Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes

On "The Varieties of Religious Experience," the conclusion of lecture 15. Why do some saintly types engage in ascetic practices like voluntary poverty? James thinks we could all do with some self-discipline of this sort, as extreme as the examples of literary saints may be. Self-denial is a less destructive way of expressing a martial character than actually going to war. Read along with us, start...

On "The Intelligence, The Ideas, and Being," starting on section 6. What is "The Intelligence" anyway? How does its storehouse of Forms get into the material world? Read along with us, starting on p. 51. To get part 3, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On "The Intelligence, The Ideas, and Being" from the Enneads (270 C.E.), about the various elements of Neo-Platonist cosmology: You've got The One, which is so awesome that it has literally no properties (so you can't even say it's awesome), then The Intelligence, which is the repository of the Forms (these first two together serve the same function as Aristotle's Unmoved Mover), then The Soul (th...

We begin a long series on Maurice Merleau Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" (1945), focusing on Part I, "The Body": "Experience and Objective Thought." M-P talks first about what seeing an object (like a house) in the world involves. It pre-supposes a relation to us as perceivers, which involves our situatedness in a body. Yet when we make our own body into an objective object in space and tim...

We begin a long series on Maurice Merleau Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" (1945), focusing on Part I, "The Body": "Experience and Objective Thought." M-P talks first about what seeing an object (like a house) in the world involves. It pre-supposes a relation to us as perceivers, which involves our situatedness in a body. Yet when we make our own body into an objective object in space and tim...

Continuing on "Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge," with the "Experience and Meeting" section, whereby we try to make sense of the theory that the self is metaphysically a relation to other people. How does a model of philosophy based on the cogito (first person perception) necessarily objectify other people? How does speaking "to" someone provide a break from this intentional (objectifying)...

We read the first pages of Emmanuel Levinas' 1958 article, "Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge." In these initial sections, subtitled "The Problem of Truth" and "From the Object to Being," he's recounting how Heideggerian phenomenology argued that being (including our unarticulated awareness of being) is more fundamental than knowledge (a verbalized, objectifying attitude toward the world at...

We discuss the fact-value distinction, both with regard to ethics but also epistemology, i.e. how the search for facts depends on what we're looking for. Read along with us, starting on p. 6. To get part 3, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're reading a 1984 essay by Mark's U. of Michigan undergrad advisor, included among the most cited philosophy papers in some list that Wes found. Railton's goal is to give a naturalistic account of ethics (i.e. ethics within a framework of natural science) that both connects tightly to observed empirical facts and also makes moral facts real parts of our world, not merely reducible to non-moral...

Continuing on this text about the mechanics of how mind and body work together. Is this schematically useful or hopelessly archaic? You decide! Read along with us, starting at article 22. To get parts 3 and 4, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're reading the final text by René Descartes, published in 1649, about how mind and body relate to each other. Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Continuing on "Two Concepts of Liberty" (1969), we finish up the negative conception ("freedom from") and give Berlin's strange account of positive freedom ("freedom to"), which involves an identification of some part of you (e.g. for Plato, your rationality), the obeying of which makes you free, even if what you "want" goes against this. Read along with us, starting on p. 20. To get parts 3 and 4...

We're reading through the beginning of "Two Concepts of Liberty" (1969). What are the various ways we can conceive of freedom, and is the concept necessarily political? Can you legitimately say you've been deprived freedom because, e.g., you can't afford some necessity? Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Continuing on Aristotle's Metaphysics, book 1, ch. 9. Why does Aristotle insist that Forms have to be in objects, contra Plato? What would it mean for the Forms to be mathematical objects per the Pythagoreans' view? Read along with us starting on p. 23. At some point we'll return to Aristotle's take on Plato's forms via his treatment later in the look, but this is enough of Chapter 9! Learn more a...

Aristotle offers a critique of Plato's theory of forms at a few points in his Metaphysics, and in this and the following part of this series, we'll be tackling this by reading part of book 1, ch. 9. Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is technology, REALLY? People think of it as neutral, as something that can be used for good or misused, but what is it really to be a TOOL in such a way? Heidegger analyzes causality itself, arguing that our modern emphasis on the mechanical (efficient) cause of something is impoverished as compared to Aristotle's. Read along with  us starting on PDF p. 38: (p. 4 in the text). You can choose...

Continuing on Yaqub ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi's Islamic, Stoic-flavored ethical treatise. What habits should we instill that will immunize us against loss? What constitutes enough mourning? How does a feeling of loss go away, and can (and should) we hasten this? Read along with us, starting on p. 124. To get part 3, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...

We're reading a 9th century Arabic philosopher (from what's now Iraq), in fact the "father of Arab philosophy," Yaqub ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi, writing about how we can immunize ourselves to the sorrows of life through some means akin to Stoicism, which Al-Kindi as scholar of the Greeks knew all about. Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Continuing on "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," ch. 2: "The Moral Teaching of Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount Contrasted with the Mosaic Law and with Kant’s Ethics." Read along with us, PDF p. 228 (text p. 210). To get parts 3-5, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On "The Varieties of Religious Experience," the conclusion of lecture 15. Why do some saintly types engage in ascetic practices like voluntary poverty? James thinks we could all do with some self-discipline of this sort, as extreme as the examples of literary saints may be. Self-denial is a less destructive way of expressing a martial character than actually going to war. Read along with us , star...

We're reading an early Hegel essay, "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," ch. 2: "The Moral Teaching of Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount Contrasted with the Mosaic Law and with Kant’s Ethics." Here Hegel describes how Jesus' ethics broke with Judaism. Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We complete our treatment of Soren Kierkegaard's On the Concept of Irony (1841), "Irony as a Controlled Element, the Truth of Irony." How can a controlled level of irony help us gain health and truth? Read along with us, starting at PDF p. 324 in the middle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We read the conclusion to Soren Kierkegaard's On the Concept of Irony (1841), "Irony as a Controlled Element, the Truth of Irony." The discussion starts with the role of irony in good art, and then moves on to discuss the proper role of irony as an existential strategy in a well-grounded, thoughtful life. Read along with us, starting at PDF p. 321. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...

On Book II of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Part I, "Pride and Humility," sections 3 and 4. Pride, according to Hume, has both a cause (whatever you're proud of) and an object (the self). Hume describes this structure as both "natural" (as opposed to being a social construction) and "original" (based on an innate psychological capacity). Pride involves both impressions (e.g. you perceive that...

On Book II of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), this time reading sections 1 and 2 in Part I, "Pride and Humility." How does David Hume deal with human emotions, given his empiricism that begins with the premise that our minds contain only impressions and ideas (which are mainly different from impressions in that they are fainter, like a memory of an apple as compared to the perception of an appl...