Elucidations

This episode, Matt talks to Christopher Beem (Penn State University) about how we can cultivate those skills that conduce to having a functioning democracy. His book on the topic, The Seven Democratic Virtues, is out now from Penn State University Press.The storming of the US Capitol Building in 2021 was an eyebrow-raising event, to say the least. It prompted historians, political scientists, and political philosophers to ask whether deep down, everything was going okay with our democratic system. Was this event some kind of sign that the voting process was under unusual strain? Was it time to start thinking about measures we can take to try to support and maintain it?Our guest says yes: that time is upon us. In light of evidence from evolutionary psychology that natural selection imbued us all with an instinct for tribalism, he argues that there are pretty strong causal forces working to congeal us into increasingly disjoint political camps. If we don’t do anything about it, members of these communities may one day no longer be willing to vote in the same elections. But what are we supposed to do about it? Although no one simple trick is likely to work, Beem argues that there are personal moral virtues that we can all work on developing. Democracy doesn’t just function by default; we have to actively work on ourselves in order to make it function. It’s not like we wave a magic wand, follow a couple simple steps and then we’re “done”. Rather, it’s always going to be an ongoing process to keep this crazy thing afloat.Tune in to hear Christopher Beem’s thoughts about what these virtues are and how exemplifying them can get our democracy back into whack!

This episode, Matt Teichman talks to Mark Linsenmayer about alternative models of education. Mark is creator and host of the Partially Examined Life, Nakedly Examined Music, Pretty Much Pop, and Philosophy vs. Improv podcasts. He is also the author of the recent book, Philosophy For Teens.There’s going to college and there’s listening to podcasts. Both can give you a way to learn new things, so in that general sense, both can count as forms of education. Going to college has advantages over listening to podcasts when it comes to learning—a college class can kick off a feedback loop where you’re given work to do, then you’re given one-on-one feedback on that work, then you do more work, and so on. In the best college classes, there’s a dynamic interplay between the state of your understanding and what happens next in the lesson. That means that at least for people who end up connecting with the college experience—not necessarily everyone, but some significant number of people—being in college has a certain intensity to it. It feels like you’re gaining understanding at a more concentrated dose.That said, though, in addition to these upsides, there is a downside to college, which is that it ends! The learning is nice and concentrated, but it’s also relatively short compared to listening to podcasts, which you can do for way more than just four years—theoretically, it’ll be possible for as long as the technology exists. (And it’s showing no signs of ever going away.) Sure, people can’t just go to college forever. If literally every single person went to college for their entire lives and no one ever did any of the work that makes society function, it wouldn’t be clear how we’d keep the lights on, run hospitals, create enough food for everyone to eat, build houses for everyone to live in, etc. At the same time, a lot of college students have the joyous experience of having their intellectual horizon expanded for four years, only to get suddenly thrust into a demanding work environment upon graduation that may not afford time for all that. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to embark upon your career while not giving up on exploratory learning? At least not entirely?This is where podcasts come in, according to our guest. They let you continue to explore new topics with a more free-form, lower-stakes structure. Maybe you don’t know whether you want to know more about something yet, but you suspect you might, and that’s enough. The fact that listening to a podcast doesn’t have to end means you can do it at your own pace, and more fundamentally, that you won’t suddenly go from having it to not having it anymore—the way it always seems to happen with formal education.Tune in to hear Mark Linsenmayer explain the kind of experience he seeks to foster in his listeners by way of four (!!) different podcasts!

In this episode of Elucidations, Matt sits down with Emily Dupree to learn about whether it’s rational or irrational to try to seek revenge.As a culture, we kind can’t decide what we think about revenge. Out of one side of our mouths, we talk a big game about letting bygones be bygones, about how revenge and retaliation lead to cycles of violence, and about how nothing good can really come of getting back at people. But acts of revenge, where clearly warranted, also have a visceral moral appeal that it would be absurd to deny. If we didn’t think there were at least some situations in which a person ought to get their comeuppance, then there wouldn’t be so many heroic adventure movies centered around the protagonist’s quest for revenge. When the hero gets back at the villain, it just feels right, like the movie needs to end here and we can all go home; and no amount of pedantic, post-hoc reasoning can ever make that feeling go away.Solving that dilemma is hard, but as a way of working up to it, our distinguished guest decides to tackle a slightly different question. Not: can seeking revenge ever be the right thing to do—but: can seeking revenge ever be a rational thing to do. Traditionally, most philosophers have answered that question in the negative. Calling it irrational means that it’s senseless and unintelligible, like anyone who does it is undergoing a (possibly temporary) lapse in their basic mental faculties. The reason most philosophers think that it’s irrational to take revenge is that there’s no way to undo the wrong that was done to you in the past. If Person A did something truly horrible to Person B, that thing doesn’t get undone when Person B does a new horrible thing to Person A. And if that’s the case, why do it? Doing it is all cost and no benefit.In this episode, Emily Dupree argues that in fact, it can be rational to take revenge. How come? It isn’t all cost and no benefit, because in some cases, successfully taking revenge can lead to a unique benefit: namely, the restoration of the vengeance seeker’s moral personhood. For the unique benefit to come, certain background conditions have to hold: the original harm has to have been genuinely morally wrong, it has to have been as egregious as it can be (so it can’t be minor/inconsequential), it has to have taken place under conditions of the political state failing, and it has to have undermined the vengeance seeker’s moral personhood. In that case, it is possible for an act of vengeance to be intelligible as an attempt on the part of the vengeance seeker to get their moral personhood back. Note that our guest isn’t saying the vengeance seeker is right to seek vengeance in these circumstances. The view is just that seeking vengeance under these circumstances can be comprehensible, rather than just bonkers.Tune in to hear our guest discuss some historical examples of revenge that we can comprehend!Matt Teichman