The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

On "The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong" (1889). What justifies basic moral facts? Brentano claims that right there in our experience, we can rationally sense with complete certainty that certain kinds of preferences are good ones, and others are not. This take on intuitionism is a response to Kant that (like Kant) cuts between the traditional epistemic categories of rationalism and emp...

Continuing on Ecclesiastes with guest Jesse Peterson, getting into some more close reading of particular sections. We make some connection from the author's observations to ancient Greek Skepticism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. How is the world "absurd" according to this book? Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus d...

Ecclesiastes is often cited as one of the most philosophical books of the Bible, so we approached it in that spirit with the help of Jesse M. Peterson, whose soon-to-be-published book is called Qoheleth and the Philosophy of Value . Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion. Sponsor: Check out the History of...

On "Fragment on Machines" (1858). Shouldn't automating work free workers? Not according to Marx, until capitalism is overthrown. Until then, automation actually just makes labor conditions worse and certainly doesn't give people more free time, since the capitalist keeps all the surplus gained by greater productivity. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support...

We finish our treatment of Capital , Ch. 1, covering the little bit that Marx says about actual communism (he was wary of utopianism, contra his reputation), and think through a number of related practical problems. We introduce "Fragment on Machines" (1858). Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion. Sponso...

Continuing on Capital , Ch. 1 on commodities. We go into detail on his account of how money gets derived from the continued comparison of various commodities, how use value comes back into play when we compare the economic value of one commodity as compared to another, and finally, the details of commodity fetishism. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support t...

On Capital (1867), Ch. 1, "The Commodity." What makes something we buy or sell valuable? Marx says it's ultimately the labor that goes into it, though there are some wrinkles in formulating this accurately, and the commodities and surrounding marketplace activity blind us to labor's role and its ethical import. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get...

Mark and Wes read through and discuss Karl Marx's The German Ideology (1846), delving deep into the middle of his critique of Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own .  Marx articulates and criticizes Stirner's attempt to distinguish the mere common egoism of an unthinking person from the enlightened egoism that Stirner is recommending. Read along with us , starting on p. 259 (PDF p. 255). Sign up to su...

We continue on the introduction to Marx's Grundrisse , going through his criticisms of prior economists who were too ahistorical and didn't understand how production, consumption, distribution and exchange hang together as a single system. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion. Sponsor: Learn about St. J...

On the intro to Marx's Grundrisse (1857) and "Theses on Feuerbach" (1845). Why economics, and why do it the way Marx does? We see Marx argues that Feuerbach's materialism was not materialistic enough, start looking at production, consumption, distribution, and exchange as moments within a single process, and talk about why anyone would want to read a historical economic text. Get more at partially...

Continuing on The Ego and Its Own , focusing now on the sections "The Owner" and "My Power." Stirner lets us know that his egoism ("ownness") is not compatible with liberal egalitarianism, which he sees as just a continuation of the Christian project of perfecting humanity. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus dis...

On The Ego and its Own (1844), another big influence on Karl Marx and a precursor of Nietzsche, or perhaps an early Ayn Rand. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion. Sponsor : Have up to a $100 donation to effective charities matched at GiveWell.org .

Mark, Wes, Seth, and Dylan reflect on our past year of PEL recording, catch you up on our habits and interests, and talk about what might come next. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to this and every recording ad-free, plus numerous Nightcaps and many hours of other bonus content. Learn about Mark's spring Core Texts in philosophy class at partiallyex...

We finally discuss Feuerbach's proposed post-Hegelian, materialist approach to philosophy in his "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future" (1843). How can a materialist framework support phenomena central to F's account like our immediate, indubitable recognition of our selves, each other, and love itself? Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad...

Mark, Wes, and Dylan continue to look at Ludwig Feuerbach's "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future" (1843), recounting his story about how increasingly mature notions of God should lead philosophy eventually to a materialism where the sensual is the real. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion. Spons...

We dig in and start our detailed treatment of Ludwig Feuerbach's essay "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future" (1843). Feuerbach claims that people don't realize that the entity they worship is really just whatever it is about humanity and the world that we value, wrongly posited as an independent entity. So God is a mirror for any given society. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit...

On Ludwig Feuerbach's "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future" (1843) and the introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1841). What was the original point of religion? Can we retain what was emotionally good about it yet direct our efforts to purely practical matters? Feuerbach says yes, and this was a key influence on Marx. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlif...

Continuing on "Estranged Labor," "Private Property and Communism," and "The Power of Money on Bourgeois Society" with guest Lawrence Dallman. Does capitalism give rise to alienation, or is it alienation that is responsible for capitalism? Does a person (capitalist) have to be responsible for someone's alienation? What would we be like unalienated? Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit part...

On three of Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, "Estranged Labor," "Private Property and Communism," and "The Power of Money on Bourgeois Society." Featuring guest Lawrence Dallman. What is the plight of the working poor? It's that they are in an unnatural situation with regard to their work, which is supposed to gain them a sense of self but doesn't do so when it's a result...

Mark, Wes, and Seth talk about horror media and what scares us in light of Halloween. We then give some follow-up discussion re. our Williamson and Chappell interviews. Do we actually want to participate in Williamson's science-minded analytic philosophy of the future? Were we too one-sided in our trans coverage? We respond to an email about our trans episode. If you're not hearing the full versio...

We continue talking with Tim about Overfitting and Heuristics in Philosophy (2024), considering Tim's overall project and view of what philosophy should be doing and with what tools. We get into modeling, ethics, public philosophy, and more. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion, including a supporter-ex...

Oxford philosophy professor Timothy Williamson talks to us about his new book, Overfitting and Heuristics in Philosophy . How can we best apply the insights of philosophy of science to philosophy itself? Maybe some alleged philosophical counter-examples are just the result of psychological heuristics gone wrong. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get...

Concluding our treatment of "Of Seeing" in Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense . We continue to hammer at this idea of "resemblance" between mental contents and physical objects, consider more carefully Reid's level of support for the primary/secondary quality distinction, how he treats non-signifying feelings like pain and warmth, and his comparison of sense experience t...

We're continuing our treatment of Thomas Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764), now discussing ch. 6: "Of Seeing." Does vision provide the exception to Reid's point that our sensations do not resemble objects in the world? Images surely seem to do so! What does this mean for Reid's epistemology? Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedli...

Continuing on Inquiry into the Human Mind , getting further into the chapter on smelling as well as the conclusion and Reid's exchange with Hume. What exactly is our relation with objects in the world according to Reid? Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com . Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and bonus content.