The Partially Examined Life Podcast

I am a big user of free audio sources on the internets. ITunesU and Librivox and other things represent the best opportunity to redeem otherwise useless time (chores, commuting). You can listen to an Oxford don explain Kant, and then listen to the Critique of Pure Reason read by volunteers.

And then, you can listen to The Partially Examined Life podcast (snappy title guys). Three friends from the US who studied philosophy but didn't find an academic career get together and discuss their reading of a text. I find it very enjoyable and interesting. They are knowledgeable and smart, but not so smart they don't get into confusion.

My favourite moment so far has been their uncontrollable gut-shaking laughter at Nietzsche saying:

Kant asked himself: How are synthetic judgements a priori possible? - and what really did he answer? By means of a faculty: but unfortunately not in a few words, but so circumspectly, venerably, and with such an expenditure of German profundity and flourishes that the comical naiserie allemande ['German silliness' -VP] involved in such an answer was overlooked.

Beyond Good and Evil - S11.  Hysterical.

( 'There is no a priori. Kant's answer to the question of how we know the world was 'by means of a faculty' but unfortunately he could not bring himself to say it in five words.'*

*My recollection originally posted here, retained for comparison.)

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