Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes

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...

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 (t...

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

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...

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 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. Get all Closereads ad-free at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy . The post Ep. 341 Supplemental: Zhuangzi, Ch. 19 (Citizen...

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

Reading through difficult philosophy texts line-by-line to try to figure out what’s really being said. 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...

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 . You can choose to watch this on video . To get parts 2-4, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy . The post Closereads: Descartes’ Passions of the Soul (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast .

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 . You can choose to watch this on video . To get parts 2-4, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy . Th...

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. Watch the video , if you choose. Get part two of this and every other Closereads ad-free at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy . The post Closereads: Aristotle Against Platonic Forms (Audio Part One), ak...

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 . To get parts 2 and 3, subscribe at  patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy . The post C...

We're starting a new Closereads series on an early, comparatively early Hegel essay called "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," (1798). Listen to the first ten minutes of the first part at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. The post Closereads: Hegel on Jesus and Kant (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast .

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. Get all episodes ad-free at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy . The post Ep. 329: Kierkegaard on Irony (Part Four for Supporters/Closereads P...