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Following up on our live episode, we further ponder the 1869 novel, revisiting the "problem of evil" arguments and how the various brothers cope with an imperfect world.
Plus, we relate Dostoevsky's views of freedom and ethics to those of other existentialists.
The post Ep. 317: Character Philosophies in Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov” (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.On Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1880 existentialist novel, focusing mostly on the "Rebellion" and "Grand Inquisitor" chapters.
How can we reconcile ourselves to the existence of evil and suffering? The character Ivan argues that we can't, that children's suffering can't be justified by any alleged Divine Plan. Dostoevsky's answer to this challenge is practical, concrete love and service to others, but does this really address or merely sidestep Ivan's challenge?
Sponsors: Check out Continuing the Conversation by St. John's College at sjc.edu. Visit GreenChef.com/pel60 and use code pel60 to get 60% off the #1 Meal Kit for Eating Well, plus free shipping.
The post Ep. 316: Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov”: PEL Live in NYC (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.Battery materials and recycling startup Redwood Materials is expanding a partnership with Volkswagen of America in its bid to collect more end-of-life batteries from consumer electronics and strip out the valuable materials so they can be used to make batteries for electric vehicles.
Redwood has said its technology can recover more than 95% of the critical minerals from batteries (like nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper) and then manufacture the metals into battery components that are supplied to U.S. battery manufacturers for new electric vehicles and energy storage products. Co-founder and CEO JB Straubel, who was formerly the co-founder and CTO at Tesla, has long argued that creating a closed-loop system will reduce battery costs and the need to mine and ship raw materials.
Volkswagen of America and sibling brand Audi contracted with Redwood last year to recover and recycle end-of-life EV battery packs from its thousand-dealership network in the United States. Audi then expanded its partnership with Redwood to launch a consumer-focused recycling program.
Now Volkswagen of America has agreed to set up bins at certain dealerships to collect consumer electronics. The batteries and devices, including cell phones, cordless power tools, electric toothbrushes, wireless headphones and other lithium-ion-powered devices that are collected in the bins, will be sent to Redwood’s Nevada facility to be repurposed as EV batteries.
The consumer recycling program officially launches at 14 dealerships April 22, including locations in New Jersey and Wisconsin. Volkswagen will also set up a bin during the New York International Auto Show, which will be held from April 5 to April 16. Additional dealerships will be added throughout the year.
Redwood has largely been a B2B enterprise since its founding. The company has locked in deals with companies like Panasonic to recycle and process the scrap to recycle scrap from battery cell production. In early 2021, Redwood quietly opened a recycling program to everyday consumers and all of the old electronics sitting in their junk drawers. Redwood posted a “recycle with us” tab on its website, along with an address, where consumers can send their e-waste, and a “contact us” button.
The program has collected tens of thousands of pounds of electronics from consumers, according to Redwood.
VW and Redwood want to turn your old laptops into EV batteries by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch
“Love the earth and sun and the animals,” Walt Whitman wrote in his timeless advice on living a vibrant and rewarding life — advice anchored, like his poetry, in that all-enveloping totality of goodwill that makes life worth living, advice at the heart of which is the act of unselfing; poetry largely inspired by the prose of Emerson, who had written of the “secret sympathy which connects men to all the animals, and to all the inanimate world around him.”
A quarter century after Leaves of Grass, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (November 11, 1821–February 9, 1881) took up this bright urgency in his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov (public library | public domain) — one of the great moral masterworks in the history of literature.
Dostoyevsky — who felt deeply the throes of personal love — contours the largest meaning of love:
Love every leaf… Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy. So do not trouble it, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God’s intent. Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals: they are without sin, while you in your majesty defile the earth by your appearance on it, and you leave the traces of your defilement behind you — alas, this is true of almost every one of us!
In our era of ecological collapse, as we reckon with what it means to pay reparations to our home planet, the next passage rings with especial poignancy, painting the antidote to the indifference that got us where we are:
My young brother asked even the birds to forgive him. It may sound absurd, but it is right none the less, for everything, like the ocean, flows and enters into contact with everything else: touch one place, and you set up a movement at the other end of the world. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but, then, it would be easier for the birds, and for the child, and for every animal if you were yourself more pleasant than you are now. Everything is like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds, too, consumed by a universal love, as though in ecstasy, and ask that they, too, should forgive your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however absurd people may think it.
Complement with Shelley’s prescient case for animal rights and Christopher Hitchens on the lesser appreciated moral of Orwell’s Animal Farm, then revisit Dostoyevsky, just after his death sentence was repealed, on the meaning of life.
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