logo
episode-header-image
Dec 2021
40m 9s

Ep. 284: Mark Twain's Philosophy of Huma...

Mark Linsenmayer, Wes Alwan, Seth Paskin, Dylan Casey
About this episode

On "What Is Man" (1905). Twain describes a person as a machine. We have no free will and always act to win our own self-approval. This was a bleak enough picture that the essay was not printed until after Twain's death.

Part two of this episode is only going to be available to you if you sign up at partiallyexaminedlife.com/support or via Apple Podcasts.

Up next
Yesterday
Ep. 380: Josiah Royce on Community (Part One)
<p>On sections of <em>The Problem of Christianity</em> (1913) which establish Royce's concept of a community of interpretation: individuals working together with a sense of shared history and expectation. He claims that such a grouping can be counted as a literal mind and that it ... Show More
46m 54s
Nov 20
PEL Presents NEM#242: Marshall Crenshaw Subtracts
<p>Marshall began creating his catchy, harmonically thick rock tunes in the early '80s with six major label albums, but went indie in the '90s to record four more as well as several EPs and live collections.</p> <p>We discuss "Stranger and Stranger," newly reworked for <em>From t ... Show More
1h 6m
Nov 17
Ep. 379: Egyptian Philosophy with Chike Jeffers (Part Two)
<p>Continuing on sources from ancient Egypt, finishing up the instructional literature: "The Instruction of Ptahhotep," and "The Instruction Addressed to King Merikare," and then we move to the dialogues, ""The Eloquent Peasant," and "The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba."</p> <p ... Show More
1h 11m
Recommended Episodes
Sep 2022
“Mark Twain: The Reports Of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated!”
Mark Twain has arguably been called the greatest American author, and in his first interview since his death in 1910, it’s not hard to see why. Twain wrote such classics as Life on the Mississippi and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- and is responsible for some of the wittie ... Show More
27m 4s
Jun 2014
Episode #026 ... Thomas Hobbes pt. 1 - The Social Contract
On this episode of the podcast, we learn about Thomas Hobbes. We first ask ourselves what it would be like to live in a society with no laws or government, much like the scenario depicted in The Purge. Next, we question whether or not humans are inherently selfish and how this af ... Show More
29m 12s
Oct 2017
#99 Will Storr: Selfies, Self-esteem & Our Environment
This episode is with Will Storr, journalist and author of many books including his most recent work of non-fiction called SELFIE. We talk about his new book Selfie: how we became so self-obsessed and what it’s doing to us. He unpicks our society’s longing for self-esteem and wher ... Show More
42m 49s
May 2014
Episode 47: Schooled By Our Listeners
<p>Tamler and David leech off of their listeners and dedicate an episode to their favorite comments, questions, and criticisms from the past few weeks (but not before Tamler goes on a rant about bicycle helmets). Included in this episode: Does doing research on hypothetical moral ... Show More
1h 2m
Apr 2019
David Brooks' Moral Journey
Tina Brown talks with David Brooks, the New York Times op-ed columnist and author of the new book The Second Mountain. Brooks posits that decades of unfettered individualism and social freedom have left us all morally adrift. But he has identified four principles that can get one ... Show More
33m 49s
May 2019
Thoreau: the writer who went to the woods
Rajan Datar and guests explore the life and legacy of the American thinker Henry David Thoreau and his famous work 'Walden', which describes the young writer's experiment in living simply at Walden Pond in Massachusetts, for two years, two months and two days in the 1840s. A land ... Show More
39m 58s
Jun 2023
The Word For Man Is Ishi
In 1911, a Native American man, the only member of his community to survive a genocide, encountered the new Anthropology department at The University of California, Berkeley. What happened next helped to define the ethical quandaries of the field and, in a strange turn, the histo ... Show More
49m 18s
Mar 2022
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
<p>Tonight's snoozy tale is the Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain. Published in 1881, it is the story of two boys, born on the same day, identical in appearance, and from very different backgrounds. In this episode, Tom Canty, the pauper, meets the Prince for the first time.</p ... Show More
40 m
Jun 2023
How Emerson Can Help You Become a Stoic Nonconformist
<p>When we think about Stoic philosophers, we typically think about the thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome, like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. But my guest, Mark Matousek, says there was an incredibly insightful Stoic philosopher who lived on the American continent in more mode ... Show More
46m 28s