Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes

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

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

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...

We complete Plato's "divided line" schema at the end of Book VI of the Republic (and are going to hold off on the actual allegory of the cave in book VII for the time being, so this is the end of this series for now), discussing the "intelligible" realm and Socrates' strange distinction between the "mere hypotheses" of geometry, where the abstract material is based on empirical matters vs. reasoni...

Toward the end of Book VI and into Book VII of the Republic, Plato gives a series of metaphors for the role "the good itself" plays in our knowledge and values. We read here starting at line 507b of the G.M.A. Grube/C.D.C Reeve translation, where we hear that the form of the good is to our ability to know anything as the sun is to our ability to see anything. We conclude by discussing the first ha...

Continuing on the 1975 paper, we describe how the various maxims of Grice's conversational "Cooperative Principle" can be violated in systematic ways to produce conversational implicature. We talk in non-literal ways, yet other people still think we're trying to communicate and successfully understand us. Follow along with us in the text. To get part 3, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosoph...

We read through Paul Grice's 1975 ordinary language philosophy paper. What are the assumptions behind everyday conversation? When someone violates a conversational norm by, e.g., giving too much information or stating something literally untrue, what are the strategies by which we try to make sense of what they're saying as still a sensible contribution to the conversation? Follow along with us in...

We read through book one, chapter two. How can a person on every occasion maintain his proper character? Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Ch. 1 of this classic of ancient Stoicism, a series of informal lectures written down by Epictetus' student Arrian in around 108 C.E. What is it about us that enables self-control? Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Continuing on ch. 5 in Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651). We go through seven ways of producing absurd reasoning according to Hobbes. Read along with us. Part Three can only be found at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reading ch. 5 in Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651) to see how a materialist empiricist with a highly restrictive view of what counts as real knowledge tries to account for our ability to reason. Read along with us (start on p. 16). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the latter portion of Plato's middle-period dialogue, where Plato argues to Cratylus that even if names (words) were devised to somehow depict the things they stand for, that wouldn't guarantee that they ACCURATELY describe the world. You can't look at the definitions of words to learn about the world; you have to actually investigate the world directly. Follow along with us in the text, starti...

We're reading the "Fathoming Life" chapter of this seminal Daoist philosopher, using the Ziporyn translation: Just the first couple pages to really focus in on some text that came up tangentially in Partially Examined Life ep. 341. Read along with us, starting on PDF p. 188. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're continuing reading through the entry on Spinoza from Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1830). Let's Make Philosophy Mathematical Again! Read along with us. Part Three can only be found at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We read through the Spinoza entry in Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1830). Does this tell us more about Spinoza, or about Hegel? Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're continuing to go through Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1841 essay "The Over-Soul." What is this godhood allegedly in us that transcends time and space? Read along with us. Parts Three and Four can only be found at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are we underlyingly all really a single, unified organism? Or do we just have a lot in common? We begin unraveling this puzzling claim by reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay “The Over-Soul.” Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices