with the mundane, merged to become a gem like flame.

Gemlike

On Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science (1882, with book 5 added 1887).

What is wisdom? Nietzsche gives us an updated take on the Socratic project of challenging your most deeply held beliefs. Challenge not just your belief in God (“God is dead!”) but uncover all your habits of thinking in terms of the divine. Question the motives behind relentless inquiry: the “will to truth.” Realize how little of your life is actually a matter of conscious reflection, and the consequent limits on self-knowledge. The very act of systematization in philosophy overestimates what we can know; instead, we need a “gay” (in the sense of cheerful, carefree, and subversive) science (in the sense of organized knowledge; this is not about modern experimental science) that chases after fleeting insights and is able to question, i.e. laugh at, the pretensions of its own activity. This is the position from which one can then artistically create one’s own character and one’s values, and this “creation” is not whimsical in the sense of arbitrary, but is a matter of rigorous and careful discernment, an exercise of one’s “intellectual conscience.” Hear Mark, Wes, and Dylan frolic through this field of aphorisms and short essays.

Nietzsche's Gay Science - Partially Examined Life

We’re proud to share with you all our cover of ‘Sweet Harmony’ by The Beloved.

This is a song that we’ve recently revisited from our youth. We’ve been listening to it whilst travelling and writing music.

It's such a great song that we decided to record our own version. We even managed to dig the saxophone out and record a solo! It'll be a bonus track on our next record and you can download + stream now.

Download on iTunes: smarturl.it/MWCSweetH
Stream on Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/16wEnvdtOREG7wnKQTaLS6

More new music soon, subscribe to be the first to hear about it: manwithoutcountry.com

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Sweet Harmony (The Beloved Cover)

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Guitar by Gaétan Lopez

Take Care Of You

On Outlines of Pyrrhonism , Book 1, from around 200 CE.

Are our beliefs warranted? Skeptics following in the footsteps of Pyrrho (who lived just after Aristotle, around 300 BCE, but didn’t leave us any writings, so Sextus, centuries later, has to fill us in) think that for any argument someone puts forward (at least about the nature of reality), you can come up with a plausible counter-argument, and that after you’ve done this enough, you achieve a relaxed state where you you’re satisfied in not being able to decide.

Is this really true? And is there a sharp distinction between beliefs you need to accept in order to live (this is food; that is poison) and theoretical ones? Can a philosopher really get beyond philosophizing in this way? Can one be a scientist and still be a skeptic of this sort? Jessica Berry joins Mark, Wes, and Dylan to defend this position.

Pyrrhonian Skepticism According to Sextus Empiricus

~Fell in love with the original this past fall...gave it a chill rework for you guys to vibbbeee to ~

Original: https://soundcloud.com/jaymes-young/ill-be-good

Jaymes Young - I'll Be Good (Thero Remix)

2015 UK & European Tour Announced. Click here: smarturl.it/finkautumntour for all dates & tickets.

Horizontalism out now on R'COUP'D. Visit & sign up to Fink newsletter: http://finkworld.co.uk for more information.

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Horizontalism

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An extract from Heidegger: Philosophy in an hour

One of the two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was linguistic analysis, derived largely from Wittgenstein. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and its fundamental question was: ‘What is the meaning of existence?’ For Heidegger, this was not a query that could simply be ‘analysed away’ – it was beyond the reach of logic or reason. This was the primary ‘given’ of every individual life. To confront it, Heidegger needed to develop an entirely new form of philosophy.

This audiobook is a concise, expert account of Heidegger’s life and philosophical ideas which is entertainingly written and above all, easy listening. Also included are selections from Heidegger’s work, suggested further reading and chronologies that place Heidegger in the context of the broader scheme of philosophy.

Buy the audiobook here

Heidegger: Philosophy in an Hour written by Paul Strathern, Read by Jonathan Keeble

Balamir Nazlıca (compositions, lyrics, vocals and artwork) 
Burcak Sait Daldal (Guitars, arrangement)
Emir Celt: Drums
Burak Irmak: Keys

MANAGEMENT & BOOKINGS : balamirnazlica@gmail.com

Balamir Nazlica released his first EP, In Light, in 2009 with Ventilation Label and gained a strong fan base globally. His debut album, Aftermath, was released by Topkapi Muzik in 2011 and considered one of the new rising stars of the Turkish music scene according to Cut Magazine. With Aftermath, Balamir managed to shoot Turkey’s first ever crowd sourced video project. In 2014, he released his second album, Wanted, with Topkapi Muzik and directed and filmed his first video to the track, ‘Baby Get Out’. He also began work on a video series titled Unconcealment. 

It would be best to describe the artist Balamir Nazlica as a true Jack-of-all-trades. Contrary to what is believed about creatures of this nature, he defies the term by being very good at all skills. In the mediums of music, video and photography he has produced impressive artwork by combining pragmatism with art and science.  

He has been mostly based out of Istanbul and recently moved to the USA. He is interested in and influenced by a wide range of topics from philosophy to sci-fi and romanticism. Balamir uses any medium to create that he finds readily at hand, whether it be songwriting, filming, photography or painting. He uses all the mediums as an extension of his vision. 


Gemlike

Soaked

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