Phi Fic

What is Philosophy vs. Improv? Hear about the new podcast by Mark Linsenmayer (The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast) and Bill Arnett (Chicago Improv Studio, The Complete Improviser author).

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The Wizard of Oz is supposed by the land’s inhabitants to be its most powerful magician. But far from having any actual power, he is not even native to the place in which real magic is in plentiful supply. Oddly, this supernatural world seems to be secretly governed by mundane sleight of hand, and growing up, for Dorothy, involves uncovering the flimsy basis of adult authority. Which magic is more potent: the childish imagination, or the symbolic power of grown-ups to educate it? Wes & Erin discuss the 1939 film, “The Wizard of Oz.”

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Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode.

Continuing on the Introduction to Friedrich Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), focusing on the harmony between mind and world and imputing intelligence to nature.

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On Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism (1800).

What's the relationship between mind and world? Schelling thought that our minds produce the world, but also that the perceiver-world dichotomy comes to us as a single piece. "Transcendental philosophy" is an exploration of the internal logic of that revelation.

Part two of this episode is only going to be available to you if you sign up at partiallyexaminedlife.com/support. Get it now or listen to a preview.

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Wes & Erin continue their analysis of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In Part 1, they covered roughly the first third of the poem. In Part 2, they begin with a discussion of Prufrock’s coffee spoons, and then continue on to: his allusions to John the Baptist, Lazarus, and Hamlet; the disjointed portrait of his probable love interest; and the twinning of aging and fantasy in the final stanzas.

Subscribe: (sub)Text won’t always be in the PEL feed, so please subscribe to us directly: Apple | Spotify | Android | RSS

Bonus content: The conversation continues on our after-show (post)script. Get this and other bonus content at by subscribing at Patreon.

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Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode.

Continuing on The Vocation of Man (1799), Book II.

We focus on how ethics fits in with Fichte's epistemology in a unified theology with humans literally united (in this world or the next) in a shared, divine Will.

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Our second full discussion on The Vocation of Man (1799).

What are the ethical implications of believing that the world is all in our minds? You could be a solipsistic nihilist, but Fichte thinks the path of faith is unavoidable for a reasonable person: faith that the world is real and matters, that other people have moral status, and yes, he's going to argue for God and heaven, though unconventionally.

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Continuing on The Vocation of Man (1799), Book II.

In this preview, we clarify whether Fichte is trying to keep the notion of a "real world" beyond our experience or not. It's part of the progression of the text that while at first he assumes that there must be something real behind this experienced world we as individuals create, he gives up that notion in the middle of Book II. So how does he get to his startling reversal?

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On The Vocation of Man (1799), Books I and II. What is reality?

Fichte's armchair journey starts him considering nature and thus himself as determined, but then he backtracks to say that actually, experience doesn't tell us whether we're determined or free. In Book II, he argues that since our experience is always of something going on in ourselves, then causality, the external world, the self, etc. must be our own mental creations. So we're free after all, yet everything is drained of significance!

Part two of this episode is only going to be available to you if you sign up at partiallyexaminedlife.com/support. Get it now or listen to a preview.

Sponsors: Learn about St. John's College at SJC.edu/PEL. Visit Brightside.com/pel for a free mental health assessment and up to $100 off your first month of treatment. Get $75 off your starter teeth-straightening kit via CandidCO.com/pel (code PEL). Get a loan to lower your monthly payments at Upstart.com/PEL.