Ep. 363: Franz Brentano's Moral Epistemology (Part One)

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. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion. Sponsors: Get a $1/month e-commerce trial at shopify.com/pel. Learn about African history at historyofafricapodcast.podbean.com.

Om Podcasten

The Partially Examined Life is a podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a short text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don't have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we're talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion. For links to the texts we discuss and other info, check out www.partiallyexaminedlife.com. We also feature episodes from other podcasts by our hosts to round out your partially examined life, including Pretty Much Pop (prettymuchpop.com, covering all media), Nakedly Examined Music (nakedlyexaminedmusic.com, deconstructing songs), Philosophy vs. Improv (philosophyimprov.com, fun with performance skills and philosophical ideas), and (sub)Text (subtextpodcast.com, looking deeply at lit and film). Learn about more network podcasts at partiallyexaminedlife.com.