Pill Pod 170 - Existential Ethics vs. Landlords (Exclusive)
Added 2024-06-04 04:25:26 +0000 UTCPart 2 of our reading of Simone De Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/
Comments
The part with the human lampshades is true. They are still around in museums and play a seizable part in German remembrance culture, where they symbolize the barbarism of the nazis.
Florian F.
2024-08-23 20:03:50 +0000 UTCIn addiction psychology, there is a theory of choice where addiction is seen not as the addict being a total servant to their addiction, but as a series of micro-decisions, where the addict must make the decision every time to take drugs or not. Not that this makes light of addiction or the circumstances leading to it (in fact, these are important factors), but there is a case to be made that there is an element of responsibility even within the context of addiction like that.
anacidcommie
2024-07-08 17:08:10 +0000 UTCMost ethics feel... kind of like permission becomes obligation or liberation demands consent way beyond itself, which seems inherently shamey (to me at least). I know deontology seeks to address this but, as mentioned, it is a bit cakeist (the sign representing a negative has a positive existence itself)
Alex B
2024-06-18 13:18:42 +0000 UTCFirst time, long time here. Was relistening to this episode today, and was struck by the initial conversation about how ethics seemed to be less important to philosophy (assuming that implicitly means 'academic philosophy' haha) than in the past. I think I agree with that, but it did make me pause putting on this podcast right after reading the New York Times and noting that the staff 'ethicist' is maybe the only person engaged with the philosophical tradition being published there. Raised a bunch of questions about the PillPod crew's take on (a) the role of pop culture, and less popular 'pop culture' like the failing New York Times.., in academic philosophy debates, (b) whether the fact that the most historically important publication in existence is giving lip service to philosophy via a banal ethics column, and (c) just how weird it is that my three main links to philosophy are the NYT, a relatively niche Patreon podcast, and a bunch of books from the 1960s. Love y'all, appreciate the show!
Ben
2024-06-14 21:54:07 +0000 UTCLoved these two episodes as I find ethics interesting. Thank you for doing this. I totally agree with the point raised in the episode that Beauvoir is presenting an ethical theory that is in some ways Kantian and consequentialist in character - especially if you consider Christine Korsgaard's Kantian approach to ethics. There's a really interesting essay 'Deleuze, Values, and Normativity' by Nathan Jun in 'Deleuze and Ethics (Deleuze Connections)' which this discussion reminded me of a lot; you might find it interesting. Ian Buchanan has a great paper on this as well called 'Desire and Ethics' which also brings up Hume's is-ought problem and comments on Foucault's puzzling preface to Anti-Oedipus where he says it is 'the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time'. Finally, Todd May has a book called 'The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism' which proposes a poststructuralist metaethics which is broadly consequentialist.
Xavier
2024-06-07 12:52:27 +0000 UTCThat makes it a little clearer. So then a follow up question I have is what’s the significance of ‘existence’. In the text it seemed existence was past all that somehow but now I’m not sure how we could get past change.
Jack
2024-06-06 05:34:06 +0000 UTCIf I understand your question, being can't be complete because then change or development would be, if not impossible, then just random. The Hegelian or even hegel-lite versions of the dialectic are that change isn't arbitrary
Plastic Pills
2024-06-05 23:20:47 +0000 UTCI don’t understand why being has to lack being in order to be or whatever is that just saying subjectivity has to objectify itself and transcend or something?
Jack
2024-06-05 20:49:12 +0000 UTCI liked this one. I tried my best with the reading but the Hegel stuff goes way over my head and the Kant stuff goes a little over my head. I think it does make sense that because of antinomies like free will va determinism or universal vs particular that a certain ambiguity is necessary. I felt like the will has to justify its end and that freedom was supposedly something that didn’t need to be justified externally.
Jack
2024-06-05 20:47:29 +0000 UTCGlad you touched on the "seeming kantianism" or "seeming utilitarianism" of this piece, as i alluded to it in the comments of the previous episode. Definitely a complex project that requires one to take ambiguity seriously. Perhaps fitting it into one of the three classical branches of ethics makes the error of ruining the ends by ones choice of means, as Eric implies.
Jonas Ludvigsen
2024-06-04 14:23:17 +0000 UTC
