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Concluding on William James's Psychology, the Briefer Course (1892). We briefly cover emotions and spend the bulk of our time on will.

James’s introspective method allows us to distinguish reflex or coerced actions from voluntary, free-seeming ones, and gives us the vocabulary to attribute moral virtue to those who have enough willpower to keep those inconvenient truths in mind (if you eat this, you’ll get fat!) that allow us to successfully resist temptation.

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End song: "Join the Zoo/Live Again" by Craig Wedren; listen to him on Nakedly Examined Music #15.

On Benedict de Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), ch. 1–11. For Spinoza, the Bible was a political issue, and he was interested in a way to read it that didn't lead to people fighting wars and persecuting each other. Spinoza argues that a respectful reading is one that looks for the central message and doesn't paper over many places where the text was tailored to its original audience's prejudices, or where for historical reasons we can't now really know what it meant to them.

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More on the novel with guest Corey Mohler, considering Dostoyevsky qua existentialist in terms of his analysis of the crisis of meaning and his consequent views on religion.

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End song: "Don Quixote" by Nik Kershaw, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #37. 

On Fyodor Dostoyevsky's philosophical novel from 1869. Could a morally perfect person survive in the modern world? Is all this "modernity," which so efficiently computes our desires and provides mechanisms to fulfill them, actually suited to achieve human flourishing? Dostoyevsky's Russian existentialism says no! 

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Continuing our interview about Natural Kinds and Genesis: The Classification of Material Entities. Buy Stewart's book at www.rowman.com and use the code LEX30AUTH17 to get 30% off.

Listen to part 1 first or get the ad-free Citizen Edition.

End song: "Destroy the Box" by Wertico, Cain and Gray from Organic Architecture (2014). Hear Paul Wertico and David Cain interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #30.

On Natural Kinds and Genesis: The Classification of Material Entities (2016). Are general terms like "water" or "dog" just things that we made up to order the world? Aristotle thought that some universals constitute natural kinds, with a nature that explains their behavior. "Kinds" were replaced with "laws," but Stewart wants us to reconsider, and bring back "natural philosophy" in the process.

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On the short stories "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" (1960) and "Sonny’s Blues" (1957). Mark joins the Phi Fic crew to supplement PEL ep. 162 by delving into Baldwin's fiction, which is actually pretty similar to his biographical essays.