Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes

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 house) in the world involves. It pre-supposes a relation to us as perceivers, which involves our situatedness in a body. Yet when we make our own body into an objective object in space and time (like the house), we've shifted it from this primordial center of perception into something described like perception. What is involved in this shift?  Read along with us, starting on p. 77 (PDF p. 102). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

9/5/24 • 72:10

Continuing on "Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge," with the "Experience and Meeting" section, whereby we try to make sense of the theory that the self is metaphysically a relation to other people. How does a model of philosophy based on the cogito (first person perception) necessarily objectify other people? How does speaking "to" someone provide a break from this intentional (objectifying) speaking "of" others? Does this relation to others actually require language? Is bringing in animals off-limits in talking about the phenomenology of consciousness? Read along with us, starting on p. 63. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8/29/24 • 78:24

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 attributed to a tradition initiated by Descartes). Read along with us, starting on p. 60 (PDF p. 66). For more about Levinas, you can listen to PEL eps. 145 and 146, plus ep. 71 on Buber. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8/27/24 • 66:02

We discuss the fact-value distinction, both with regard to ethics but also epistemology, i.e. how the search for facts depends on what we're looking for. Read along with us, starting on p. 6. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8/23/24 • 73:42

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 facts about pleasure, social norms, or the like. In this first part, Railton lays out what naturalism in ethics amounts to and begins to explain why past empiricists like Hume don't provide an account of morality that is adequately normative: Merely describing what people tend to shoot for doesn't explain why such a norm is binding on us. Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8/20/24 • 68:05

Continuing on this text about the mechanics of how mind and body work together. Is this schematically useful or hopelessly archaic? You decide! Read along with us, starting at article 22. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8/15/24 • 74:34

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8/13/24 • 66:56

Continuing on "Two Concepts of Liberty" (1969), we finish up the negative conception ("freedom from") and give Berlin's strange account of positive freedom ("freedom to"), which involves an identification of some part of you (e.g. for Plato, your rationality), the obeying of which makes you free, even if what you "want" goes against this. Read along with us, starting on p. 20. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8/8/24 • 69:13

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8/6/24 • 68:31

Continuing on Aristotle's Metaphysics, book 1, ch. 9. Why does Aristotle insist that Forms have to be in objects, contra Plato? What would it mean for the Forms to be mathematical objects per the Pythagoreans' view? Read along with us starting on p. 23. At some point we'll return to Aristotle's take on Plato's forms via his treatment later in the look, but this is enough of Chapter 9! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8/1/24 • 78:04

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. Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7/30/24 • 69:40

Continuing on Yaqub ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi's Islamic, Stoic-flavored ethical treatise. What habits should we instill that will immunize us against loss? What constitutes enough mourning? How does a feeling of loss go away, and can (and should) we hasten this? Read along with us, starting on p. 124. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7/25/24 • 62:25

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7/23/24 • 64:25

Continuing on "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," ch. 2: "The Moral Teaching of Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount Contrasted with the Mosaic Law and with Kant’s Ethics." Read along with us, PDF p. 228 (text p. 210). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7/19/24 • 76:25

We're reading an early Hegel essay, "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," ch. 2: "The Moral Teaching of Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount Contrasted with the Mosaic Law and with Kant’s Ethics." Here Hegel describes how Jesus' ethics broke with Judaism. Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7/16/24 • 76:24

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7/11/24 • 71:51

We read the conclusion to Soren Kierkegaard's On the Concept of Irony (1841), "Irony as a Controlled Element, the Truth of Irony." The discussion starts with the role of irony in good art, and then moves on to discuss the proper role of irony as an existential strategy in a well-grounded, thoughtful life. Read along with us, starting at PDF p. 321. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7/9/24 • 59:55

On Book II of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Part I, "Pride and Humility," sections 3 and 4. Pride, according to Hume, has both a cause (whatever you're proud of) and an object (the self). Hume describes this structure as both "natural" (as opposed to being a social construction) and "original" (based on an innate psychological capacity). Pride involves both impressions (e.g. you perceive that you find pleasure in whatever you're proud of), and ideas (e.g. you understand the relation of the thing we're proud of to yourself). For both of these types of mental entities, pride or any other emotion will also involve associated ideas and impressions; pride in something will make us think of other things, and feeling pride about a particular thing gives rise to related feelings, e.g. pride in those other things. We switched which edition of the text we were reading since part one. Read along with us, starting on PDF p. 201. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7/4/24 • 75:23

On Book II of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), this time reading sections 1 and 2 in Part I, "Pride and Humility." How does David Hume deal with human emotions, given his empiricism that begins with the premise that our minds contain only impressions and ideas (which are mainly different from impressions in that they are fainter, like a memory of an apple as compared to the perception of an apple)? Read along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7/2/24 • 70:59

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. reasoning that relies only on the forms, yet is enabled by dialectic, as opposed to some kind of intellectual intuition directly of those forms. Follow along with us, starting on PDF p. 4. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6/27/24 • 72:42

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 half of Plato's "divided line" image, whose lower half marks off reflections/images and then the material objects that these are images of. Because these are in the lower half, we can't have any real knowledge of them; thus physical science should be impossible. Follow along with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6/25/24 • 73:33

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. Part Three can only be found at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6/20/24 • 68:39

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 the text. This also serves as part three to The Partially Examined Life's episode #325. However, this should be understandable without listening to any of that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6/18/24 • 65:21

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

6/13/24 • 70:58

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

6/11/24 • 67:33

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

6/6/24 • 76:45

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

6/4/24 • 72:48

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, starting at the bottom of p. 144. This also serves as part three to The Partially Examined Life's episode #324. However, this should be understandable without listening to any of that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

5/29/24 • 67:23

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

5/20/24 • 71:14

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

5/17/24 • 67:04