The question of how to become a good person has as many answers as there are people in the world. There aren’t a lot of people who wouldn’t want to be a good person. But it is also the case (at least in my experience) that most people don’t regard themselves as a good person. […]
It’s one of those questions someone who studies philosophy gets quite a lot. You’re sitting at a family dinner table and a distant relative asks you the question: “So, what do you do?” You answer: “Philosophy.” They stop to think for a small moment and then ask you what in the world you can do […]
Artificial Intelligence has been going through unparalleled progress during recent years. Many intellectuals like Elon Musk for example, believe that AI will at one point surpass human intelligence. What is meant by intelligence is already a problematic concept but it might be fun to think about the implications it would have if AI really achieved […]
Sadism is one of those aspects of humans which is quite hard to fathom in my opinion. The fact we can actually love hurting other people and enjoy it. I have made a post about cruelty in Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’s philosophy, but there are many other intellectuals who have taken the topic of sadism and […]
There is this video on YouTube by the channel Kurzgesagt on optimistic nihilism[1], where the narrator explains the philosophy behind the optimistic nihilist. In short, the video explains how nothing has any intrinsic value, because in then ‘end’ nothing which we have built will exist. The French postmodern philosopher Jean-François Lyotard asked this same question […]
I’ve been studying philosophy for two years now and it might be daunting to start reading on the many topics or the many different writers. I am at the moment reading Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and it’s a book I have a hard time going through. Between five and ten pages a day is about […]
As we’re entering the second half of this year, I wanted to take the time and reflect on the best books I’ve read so far. The range of genres is pretty great, but it mostly consists of philosophy and history as those are the subjects I am most interested in. Let’s start off with the […]
We have all experienced a moment when someone who was a bit older, or knew a bit more than you, told you to not do something or really do something, without giving any real explanations other than they know what is good for you. That is a form of paternalism. It’s when someone makes decisions […]
Humans have the ability to do truly horrendous things. When animals hurt each other, we can think of reasons why they do it. To protect their nest, or to hunt. But never do we think that they do it on purpose just to see the other being suffer. That it seems to be something only […]
Karl Marx is one of the most famous, if not the most famous, social intellectuals to have existed. A whole movement bears his name, and his critique of capitalism is still used to this day. But Marx was also a severe critic of the socialists of his time. In particular those who he and Engels […]
Elenchus Philosophy 