Folks who are interested in taking my core text in philosophy class this spring should check

partially examined life.com slash class for details. This is the partial examine life episode 331. Part 2, we've been discussing volume 2 of either or, 1843, specifically the first half of the essay,

the balance between the aesthetic and the ethical and the

ethical and ethical in the development of the personality. And I believe we were,

when we stopped, about to say more about why

this character, the judge,

is crapping on philosophy specifically.

Isn't that taking life seriously? Isn't that having an ethical philosophy,

not just merely drifting along?

Yeah. So on page 170 where he says, I'm not someone who's sacrificed his life to philosophy and art like you.

I'm just a married man, he's into his day job and children and the rest of his life but I have a life unlike you

so it'll say you know my preoccupations are trifles compared to your big dreams

there's a big dose of irony in that. But essentially

he's going to say in this section that philosophy takes him out of the realm of action. And as the critique, right, so life comes to a halt, you're

politically disengaged, you're otherwise disengaged. But as this critique elaborates over the

next few pages, it kind of incorporates a critique of the Hegelian conception of history and its relation to freedom.

He explicitly connects philosophy to youth and to continue to bang the drum on this whole notion of creative, you know, self-actualization or create, you know, manufacture, he's equivocating in some respects the

philosophical position in the aesthetic position in the sense that they're both

contemplative and not focused on choice and action.

But, you know, he's saying it's a young man's game, which is to say it's immature

and to a certain extent naive,

while at the same time being made only possible by certain, let's call them not necessities,

...