Ep. 284: Mark Twain’s Philosophy of Human Nature (Part One)

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Mark Linsenmayer

Casey, Paskin, Philosophy, Linsenmayer, Society & Culture, Alwan

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On "What Is Man" (1905). Twain describes a person as a machine. We have no free will and always act to win our own self-approval. This was a bleak enough picture that the essay was not printed until after Twain's death.

Part two of this episode is only going to be available to you if you sign up at partiallyexaminedlife.com/support or via Apple Podcasts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the partially examined life, a podcast by some guys who were at one
0:11.3	point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it.
0:15.2	Our question for episode 284 is what is human nature?
0:18.5	And we read an essay by Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, called What Is Man, published
0:24.7	posthumously in 1905.
0:26.8	For more information please visit partiallyexaminedlife.com.
0:29.2	This is Mark Littemeyer, a speaking trumpet in medicine, Wisconsin.
0:33.3	This is Seth Paskin in all caps in Austin, Texas.
0:38.1	This is Wes Alwin, the result of the law of construction in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
0:44.4	This is Dylan Casey, satisfying an assassin's conscience in one way of philanthropist's
0:48.9	conscience in another way, amizers in another in a burglar's and still another way in medicine
0:54.8	Wisconsin.
0:55.8	All right, this was a request from a listener who did not respond when I asked him if we
1:02.4	could read his name on the air.
1:03.4	So I'm not going to read his name on the air, but if you give enough money, then we'll consider
1:08.0	it.
1:09.0	Maybe ask us before actually making the donation if we want to read the thing so you don't
1:12.8	just get disappointed.
1:14.3	But yeah, this was something we were not aware of.
1:16.8	At least I wasn't.
1:17.8	Anybody was anybody aware of this?
1:19.4	Nope.
	...

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