Episodes

  • F.H. Bradley's "Appearance and Reality" (Video Part Two)

    F.H. Bradley's "Appearance and Reality" (Video Part Two)
    Oct 18 2024
    We begin Bradley's argument for idealism: The world as we perceive it is appearance, not reality. In ch. 1, "Primary and Secondary Qualities," we see him give Locke's arguments for the distinction and Berkeley's response that both alike are in the mind, not the world. We try to make sense of this given our recent reading for The Partially Examined Life of Thomas Reid, who argued for realism against Berkeley and others. Read along with us, starting on p. 17. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • F.H. Bradley's "Appearance and Reality" (Part One)

    F.H. Bradley's "Appearance and Reality" (Part One)
    Oct 11 2024
    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 philosophy. Today we read just the Introduction to this massive 1893 tome, where Bradley argues that metaphysics is possible and worthwhile. Read along with us, starting on PDF p. 29. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Heidegger on Technology (Part Two)

    Heidegger on Technology (Part Two)
    Oct 2 2024
    We move from the discussion of the four types of causes, to "disclosure," to an environmental critique. Read along with us starting on p. 10. To get parts 3-5, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Heidegger on Technology (Part One)

    Heidegger on Technology (Part One)
    Sep 26 2024
    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? Heidegger analyzes causality itself, arguing that our modern emphasis on the mechanical (efficient) cause of something is impoverished as compared to Aristotle's. Read along with us starting on PDF p. 38: (p. 4 in the text). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • William James on Asceticism and Saints (Part One)

    William James on Asceticism and Saints (Part One)
    Sep 18 2024
    On "The Varieties of Religious Experience," the conclusion of lecture 15. Why do some saintly types engage in ascetic practices like voluntary poverty? James thinks we could all do with some self-discipline of this sort, as extreme as the examples of literary saints may be. Self-denial is a less destructive way of expressing a martial character than actually going to war. Read along with us, starting on p. 352 (PDF p. 369). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Plotinus on The Intelligence (Part Two)

    Plotinus on The Intelligence (Part Two)
    Sep 12 2024
    On "The Intelligence, The Ideas, and Being," starting on section 6. What is "The Intelligence" anyway? How does its storehouse of Forms get into the material world? Read along with us, starting on p. 51. To get part 3, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Plotinus on The Intelligence (Part One)

    Plotinus on The Intelligence (Part One)
    Sep 10 2024
    On "The Intelligence, The Ideas, and Being" from the Enneads (270 C.E.), about the various elements of Neo-Platonist cosmology: You've got The One, which is so awesome that it has literally no properties (so you can't even say it's awesome), then The Intelligence, which is the repository of the Forms (these first two together serve the same function as Aristotle's Unmoved Mover), then The Soul (the World Soul) that actually exists in time and creates things, then lots of little souls, individual Forms that are transmitted around via "the seminal reasons," and the grubby material world that nonetheless may have received enough Form to make us look up the chain of Being toward its divine elements. Read along with us, starting on p. 46 (PDF p. 48). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    59 mins
  • Merleau-Ponty on the Body (Part One)

    Merleau-Ponty on the Body (Part One)
    Sep 5 2024
    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). To get the subsequent 4 parts of this series, subscribe at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 12 mins