Episodios

  • Scheler on Personhood (Part One)

    Scheler on Personhood (Part One)
    Apr 16 2025
    On Ch. 6 "Formalism and Person," in Max Scheler's most famous work, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (1916). Ethical Formalism is Kant: What makes something ethically correct is just something about the type of act and willing involved. Non-formalism pays attention to the content, e.g. our sentiments (a la Hume). As we've been studying on The Partially Examined Life, phenomenologists starting with Brentano sought to merge the two: Things in our experience just present themselves as intuitively praiseworthy, and this is sufficient to establish ethical obligations. We have been reading about how Scheler relies in his ethical theorizing on our experiences of sympathy and love, but we wanted to learn more about what it is about particular people that we love and respect: What is it to be a "person" in the moral sense? This book moves very slowly, so in this part he's still just distinguishing himself from Kant when it comes to saying some basic things about your relation to your own selfhood. Read along with us, starting on p. 370 (PDF p. 403). You can choose to watch this on video. To get future parts, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 2 m
  • Schopenhauer on Ethics (Part One)

    Schopenhauer on Ethics (Part One)
    Apr 2 2025
    On The Basis of Morality (1840), Part III: "The Founding of Ethics," Ch. 5: "Statement and Proof of the Only True Moral Incentive." Everything up to this point in the book has been negative: Morality can't be founded on pure reason as Kant thinks, or on the idea of the good life (eudaimonia) per Aristotle. Schopenhauer tells us that all actions are motivated by someone's "weal" or "woe." We are naturally self-interested (motivated by own own weal and woe), but such actions will not be moral. So Schopenhauer's puzzle is: How can I be effectively motivated by someone else's weal and woe? I must somehow identify with that person so that the Other's suffering induces my compassion. This is the only source of moral value. Read along with us, starting on p. 165 (PDF p. 193). You can choose to watch this on video. To get future parts, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 8 m
  • Husserl on Perceiving Minds

    Husserl on Perceiving Minds
    Mar 24 2025
    On Edmund Husserl’s Ideas, Vol. 2 (1928), Section 3, “The Constitution of the Spiritual World,” Ch. 1, “Opposition Between the Naturalistic and Personalistic Worlds." Given Husserl’s method of “reduction” whereby he sets aside the metaphysical status of objects in the natural world (are they mind-independent or merely ideas?), we wanted to see how he accounts for our ability to directly perceive other people’s minds. We don’t just perceive their bodies and our own bodies and deduce that others must be like us, but we perceive both our minds and those of others as strata (aspects) of physical bodies. Read along with us, starting on p. 183 (PDF p. 101). You can choose to watch this unedited on video. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 11 m
  • Guattari on Fascism (Part One)

    Guattari on Fascism (Part One)
    Feb 18 2025
    Mark and Wes read through and discuss the beginning of Felix Guattari's "Everybody Wants to Be a Fascist" (1973). Guattari was a Lacanian psychotherapist, and he argues for explaining fascist tendencies via a "micropolitics of desire," i.e. looking at the individual psychology of fascism instead of merely focusing on sociological, material causes of the rise of fascism. Read along with us. You can choose to watch this on video. To get future parts, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 13 m
  • Marx on Stirner (Part One)

    Marx on Stirner (Part One)
    Jan 28 2025
    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" (recently covered on The Partially Examined Life ep. 358). 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). To get future parts, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 6 m
  • Husserl on Essences (Part One)

    Husserl on Essences (Part One)
    Dec 29 2024
    Mark and Wes read through and discuss Edmund Husserl's Ideas (1913), ch. 1, "Matter of Fact and Essence" in First Book, "General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology," Part One, "Essence and Eidetic Cognition." This is the book that basically designed phenomenology as a movement, and this part of the reading lays some groundwork by describing what these "essences" that phenomenology studies are, and how they differ from matters of fact. Read along with us, starting on p. 5 (PDF p. 14). To get future parts, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 10 m
  • Mill on Induction (Part One)

    Mill on Induction (Part One)
    Dec 6 2024
    We're discussing John Stuart Mill's A System of Logic (1843), specifically from Book III, "Of Induction," ch. 8, "Of the Four Methods of Experimental Inquiry." What is induction, and why is it part of logic? Science doesn't just observe regularities, but tries to isolate what is connected with what through a combination of experiments and observations. Read along with us, starting on p. 278, i.e. PDF p. 284. To get future parts, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 2 m
  • Sartre on Nothingness (Part Two)

    Sartre on Nothingness (Part Two)
    Nov 14 2024
    We continue reading Part One of Being and Nothingness, with ch. 2, "Negations." We get some context and then jump into the classic question of whether existence in itself is just pure being, such that nothingness is just a result of human judgments on it, or whether nothingness is something objective that we grasp. We end by introducing the famous "absent Pierre in the café" example. Read along with us, starting on p. 36, i.e. PDF p. 87. To get future parts, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 9 m
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