Reputation

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2024

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

They say this one is the real deal. In Episode 98 of Overthink, Ellie and David untangle the philosophy behind the way we compare, judge, and defend our reputations. From Machiavelli’s advice to despots looking to stay popular, to disgruntled students venting on their professors online, reputation can glide you to victory or trigger your fall from grace. Exploring concepts like the Matthew effect, the homo comparativus, and informational asymmetry, your hosts ask: Why do both Joan Jett and Jean-Jacques Rousseau refuse reputation’s fickle pleasures? Does David actually have a good work-life balance, or is everyone else hoodwinked? And, what is the place of quantified reputation in an increasingly digital world?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed

Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Honor Code

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Bad Reputation

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Louise Matsakis, “How the West Got China’s Social Credit System Wrong,” Wired Magazine

Gloria Origgi, Reputation: What It Is and Why It Matters

Gloria Origgi, "Reputation in Moral Philosophy and Epistemology"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Jordi Xifra, “Recognition, symbolic capital and reputation in the seventeenth century”

Overthink Episodes

Ep 28, Cancel Culture

Ep 19, Genius

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Overthink.
0:13.0	The podcast reputed to be the best of all possible philosophy podcasts.
0:17.5	I'm your co-host, Dr. David Peña-Gusman.
0:20.5	And I'm Dr. Ellie Anderson. We do indeed love a lot of
0:23.4	other philosophy podcasts, too. We're not actually saying that ours is the de facto best, but
0:29.2	hopefully we do have a good reputation among them. David, I want to start today by talking about a
0:34.6	song that I can't not think of when the word reputation comes up. In fact, it's been in my head a lot since we decided to do this episode. And that is the song Bad Reputation by Joan Jett and the Black Hearts, which is like, I don't give a damn about my reputation. Don, no, no, no, no, don't. I don't know the rest of the lyrics.
0:54.7	I just know the chorus.
0:56.2	I don't know them either, or I didn't until I Google them.
0:58.8	And I want to talk a little bit about these lyrics because I feel like they say something about how reputation is conceived in contemporary society, which is that it has a bad reputation, let's say. Like, it's not cool to care about your reputation. Okay, let me look, let me look up the lyrics while you do this so that I'm looking at the same thing as you. Yeah, I'm going to read you a little bit, them too. I don't give a damn about my reputation living in the past. It's a new generation. This is like exactly how they sing it too with the same kind
1:27.5	of rhythm. A girl can do what she wants to do and that's what I'm going to do. Okay, so I'm getting
1:34.2	from this that Joan Jett is resisting the patriarchal expectation that girls, because she says a girl
1:42.5	can do what she wants to do, that girls do things with
1:45.7	a sort of internalize other in mind who is meant to guide their behavior towards stimulating a good
1:55.2	reputation, or towards stimulating is a weird word there. Towards like, establishing.
2:01.1	Establishing.
2:01.6	Establishing.
2:02.5	Yes.
2:02.7	Yes.
2:03.2	Well, and the lyrics that follow actually speak to me a little bit more.
2:07.2	So the lyrics basically go, and I don't give a damn about my bad reputation.
2:12.5	Oh, no, not me.
	...

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