Failure Is Freedom
https://www.martinessig.com
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About This Podcast
I'm exploring why Generation X failed to get free, and how the concept of "authenticity" was turned into a sort of un-freedom.
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Recent Episodes
S2E10 Kant's Intuition and the Lacan's Imaginary
Kant's use of the term "intuition" was different than how we might normally think of it. By intuition we usually mean something like having been registered affectively in the body but unanalyzed or…
S2E9 There Is No "Before" of Binary Oppositions
There is no thing without the dialectic of some-thing and no-thing. Whatever was before the binary opposition of something and nothing, was neither something nor nothing. When this primordial…
S2E8 Being Finds itself in Nonbeing as Becoming
Being is birthed by nonbeing, and nonbeing is birthed by being. Whatever is "before" this simultaneous co-arising is a nothing that "proceeded" the dialectic between something and nothing, sometimes…
S2E7 The Abyss of the Otherness Within
The Symbolic is not at one with itself, which means that knowing through representation is not only mediated through language but also shifty. However, it is the immediacy of this "shiftiness" that…
S2E6 Otherness in Phenomenology Versus Hermeneutics
Formal Phenomenology began with Edmund Husserl's attempt to discover the ground of phenomenal appearances and the relations between these appearances and the "things-in-themselves." His "Eidetic…
S2E5 What is Otherness?
The self / other relationship of being's becoming is the center piece of both phenomenology and of hermeneutics and can help explain why there was a general shift from phenomenology to hermeneutics…
S2E4 A Symbolic, Imaginary Projection into the Abyss
There may be actual degrees of freedom in the register of Imaginary if it is possible to relate determinate being to the open indeterminacy of the void. Jean-Luc Marion's Saturated Phenomena relate…
S2E3 To Imagine in Relation to the Void
Whatever degrees of freedom we may have, they seem to be "contained" in the Imaginary. The Lacanian Imaginary makes whole and complete what is neither whole nor complete, which is the Real. But it is…
S2E2 Our Freedom Is the Interpretation of Being
Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. Phenomenology is the study of how things appear. Both studies have had to concede a sort of "perspectivalism" because disclosure, or "unconcealment," is…
S2E1 The Indeterminable Hermeneutics of Irreducible Ambiguity
Jean-Luc Marion's "Saturated Phenomenon" produce "indeterminable hermeneutics." Indeterminable hermeneutics can either be a blessing or a curse because they are counter to our intention. What we…
S1E31 The Self as Another
The connection between Jean-Luc Marion (1946-present) and Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), besides both being French, Catholic philosophers who each taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School, is…
S1E30 The Semantic Advent of the Becoming of Being
It has long been noticed that there is a similarity between how the mind knows the world and how the physical world appears. For those in the Idealist camp this similarity is because our minds…
S1E29 God's Love Proceeded God.
The Epistle of John famously states that "God is Love." For Jean-Luc Marion this means that God's love came before God. Love is "God without Being." Love intends existence, but it doesn't exist in…
S1E28 The Appearance of the Invisible "As" the Non-Object
According to Acts, Paul went to the Aeropagus in Athens to preach to the Greek philosophers who apparently just sort of hung out there talking shit all day. He conveniently found a placard to an…
S1E27 Too Much Aboutness
When too much is given to the intention, there is too much aboutness, which is what Jean-Luc Marion calls a Saturated Phenomenon. Saturated Phenomena overwhelm us with too much aboutness to reduce to…
S1E26 Mystical Vision: When the Invisible Appears
How does the mystic see ultimate reality? She sees it through analogy, as we have been discussing. Analogy is an indirect way of knowing through the prepositional "as," which connects something known…
S1E25 How Does Love Give Itself "As" Itself?
Love is always becoming other than itself because love is characterized by self-emptying (Kenosis). Love opens possibilities, so it must clear away cancerous repetitions of the same, or as the…
S1E24 How Is What Is Unknowable Represented?
The mystic uses analogy to have a direct experience of the divine, which is, of course, a paradoxical, if not an altogether nonsensical thing to say. Nonetheless, Analogy is a sort of immediate…
S1E23 Mysticism's Semiological Nature is Analogy
Any predication that is made of God, such as "God is a rock," both discloses and hides God. As Meister Eckhart preached, "As God reveals Himself, he hides more deeply in His mystery. The central…
S1E23 The Numinous and the Noetic in Religious Experience
One of Jacques Lacan's most important discoveries was the relation between the desire to articulate in the register of the Symbolic and the failure of articulation in the Register of the Real. The…
Frequently Asked Questions
Failure Is Freedom has published 42 episodes since August 2025, covering topics in Music, Music History.
Failure Is Freedom is currently active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 50m.
