Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes

On Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Part C (AA) Reason, V. The Certainty and Truth of Reason. This section comes right after the self-consciousness sections, and so its big puzzle is why? Why is full recognition by another self-consciousness necessary for Reason, and consequently what is Hegel's conception of Reason?

Read along with us, on PDF p. 175, i.e. section 231.

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On Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Part C (AA) Reason, V. The Certainty and Truth of Reason. This section comes right after the self-consciousness sections, and so its big puzzle is why? Why is full recognition by another self-consciousness necessary for Reason, and consequently what is Hegel's conception of Reason?

Read along with us, on PDF p. 175, i.e. section 231.

You can choose to watch this on YouTube.

To get future parts, subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠⁠⁠.

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

In this famous, impossibly ancient (ca. 1900 BC!) Egyptian text, a man negotiations with the part of his soul that's supposed to help him in the afterlife. Can he kill himself now and still get all the benefits of an honorable death? His ba says no. Is this actually philosophy, or just a glimpse into the strangeness of a long-gone culture? You decide!

Read along with us.

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Get this ad-free along with every Closereads recording at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

In this famous, impossibly ancient (ca. 1900 BC!) Egyptian text, a man negotiations with the part of his soul that's supposed to help him in the afterlife. Can he kill himself now and still get all the benefits of an honorable death? His ba says no. Is this actually philosophy, or just a glimpse into the strangeness of a long-gone culture? You decide!

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Get this ad-free along with every Closereads recording at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

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

From Disputed Questions in De Anima (1269) as presented in Thomas Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford 1993), "Passage 18: Soul in Human Beings."

The question is how Aquinas, as an Aristotelian who therefore thinks the mind is the form of the body, can agree with the Christian doctrine that the soul exists after death. The answer is surprisingly weird: The body-less soul is incomplete, so we'd need to have the end-of-times full-bodily-resurrection of all the good people in order to have a truly satisfactory heaven.

Read along with us. The Aristotle chapter from "De Anima" (Part III, Ch. 5) is here, PDF p. 41.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Get this ad-free along with every Closereads recording at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

From Disputed Questions in De Anima (1269) as presented in Thomas Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford 1993), "Passage 18: Soul in Human Beings."

The question is how Aquinas, as an Aristotelian who therefore thinks the mind is the form of the body, can agree with the Christian doctrine that the soul exists after death. The answer is surprisingly weird: The body-less soul is incomplete, so we'd need to have the end-of-times full-bodily-resurrection of all the good people in order to have a truly satisfactory heaven.

Read along with us. The Aristotle chapter from "De Anima" (Part III, Ch. 5) is here, PDF p. 41.

You can choose to watch this on video.

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

On Leviathan (1651), ch. 21, "On the Liberty of Subjects." Thomas Hobbes is known for defending absolute monarchy, so as you'd predict, he's not going to say we have a lot of "natural" liberties.

We do always have the right to self-defense, but that doesn't mean that the sovereign can't with complete justice command you executed (even if you're innocent). Yet Hobbes wants to say that even under a repressive regime we all have lots of liberty, in the sense of no one physically stopping us from doing what we will. And he wants to dismiss as unintelligible any other sense of liberty tied to non-physical obstacles, so this entirely rules out any debate about free will.

Read along with us, starting on p. 161 (PDF p. 197).

You can choose to watch this on video.

Get the ad-free version of this and all of our episodes, including many supporter-exclusive ones, at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

On Leviathan (1651), ch. 21, "On the Liberty of Subjects." Thomas Hobbes is known for defending absolute monarchy, so as you'd predict, he's not going to say we have a lot of "natural" liberties.

We do always have the right to self-defense, but that doesn't mean that the sovereign can't with complete justice command you executed (even if you're innocent). Yet Hobbes wants to say that even under a repressive regime we all have lots of liberty, in the sense of no one physically stopping us from doing what we will. And he wants to dismiss as unintelligible any other sense of liberty tied to non-physical obstacles, so this entirely rules out any debate about free will.

Read along with us, starting on p. 161 (PDF p. 197).

You can choose to watch this on video.

Get the ad-free version of this and all of our episodes, including many supporter-exclusive ones, at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

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

On Aristotle's Physics, book 2, ch. 8 on "final causation," i.e. purposiveness as a natural explanation. Modern science doesn't much like this kind of explanation, but Aristotle found it essential, and here's his argument for it.

On Aristotle's Physics, book 2, ch. 8 on "final causation," i.e. purposiveness as a natural explanation. Modern science doesn't much like this kind of explanation, but Aristotle found it essential, and here's his argument for it.

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

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