Episodes

  • Aquinas and Scotus on Law (Part One)

    Aquinas and Scotus on Law (Part One)
    Dec 18 2025
    While we modern folks have a generally clear distinction between law as in descriptive laws of nature and law as in ethical or civil commandments, these Medieval philosophers saw these as very much related if not actually the same thing, given that humans can ignore the dictates of their nature, i.e. reason, whereas the rest of nature just proceeds according to natural law, which for these theologians means God's dictates. So what actually is the relation, in general, between law and reason? Our text includes Aquinas' presentation of this issue and his near-contemporary Duns Scotus' commentary on it. Read along with us. You can choose to watch this on video. To get future parts, subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    57 mins
  • Josiah Royce on Interpreting Other People

    Josiah Royce on Interpreting Other People
    Dec 12 2025
    On "The Problem of Christianity," vol. 2, lecture 12, ch. 9, "The Will to Interpret." The point is to help explain Royce's idea of a community of interpretation, and the idea is that in the very act of interpreting a single individual, I'm bringing in some kind of public lexicon, i.e. other people beyond us two. Even though other people are fundamentally separate from us, we make some sort of leap that is the foundation of community: the will to interpret you as if your mind were accessible to mine. Read along with us. You can choose to watch this on video. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Hegel on Reason (Part One)

    Hegel on Reason (Part One)
    Nov 14 2025
    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
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    58 mins
  • Dispute Between a Man and His Ba

    Dispute Between a Man and His Ba
    Nov 6 2025
    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
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    57 mins
  • Aquinas and Aristotle on Soul

    Aquinas and Aristotle on Soul
    Oct 30 2025
    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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Hobbes on Liberty

    Hobbes on Liberty
    Oct 16 2025
    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
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Aristotle on Final Causes

    Aristotle on Final Causes
    Oct 9 2025
    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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Horkheimer and Adorno on Enlightenment (Part One)

    Horkheimer and Adorno on Enlightenment (Part One)
    Sep 18 2025
    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 some ultimately fatal tensions within it that make it no longer serve the humanistic purposes it was created for. Read along with us on PDF p. 22. You can choose to watch this on video. To get future parts, subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins