The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

On Ernst Cassirer's An Essay on Man (1944), ch. 6-7, and Susanne Langer's Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 6-7. Why do people produce ritual, mythology, and religion? According to our authors, these are spontaneous, symbolic modes of self-expression. They're not opposed to rational, scientific thought, but are necessary preconditions for it.

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Discussing the notes Ludwig Wittgenstein made at the end of his life in 1951 that were published as On Certainty in 1969.

Can we coherently doubt propositions like "physical objects exist," "the world is more than 50 years old," and "this is my hand"? Wittgenstein looks at these questions via his framework of language games. Is doubting one of these a legitimate move in a game?

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Continuing on Plato's mid-period dialogue about language. Is attaching a word to a thing, i.e. naming it, like other activities such as carpentry or sewing that can go wrong? Can we put the "form" of a thing into letters and syllabus of its name? We go through many examples where Socrates claims to have done just that.

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Continuing from our overview in ep. 32, we do a close reading on selections from the introduction of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time to consider Heidegger's Being in relation to Aristotle's Categories, what questioning means, and some of Heidegger's basic terms.

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On Conditions (1992), Ch. 1 "The (Re)turn of Philosophy Itself."

Against post-structuralists who deny Truth, Badiou argues that truths are generated by the truth conditions (politics, art, love, and science/math) which philosophy then thinks into a unified vision.

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