The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog
Let’s get into the weeds! Your PEL hosts Mark Linsenmayer and Wes Alwan read and discuss tricky texts line by line for your amusement… on video or audio, just for supporters.
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Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. On "The Concept of Enlightenment" (1944), the first essay in this Frankfurt School book of critical theory, The Dialectic of Enlightenment. Our authors lay out what they take The Enlightenment to consist of, including some quotes from Francis Bacon, and Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. Discussing the section on Stoicism in Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit," which is under "Freedom of Self-Consciousness," "Stoicism, Scepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness." This comes right after his famous lordship and bondage chapter, and explains how Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. We are concluding our treatment of Peter Railton's "Moral Realism" (1984), and given that you likely haven't listened to the seven preceding parts, or (like us) you've forgotten things from them, this discussion can serve as a standalone summary of not only Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. What? Part Four? Yes, we're jumping back into a 1984 paper that we began a couple of years ago in light of our recent PEL activity on contemporary ethics. You should be fine just starting here, but all three previous parts have been made public on our Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. On "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" (1912). Prichard claims that we feel certain actions to be obligatory, and that we have no justification for doubting those raw intuitions. The situation, he claims, is comparable to epistemology: We have no Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. On Derek Parfit's "Prudence, Morality, and the Prisoner's Dilemma" (1978). What is a "prisoner's dilemma" and what is its relevance to ethics? In general, it's better for me if I break norms so long as others in general follow them, but if we all try to be Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. On Spinoza's Ethics, Third Part, "Concerning the Origin and Nature of the Emotions." We want to see how emotions ground ethics, but first, we have to explain what emotions are, which means explaining how mind and body (and causality) work together on Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. (The two play buttons above are ad-free for PEL supporters and with ads for the public.) Mark and Wes discuss "On the Problem of Empathy," ch. 4 "Empathy as the Comprehension of Mental Persons," starting with section 2, "The Mental Subject" and into Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. (The two play buttons above are ad-free for PEL supporters and with ads for the public.) Mark and Wes read through and discuss Ch. 6 "Formalism and Person," in Max Scheler's most famous work, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (1916). Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. 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 Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. (The two play buttons above are ad-free for PEL supporters and with ads for the public.) On Edmund Husserl's Ideas, Vol. 2 (1928), Section 3, "The Constitution of the Spiritual World," Ch. 1, "Opposition Between the Naturalistic and Personalistic Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get future parts on this reading, as well as our previous and future installments of this podcast. 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 Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get future parts on this reading, as well as our previous and future installments of this podcast. Why are there two audio players? The first is ad-free for PEL Supporters. Mark and Wes read through and discuss Karl Marx's The German Ideology (1846), delving deep into the middle of his critique of Max Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get future parts on this reading, as well as our previous and future installments of this podcast. 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 Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get future parts on this reading, as well as our previous and future installments of this podcast. 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? Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get future parts on this reading, as well as our previous and future installments of this podcast. We skip the introduction of Being and Nothingness (1943) and start with Part One, "The Problem of Nothingness," Ch. 1, "The Origin of Negation." Read along with us, starting on p. 33, i.e. PDF p. 84. You can Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get future parts on this reading, as well as our previous and future installments of this podcast. Bradley was a prominent British Hegelian, best known now for being the springboard for Bertrand Russell, who was initially a follower but then rejected idealism entirely to co-create what is now known as analytic Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get future parts on this reading, as well as our previous and future installments of this podcast. We begin a long series on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" (1945), focusing on Part I, "The Body": "Experience and Objective Thought." M-P talks first about what seeing an object (like a Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get future parts on this reading, as well as our previous and future installments of this podcast. On "The Question Concerning Technology" (1954). What is technology, REALLY? People think of it as neutral, as something that can be used for good or misused, but what is it really to be a TOOL in such a way? Continue Reading …
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get future parts on this reading, as well as our previous and future installments of this podcast. On "The Varieties of Religious Experience," the conclusion of lecture 15 on asceticism and saints. Why do some saintly types engage in ascetic practices like voluntary poverty? James thinks we could all do with Continue Reading …
