The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast (Podcast Episodes)
The Partially Examined Life is a 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 short 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. For links to the texts we discuss and other info, check out www.partiallyexaminedlife.com. We also feature episodes from other podcasts by our hosts to round out your partially examined life, including Pretty Much Pop (prettymuchpop.com, covering all media), Nakedly Examined Music (nakedlyexaminedmusic.com, deconstructing songs), Philosophy vs. Improv (philosophyimprov.com, fun with performance skills and philosophical ideas), and (sub)Text (subtextpodcast.com, looking deeply at lit and film). Learn about more network podcasts at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

On Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360 (written around 1946). What is linguistic meaning? Wittgenstein argues that it's not some mysterious entity in the mind, but that it is a public matter: you understand a word if you can use it appropriately, and you know the context in which it's appropriate to use it and how to react when you hear it in that context. W. calls such a context a "language game," and sees language as big heap of these games, spanning a wide range of human activity. With guest Philosophy Bro. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_055_4-12-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 3:21pm CDT

Continuing our discussion of Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011). Are the basic tenets of Buddhism compatible with a respect for science? We talk (eventually) about talk about karma, nirvana, emptiness, no-self, and the four noble truths. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_054_3-19-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 5:40pm CDT

Discussing The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011) with Owen Flanagan. What philosophical insights can we modern folks with our science and naturalism (i.e. inclination against super-natural explanations) glean from Buddhisim? Flanagan says plenty: We can profitably put Buddhist ethics in dialogue with familiar types of virtue ethics. However, we need to be skeptical of any claims to scientific support the superior happiness of Buddhists. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_053_3-15-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 3:11pm CDT

On W.E.B. DuBois's "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" (1903), Cornel West's "A Genealogy of Modern Racism" (1982), and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963) and "The Black Power Defined" (1967), plus Malcolm X's "The Black Revolution" (1963). With guest Lawrence Ware. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_052_2-28-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 6:50pm CDT

On Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) (Part I and Part II, Ch. 4), Claude Levi-Strauss's "The Structural Study of Myth" (1955), and Jacques Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966). What is language? What is the relation between language and reality? With guest C. Derick Varn. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_051_2-9-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:53pm CDT

On Robert M. Pirsig's philosophical, autobiographical novel from 1974. What's the relationship between science and values? Pirsig thinks that modern rationality, by insisting on the fundamental distinction between objects (matter) and subjects (people), labels value judgments as irrational. Society therefore largely ignores aesthetic considerations in the buildings and machines that litter our landscape. With guest David Buchanan. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_050_1-10-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:08pm CDT

Discussing Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975), parts 1, 2 and section 3 of part 3. With guest Katie McIntyre.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_049_12-14-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:10pm CDT

Discussing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Primacy of Perception" (1946) and The World of Perception (1948).

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_048_11-20-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:15pm CDT

Discussing Jean-Paul Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego (written in 1934).

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_047_11-6-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 6:56pm CDT

Discussing Plato's "Euthyphro." With guest Matt Evans.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_046_10-23-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 8:07pm CDT

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

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_045_9-25-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:40am CDT

Discussing selections from Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel C. Dennett.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_044_9-4-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 4:31pm CDT

Discussing the arguments by Descartes, St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, William Paley, Kant, and others, as analyzed in J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1983), chapters 1-3, 5-6, 8, and 11. With guest Robert Scott.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_043_8-7-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:29am CDT

Discussing Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novel Herland (1915) and psychologist Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1983). With guest Azzurra Crispino.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_042_7-24-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:40pm CDT

Patricia Churchland on her new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. We also discussed David Hume's ethics as foundational to her work, reading his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Book III, Part I and his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Section V, Parts I and II.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_041_6-26-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:27pm CDT

Discussing The Republic by Plato, primarily books 1 and 2.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_040_6-12-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:55am CDT

Discussing Friedrich Schleiermacher's "On Religion; Speeches to its Cultured Despisers" (1799, with notes added 1821), first and second speeches. With guest Daniel Horne.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_039_5-15-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:53pm CDT

Discussing Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), ch. 1-3 and 13-18. With guest Josh Pelton.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_038_4-24-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:14am CDT

Discussing John Locke's Second Treatise on Government (1690). With guest Sabrina Weiss.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_037_4-3-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:43pm CDT

Part 2 of our discussion of G.F.W. Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit," covering sections 178-230 within section B, "Self-Consciousness."

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_036_3-17-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:15pm CDT

On G.F.W. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Part B (aka Ch. 4), "Self-Consciousness," plus recapping the three chapters before that (Part A. "Consciousness"). With guest Tom McDonald.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_035_3-13-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:39am CDT

On Gottlob Frege's "Sense and Reference," "Concept and Object" (both from 1892) and "The Thought" (1918). With guest Matt Teichman.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_034_2-20-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:30pm CDT

Discussing Michel de Montaigne's Essays: "That to Philosophize is to Learn to Die," "Of Experience," "Of Cannibals," "Of the Education of Children," and "Of Solitude" (all from around 1580) with some discussion of "Apology for Raymond Sebond."

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_033_2-3-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 4:53pm CDT

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

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_032_1-16-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 6:14pm CDT

Discussing Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (1931).

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_031_12-22-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 8:30am CDT

Discussing Arthur Schopenhauer's On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, published in 1847 (as an expansion of his doctoral thesis from 1813).

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_030_11-28-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:40am CDT

On Soren Kierkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death" (1849). With guest Daniel Horne.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_029_11-7-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:37pm CDT

Discussing Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking (1978). With guest painter Jay Bailey.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_028_10-17-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:27pm CDT

Primarily discussing "Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas" and "Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas," by the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna. With guest Erik Douglas.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_027_10-3-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:47pm CDT

Discussing Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (1930). Get the full episode at partiallyexaminedlife.com. For Wes Alwan's summary of this book, go here).

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_026_9-5-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 3:57pm CDT

Discussing Spinoza's the Ethics, Books II through V.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_025_8-17-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 3:09pm CDT

Discussing Spinoza's Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_024_8-2-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:51am CDT

Discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse in Inequality (1754) and book 1 of The Social Contract (1762).

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_023_7-11-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:34am CDT

Discussing William James's "The Will to Believe".

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_022_6-24-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:07am CDT

Discussing articles by Alan Turing, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Dan Dennett. With guest Marco Wise.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_021_6-13-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:39am CDT

On Pragmatism (1907) by William James and "The Fixation of Belief" (1877) and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878) by Charles Sanders Peirce.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_020_5-16-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:59am CDT

Discussing Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783). With guest Azzurra Crispino.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_019_4-28-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:19am CDT

Discussing Plato's Theatetus and Meno.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_018_4-4-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:24pm CDT

On David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748).

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_017_3-14-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:53am CDT

Discussing three essays by Arthur Danto from The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986): the title essay, "The Appreciation and Interpretation of Works of Art," and "The End of Art."

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_016_2-21-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 3:07pm CDT

Discussing G.W.F Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1837).

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Direct download: PEL_ep_015_1-31-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 4:15pm CDT

Discussing Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) and Ch. 1-20 of The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy.

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Direct download: PEL_ep_014_1-3-10.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:26am CDT

On Werner Heisenberg’s Physics and Philosophy. Dylan Casey's first appearance (as a guest).

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Direct download: PEL_ep013_12-3-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 5:22pm CDT

On the Chuang Tzu, Chapters 2, 3, 6, 18, and 19. With guest Erik Douglas.

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Direct download: PEL_ep012_11-10-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:08am CDT

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?).

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Direct download: PEL_ep011_10-18-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:15am CDT

Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).

Direct download: PEL_ep010_9-20-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:22pm CDT

Discussing Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation chapters 1-5, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and Peter Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality."

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Direct download: PEL_ep009_9-6-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:36am CDT

Continuing last ep's discussion of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with some Rudolph Carnap from his 1935 book Philosophy and Logical Syntax.

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Direct download: PEL_ep008_8-11-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:42am CDT

Discussing the beginning (through around 3.1) of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921).

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Direct download: PEL_ep007_8-2-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:13am CDT

Discussing Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz's Monadology (1714).

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Direct download: PEL_ep006_7-12-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:36am CDT

Discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Books I and II.

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Direct download: PEL_ep005_6-28-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 3:14am CDT

Discussing Camus's "An Absurd Reasoning" and "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942).

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Direct download: PEL_ep004_6-15-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:29am CDT

Discussing Hobbes's Leviathan, Chapters 13-15.

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Direct download: PEL_ep003_5-26-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:51am CDT

On Descartes's Meditations 1 and 2.

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Direct download: PEL_ep002_5-6-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:52pm CDT

Discussing Plato's "Apology." Does studying philosophy make you a better person? No.

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Direct download: PEL_ep_001_4-19-09.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:51pm CDT

What are we trying to do here? Why should you bother to listen to us?

Direct download: PEL_ep000_Introduction.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:16am CDT