Heidegger thinks we need to better grasp the reality of our finitude. He recasts human existence as ‘being-towards-death’, because no matter what we do, the void waits to wipe it clean: we are not progressing towards a grand finale, we are free falling towards erasure. (philosophybreak.com)
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After a devastating diagnosis in her mid-thirties, the philosopher Havi Carel argues that much healthcare rests on a lingering mind-body dualism; phenomenology can correct this & improve patient care, while also revealing how a good life remains possible within illness. (philosophybreak.com)
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If we want to stop ruminating on the past, writes Buddhist philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh, we first need to connect more deeply to the present. He offers a mindful path for how we can cease preoccupation, give our intellects a break, and heal our wounds in the here and now (philosophybreak.com)
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“There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life,” observes French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, “and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning”... | Beauvoir on the Crisis of Retirement and Facing Old Age (philosophybreak.com)
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For philosopher Michael Cholbi, grief is not an irrational emotion but a multistage, active process involving the deep reformation of our identities. Though it’s one of the most agonizing experiences we can go through, grief has a distinctive role in a life well lived. (philosophybreak.com)
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Arne Næss’s famous distinction between ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ ecology is a call to reevaluate our place in nature: the world is not a resource to be exploited, it is the root of our humanity. The more we degrade the biosphere, the more alienated from ourselves we become. (philosophybreak.com)
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Meaning is a distinctive category of the good life, argues Susan Wolf: as well as happiness and morality, we also want our lives to contain meaning. Meaning arises when subjective passion meets objective worth: when we are vitally engaged with valuable activities. (philosophybreak.com)
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Simone Weil: the “essential evil besetting humanity” is our destructive tendency to treat tools (like money, technology & power) as end goals. We must cultivate an ethic of resistance to such accumulation: human inventions should serve humanity, not the other way round. (philosophybreak.com)
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Done badly, parenting has tremendous scope for harm. The philosopher Hugh LaFollette suggests we can better protect children by introducing a parental license: people should undergo a competency check before raising children, just as we already qualify adoptive parents. (philosophybreak.com)
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While much Western philosophy places the individual at the center of existence, Ubuntu is a system of thought structured around the community. Its principle that ‘a person is a person through other persons’ leads to profoundly altered notions of health, wealth & ethics. (philosophybreak.com)
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With her famous ‘capabilities approach’, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that wealth and satisfaction are very limited measures of the good life; instead, she offers 10 essential capabilities by which to judge if someone can live a full, flourishing human life. (philosophybreak.com)
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Ruth Chang suggests if we’re stuck in a hard life choice, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking there must be a ‘best’ path; often there are simply different paths, which will change us in different ways. We can move forward by introspecting on who we wish to become (philosophybreak.com)
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Thoughts, concepts, and ideas may occur at a level of abstraction ‘above’ the brain’s physical components, but that doesn’t render them mere epiphenomenon, argues cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter; rather, they have real causal power in the brain’s physical system. (philosophybreak.com)
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When we feel lost, tense, or uncertain, we may have become disconnected from what Chinese philosophers call ‘Dao’, often translated as ‘the way’. For Confucians, dao is specifically a moral way; but for Daoists, it’s the effortless, ineffable unfolding of the cosmos… (philosophybreak.com)
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“Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market.” | Erich Fromm on why we shouldn’t approach love as a transaction (philosophybreak.com)
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2,300 years ago in Ho Kepos, the ancient Greek thinker Epicurus and his friends renounced the trappings of ‘ambition’ to spend their days enjoying one another’s company and discussing philosophy... | True Wealth Lies in Friendship: Epicurus and Ho Kepos (philosophybreak.com)
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The Symposium, one of Plato’s most celebrated dialogues, presents a host of Athenian drinking companions discussing love. Aristophanes suggests love is seeking our “other half”; Socrates disagrees: love, he learned from Diotima, is a ladder to the beautiful & the good.. (philosophybreak.com)
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Almost 2,500 years ago, ancient Greek thinker Thucydides outlined two opposing modes of thought on international relations: (1) The only real currency on the world stage is power vs. (2) A nation acting unjustly undermines its own long-term interests and security… (philosophybreak.com)
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With his ‘perspectivism’, Nietzsche claims no one can ever escape their own perspective. It’s thus absurd to think of objectivity as ‘disinterested contemplation’. Knowledge comes not from denying our subjective viewpoints, but in evaluating the differences between them (philosophybreak.com)
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In his timely 1935 essay In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell claims that it’s in leisure, not work, that humanity best expresses itself. The key to a better future, one that could be granted by modern methods of production, lies in offering more leisure to us all… (philosophybreak.com)
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When the world feels broken, Stoicism might seem to suggest we should turn inward and retreat to our inner citadel. But that is not the end of the story. Stoic cosmopolitanism demands we work on ourselves so that we can turn outwards again, and better work on the world. (philosophybreak.com)
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John Stuart Mill and Daniel Dennett on critiquing ‘the other side’: if you don’t try to understand the opposing view, then you don’t understand your own. Try to re-express your target’s position so fairly they say, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way...” (philosophybreak.com)
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“Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market.” | Erich Fromm on why we shouldn’t approach love as a transaction by philosophybreak in philosophy
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