PEL Presents Closereads: Kierkegaard on Subjective Knowledge
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On an excerpt from Soren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) that critiques Hegel's idea of logic (dialectic) and then argues for his own conception of "truth as subjectivity."
Subscribe to Closereads (and get a link to this text to read along) 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 3-5 and everything else we've recorded. (Alternatively, support both PEL and Closereads at patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife for a nice combo deal.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, PEL listeners, I feel like far too many of you are not in the loop about the other project |
| 0:05.1 | that Wes and I do every week, Close Reads, Philosophy with Mark and West. We've just finished a five-part |
| 0:10.8 | series on subjective and objective knowledge in Kirkgaard's concluding unscientific post script. |
| 0:17.2 | So here, for you that are not subscribed to Close Reeds, here is Part 1. If you like it, |
| 0:21.7 | Part 2 is also free to the public to sign up for our ad-free feed at patreon.com slash close |
| 0:27.7 | reads philosophy. If you decide to pay us via that site, then you would get parts 3, 4, and 5, |
| 0:34.1 | and all the many other episodes we've recorded of this podcast that fills in the gaps as detail |
| 0:39.8 | really teaches you a different set of skills than you will get from partial exam in life. |
| 0:45.1 | I should say I also just this week posted the beginning of a new shorter series on |
| 0:50.2 | Galen Strausson's essay against narrativity, which I think you'd also find fascinating. |
| 0:55.3 | Enjoy. |
| 0:57.7 | This is Close Reads. |
| 0:59.5 | A philosophy podcast with Mark and Wes. |
| 1:02.1 | I'm Wes Allwin. |
| 1:03.2 | And I'm Mark Linsonmeyer. |
| 1:06.9 | Welcome back to Close Reeds. |
| 1:09.3 | We're starting a new text or a little tiny bit of a text. We had, |
| 1:15.4 | on Partially Examined Life, been engaged what were five hours in to at least nine hours of |
| 1:22.6 | Hegel's phenomenology of Spirit following our five-hour treatment of a different part of that text on this show. |
| 1:30.3 | And it made me think about Kierkegaard and the similarly long partial exam of life run we had |
| 1:36.0 | with him two years ago, something, a little while ago. |
| 1:40.8 | And the big book of his, I guess there are lots of works of Kirkagard's that we haven't read, |
... |
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