#547 Alison Suen: Why It's OK to Be a Slacker

RECORDED ON JULY 29th 2021.
Dr. Alison Suen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Iona College, New York. She is the volume editor of Response Ethics (2018), the author of The Speaking Animal: Ethics, Language and the Human Animal Divide (2015), and Why It’s OK to Be a Slacker.

In this episode, we focus on Why It’s OK to Be a Slacker. Topics include: what is a slacker?; the different types of slacker, including academic slackers; hyper-productive societies, and how our work is part of our identity; the morality of slacking; the best arguments against slacking; leisure and human flourishing; slacking during the covid-19 pandemic; and a connection to nihilism, and the purposelessness of life.

Time Links:
00:00 Intro
00:37 What is a slacker?
04:14 Different kinds of slackers
16:29 How we feel about being productive in modern societies
20:22 The morality of slacking
27:09 Arguments against slacking
32:22 Human flourishing
36:36 Slacking during the covid-19 pandemic
41:30 Nihilism, and the purposelessness of life
43:42 A final message
45:13 Follow Dr. Suen’s work!

Follow Dr. Suen’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/3kXzYPh
PhilPeople page: https://bit.ly/3x0vs4C
Why It’s OK to Be a Slacker: https://bit.ly/36S7g9Z