The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

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Ep. 363: Franz Brentano's Moral Epistemology (Part Two) Mar 24, 2025

Show notes

Continuing on "The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong" (1889), getting into how we measure the comparative value of things. While Brentano does observe actual practices in these areas, his phenomenology detects moral facts that can be used to cast judgments of people's actual practices, saving him from relativism.

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Ep. 363: Franz Brentano's Moral Epistemology (Part One) Mar 17, 2025

Show notes

On "The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong" (1889). What justifies basic moral facts? Brentano claims that right there in our experience, we can rationally sense with complete certainty that certain kinds of preferences are good ones, and others are not. This take on intuitionism is a response to Kant that (like Kant) cuts between the traditional epistemic categories of rationalism and empiricism, and Brentano's descriptive psychology kicked off the whole project of phenomenology.

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Ep. 362: Ecclesiastes: Biblical Existentialism? (Part Two) Mar 10, 2025

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Continuing on Ecclesiastes with guest Jesse Peterson, getting into some more close reading of particular sections. We make some connection from the author's observations to ancient Greek Skepticism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. How is the world "absurd" according to this book?

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Ep. 362: Ecclesiastes: Biblical Existentialism? (Part One) Mar 03, 2025

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Ecclesiastes is often cited as one of the most philosophical books of the Bible, so we approached it in that spirit with the help of Jesse M. Peterson, whose soon-to-be-published book is called Qoheleth and the Philosophy of Value.

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Ep. 361: Marx on Machines (Part Two) Feb 24, 2025

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On "Fragment on Machines" (1858). Shouldn't automating work free workers? Not according to Marx, until capitalism is overthrown. Until then, automation actually just makes labor conditions worse and certainly doesn't give people more free time, since the capitalist keeps all the surplus gained by greater productivity.

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Ep. 361: Marx on Machines (Part One) Feb 17, 2025

Show notes

We finish our treatment of Capital, Ch. 1, covering the little bit that Marx says about actual communism (he was wary of utopianism, contra his reputation), and think through a number of related practical problems. We introduce "Fragment on Machines" (1858).

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Ep. 360: Karl Marx on Economic Value (Part Two) Feb 10, 2025

Show notes

Continuing on Capital, Ch. 1 on commodities. We go into detail on his account of how money gets derived from the continued comparison of various commodities, how use value comes back into play when we compare the economic value of one commodity as compared to another, and finally, the details of commodity fetishism.

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Ep. 360: Karl Marx on Economic Value (Part One) Feb 03, 2025

Show notes

On Capital (1867), Ch. 1, "The Commodity."

What makes something we buy or sell valuable? Marx says it's ultimately the labor that goes into it, though there are some wrinkles in formulating this accurately, and the commodities and surrounding marketplace activity blind us to labor's role and its ethical import.

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PEL Presents Closereads: Marx on Stirner (Part One) Feb 01, 2025

Show notes

Mark and Wes read through and discuss Karl Marx's The German Ideology (1846), delving deep into the middle of his critique of Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own.

Marx articulates and criticizes Stirner's attempt to distinguish the mere common egoism of an unthinking person from the enlightened egoism that Stirner is recommending.

Read along with us, starting on p. 259 (PDF p. 255).

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Ep. 359: Karl Marx's Project (Part Two) Jan 27, 2025

Show notes

We continue on the introduction to Marx's Grundrisse, going through his criticisms of prior economists who were too ahistorical and didn't understand how production, consumption, distribution and exchange hang together as a single system.

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