Moral Minority

Note Bene is a series of off the cuff episodes that delve more into our personal experiences with broader topics with relevance to normativity and the ethical life. In this episode, Charles is joined by the writer and critic, Jon Repetti, to reflect on the art and philosophy of the late American avant-garde filmmaker, David Lynch. While touching upon his entire filmography, the discussion focuses on the LA triptych of films, Lost Highway(1997), Mulholland Drive(1999), and Inland Empire(2006) ...

In a far-reaching conversation with the critic Ryan Ruby, we unpack the legacy and impact of Fredric Jameson's landmark work of Marxist literary criticism, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Jameson's text argues for the explanatory richness and coherency of a Marxist hermeutical approach to interpreting the social function of the literary text. The guiding principle of Jameson's methodology is that any commentary that fails to historicize the narrative strategie...

Repetititon(1843) is a difficult and, for many, a baffling work by Søren Kierkegaard. It is equal parts psychological study, literary riddle, and philosophical problematic. In this discussion, we attempt to shed light on its central concept of repetition, how its interior dialectic differs from the Hegelian concept of mediation, and what the possibility of repetition means for the peculiarly modern problems of personal identity, historicity, and contingency. We interrogate the unusual literar...

This episode inaugurates a series of episodes exploring the existentialist approach to modern philosophy by considering the most well-known work of the melancholic, Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling: A Dialectical Lyric is a genre-bending blend of aesthetic criticism, biblical exegesis, and critical ethics. It is perhaps the most profound deliberation on the concept of faith in the history of philosophy. Firmly rooted in post-Kantian ethical universalism, Fear and Trem...

In this multi-part series, we examine the legacy of critical theory and the prospects of a recuperation of Marxist theory in the face of rising fascism by delving into the dense and fragmentary landmark text of the Frankfurt School, Dialectic of Enlightenment. In Part 2, we focus on the final completed fragment, "Elements of Anti-Semitism: The Limits of Enlightenment,' which analyzes the concept and instrumentalization of antisemitism in fascist political currents. Adorno and Horkheimer, over...

This episode discusses the German sociologist Max Weber's Vocation Lectures. In these lectures, Weber outlines a secular conception of the meaning of a vocation, the role of passion in politics and scholarship, and the kind of ethically responsibility that confronts us given the unavoidably violent nature of modern politics. Weber characterises modernity as the instrumentalization of reason and scientific knowledge towards the end of a kind mastery or control over the natural world. In ...

This episode turns to Christine Korsgaard's Tanner lectures, "The Sources of Normativity," to explore how morality might be rationally vindicated from within the nature of practical rationality. Korsgaard's project is an iteration of the Enlightenment's attempt to ground morality in human nature. Korsgaard suggests that the correct moral theory will not merely provide an explanation of our moral natures, but also be justified in the light of our status as reflective animals. Her constructivis...