Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), ch. 3, "Force and the Understanding." What is "force" as physics describes it? And scientific law? Do these terms denote objects in the world, or models for how we describe the world? For Hegel, force is a way of talking about the metaphysical relation that one object Continue Reading …
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Ep. 276: Hegel on Perception (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), ch. 1 "Sense Certainty" and ch. 2 "Perception." After introducing Hegel's project in ep. 275, we now walk through the first two steps of his dialectic where he presents some basic theories of knowledge and shows why they're inaccurate. The first of these is direct Continue Reading …
Ep. 275: Hegel’s Project in “The Phenomenology of Spirit” (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On the Introduction to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's early opus (1807), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. This is the first of three episodes on this very challenging book. It's a book that demands slow, close reading, and in fact we only had time to talk about just the Introduction (X pages) even Continue Reading …
Ep. 274: Schelling on Self-Consciousness (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), Parts 1 and 2. This continues from Ep. 273 and features Mark, Wes, and Seth. If you're an idealist, and so think that all existence is somehow in our minds, then the key to any knowledge whatsoever would have to be an Continue Reading …
Ep. 273: Friedrich Schelling’s Foundationalist Idealism (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), introduction, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth. What's the relationship between mind and world? Schelling, as a young acolyte of Fichte, thought that our minds produce the world, but also that the perceiver-world dichotomy Continue Reading …
Ep. 272: Fichte’s Idealist Theology (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Continuing from ep. 271 to cover the rest (Books II and III) of The Vocation of Man (1799), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth. What does idealism, the idea that what we take to be the external world is really just a part of the mind, entail that we do? It seems like we should just be solipsists and hence Continue Reading …
Ep. 271: Johan Gottlieb Fichte’s Transcendental Idealism (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On The Vocation of Man (1799), Books I and II, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth. What is reality? Fichte is known as a key interpreter of Immanuel Kant who removed the idea of the "thing-in-itself," i.e. reality apart from how we interpret it, from Kant's system. Kant had described how Continue Reading …
Ep. 270: Classical Indian (Vedanta and Nyaya) Design Arguments for God (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On the new book God and the World’s Arrangement: Readings from Vedanta and Nyaya Philosophy of Religion, which presents two takes on the argument that God must exist because the world is a "product." The first is excerpted from the Brahma-sūtra (a.k.a. the Vedānta-sutra, compiled ca. the 2nd Continue Reading …
Ep. 269: Arendt on Totalitarianism (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On “On the Nature of Totalitarianism” (1953) and On the Origins of Totalitarianism, ch. 13 (added in 1953), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Totalitarianism was epitomized in fiction by 1984 but enacted in the real world in Russia under Stalin and what would have likely been the end-point of Germany under Continue Reading …
Ep. 268: Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985), featuring Mark, Seth, Dylan, Wes, and guest Brian Hirt, the co-host of Pretty Much Pop with degrees in linguistics and science education. Sponsors: Save 20% on an annual membership of at TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/PEL. See Continue Reading …
Ep. 267: Avicenna on God and Soul w/ Peter Adamson (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On selections and commentary about Avicenna's argument from around 1020 C.E. for the existence of God (including arguments to prove that God has the person-like properties that Islam imputes to him) and his "flying man" argument for the soul's essential independence from matter. Featuring Mark, Dylan, and our guest Continue Reading …
Ep. 266: Jonathan Lear’s Plato: Psyche and Society (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On essays from Lear's Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul (1988), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. How does Plato's philosophy hold together, and is it still something we can make use of in the modern age? Our recent explorations of Plato's Timaeus and Phaedo showed us how humanity is supposed to Continue Reading …
Ep. 265: Plato’s “Phaedo”: Philosophy as Training for Death (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On Plato's middle dialogue depicting the death of Socrates from around 390 BCE, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Should we fear death? Plato's dialogue shows Socrates conversing with his followers immediately before his execution about the philosophical life and the immortality of the soul. Philosophy as Continue Reading …
Ep. 264: Plato’s “Timaeus” on Cosmology (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. On the later Platonic dialogue from around 360 BCE, with Mark, Wes, and Dylan. How is nature put together? Plato, speaking this time through the fictional character instead of Socrates (who is present, but only Timaeus talks after the first part of the dialogue), paints a picture of the creation of the cosmos and Continue Reading …
Ep. 263: Lise Van Boxel’s “Warspeak” on Strategies for Valuing (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Lise was one of the hosts of PEL network podcast Combat & Classics and a St. John's Santa Fe tutor. She passed away last year, but not before finishing her life's work, Warspeak, which evolved over many years out of her dissertation on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. Dylan and Seth are joined by guests Continue Reading …
Ep. 262: Nietzsche on Self-Denial (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode, or listen to a preview. Citizens can get the entire second part here. On Friedrich Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals (1887), "Third essay: what do ascetic ideals mean?" featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. When people really get serious, and try to put away frivolous things, is that good or bad? A serious athlete will subordinate Continue Reading …
Ep. 261: Derek Parfit on Personal Identity (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode, or listen to a preview. Citizens can get the entire second part here. On Reasons and Persons (1984), ch. 10-13, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth. What makes a person the same over time? Parfit used Locke as a starting point: It's a matter of continuity of memory: I am the same person as my younger self because there are Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep. 260: Locke on Moral Psychology
Subscribe to get the full episode. We made one last swipe at mopping up some outstanding issues in John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), covering Book II, ch. 21 and 28, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. This preview includes only about a third of the discussion, but I'm going to give you my full essay about its contents here: What makes a moral Continue Reading …
Ep. 259: Locke Clarifies Misleading Complex Ideas (Part Two)
More on Book II (ch. 22-33) of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), discussed by Mark, Wes, and Dylan. On relations, then personal identity, with more on substances (spiritual and material), the various ways in which ideas can go wrong, and how mental association can entrench irrationality that disrupts clear thinking. Listen to part one first, or get Continue Reading …
Ep. 259: Locke Clarifies Misleading Complex Ideas (Part One)
On Book II (ch. 22-33) of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), discussed by Mark, Wes, and Dylan. Simple ideas (as discussed in ep. 258) get complex rather quickly, perhaps as soon as you put them into words, and certainly as soon as you put them into a system. If I perceive the color blue, or a passing thought in my mind, a simple idea of this appears Continue Reading …