Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes – Details, episodes & analysis

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Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes

Mark Linsenmayer and Wes Alwan

Society & Culture

Arts

Education

Frequency: 1 episode/20d. Total Eps: 57

A philosophy podcast by the hosts of The Partially Examined Life

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🇫🇷 France - philosophy
26/08/2026
#91
🇫🇷 France - philosophy
25/08/2026
#74
🇫🇷 France - philosophy
24/08/2026
#53
🇬🇧 Great Britain - philosophy
23/08/2026
#67
🇩🇪 Germany - philosophy
28/07/2026
#87
🇨🇦 Canada - philosophy
27/07/2026
#66
🇨🇦 Canada - philosophy
18/07/2026
#81
🇩🇪 Germany - philosophy
18/07/2026
#96
🇩🇪 Germany - philosophy
17/07/2026
#62
🇨🇦 Canada - philosophy
16/07/2026
#74

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Closereads: Peirce’s New Categories (Part One)

Wednesday, August 19, 2026 • Duration 01:01:06

How shall we break down the universe into basic types of things? Peirce has an idiosyncratic way of thinking about this problem and coming up with his division, revolving around the steps and presuppositions involved in predicating something.

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Subscribe to Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy; follow us there via the free tier to part two and many other episodes like this one ad free, or pay us to get parts 2-5 and everything else we've recorded. (Alternatively, support both PEL and Closereads at patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife for a nice combo deal.)

The post Closereads: Peirce’s New Categories (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Galen Strawson on Panpsychism (Part One)

Monday, July 27, 2026 • Duration 57:08

On "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism" (2008). Strawson argues that physicalism should not just be taken as matter in motion. Instead, the physical is a broader category that includes not just chairs and molecules, but also "my experience of red." Yet he's not trying to say that experiences are just brain states; they clearly include qualia (what it's like to experience red). And he's also not just trying to solve the problem by redefining "physical" to include "mental" (though he is doing that). Instead, he's claiming that we have no warrant to claim that the properties of the physical are exhausted by what third-person science can investigate, and that we can't solve the mind-body problem unless we posit that (at least some) physical objects have a mental aspect. Sounds like Spinoza to us! Read along with us.

Get subsequent parts of this ad-free at ⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠. You can choose to watch this on unedited video.

The post Closereads: Galen Strawson on Panpsychism (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Aquinas and Scotus on Law (Part One)

Saturday, December 20, 2025 • Duration 56:11

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.

The post Closereads: Aquinas and Scotus on Law (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Royce on Interpreting Others

Friday, December 12, 2025 • Duration 01:07:20

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.

Get all Closereads episodes ad-free at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

The post Closereads: Royce on Interpreting Others first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Hegel on Reason (Part One)

Friday, November 14, 2025 • Duration 56:49

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.

The post Closereads: Hegel on Reason (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Dispute Between a Man and His Ba

Thursday, November 6, 2025 • Duration 56:06

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.

The post Closereads: Dispute Between a Man and His Ba first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Aquinas and Aristotle on Soul

Thursday, November 6, 2025 • Duration 01:03:55

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.

The post Closereads: Aquinas and Aristotle on Soul first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Hobbes on Liberty

Friday, October 17, 2025 • Duration 01:01:07

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.

The post Closereads: Hobbes on Liberty first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Aristotle on Final Causes

Thursday, October 9, 2025 • Duration 01:08:12

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.

The post Closereads: Aristotle on Final Causes first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Horkheimer and Adorno on Enlightenment (Part One)

Monday, September 22, 2025 • Duration 01:02:41

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.

The post Closereads: Horkheimer and Adorno on Enlightenment (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

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Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other99+

Patreon5

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other99+

Patreon5

Youtube38