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Reading group: Kant’s “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” (1784)
This short essay appeared in the Berlinische Monatsschrift in December 1784. It can be read in an evening, but it repays a week. Kant defines enlightenment as leaving behind a self-incurred immaturity, the inability to use one's own understanding without someone else's…
Started by Henrike Vogel3 replies -
Is “Islamic philosophy” a useful label?
Some colleagues prefer "Arabic philosophy". Others say "philosophy in the Islamic world". Each has problems. "Islamic philosophy" suggests that it's all religious, or that all of it was done by Muslims. But Christians like Yahya ibn 'Adi and Jews like Maimonides wrote…
Started by Layla Sfeir2 replies -
Sartre’s “look” and Fanon on being fixed by another’s gaze
In Being and Nothingness (1943), Sartre describes the moment of being caught looking through a keyhole: suddenly I am an object for someone else, and I feel shame. The look of the other gives me an outside I can't control. Fanon's Black…
Started by Claire Dubois2 replies -
Karma as moral causation: does the theory hold together?
The doctrine of karma says that actions have consequences for the agent that go beyond their visible effects, ripening in this life or future lives. It is shared, in different forms, by Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. As an engineer I want…
Started by Arjun Iyer1 reply -
Wu wei for burnt-out founders: what did Laozi actually mean?
After Stoicism, I've been reading the Daodejing. One idea that hits hard is wu wei, usually translated "non-action" or "effortless action". Chapter 48 says that in pursuing learning you add something every day, but in pursuing the Dao you let something go…
Started by Rohan Desai1 reply -
Sanskrit grammar as philosophy: Bhartṛhari on word and meaning
Bhartṛhari (around the fifth century) wrote the Vākyapadīya, "On Sentences and Words", a work of grammar that became a full philosophy of language. Some key ideas: Sphoṭa: meaning isn't built up from individual sounds; there's an indivisible linguistic unit, manifested by the…
Started by Meera Kulkarni1 reply -
What did Ibn Sina mean by the “internal senses”?
In my history of psychology course, Ibn Sina was mentioned for his theory of "internal senses", and the lecturer said it was an early version of cognitive psychology. I'd love a clear explanation of what the internal senses were and how they…
Started by Elif Yıldız2 replies -
What does “intersectionality” mean philosophically, beyond the slogan?
In journalism the word "intersectionality" is everywhere, and it's often used just to list identities. I know Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term in 1989, but I'd like to understand the original argument and what philosophical claim, if any, it makes.
Started by Sana Rizvi2 replies -
Can you be religious and a philosophical skeptic at the same time?
This semester I took a module on scepticism, Pyrrhonism, Descartes' demon and so on, and I found some of the arguments hard to answer. Now I'm wondering whether serious scepticism is compatible with religious faith, or whether every believer is just a…
Started by Aoife Kilbride2 replies -
Reading group: Suhrawardi’s Philosophy of Illumination, introduction and Part One
Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi (1154–1191) was executed in Aleppo, still young, after falling foul of the authorities. His Philosophy of Illumination (Hikmat al-Ishraq), completed in 1186, founded a school that shaped Persian philosophy for centuries, Mulla Sadra included. The first part is a…
Started by Reza Tehrani2 replies -
What is longtermism, and what’s the main objection to it?
Everyone in tech talks about longtermism. I know it's connected to effective altruism and William MacAskill's What We Owe the Future (2022). But I've never seen a clear explanation of the core argument and the best objections. Can someone help?
Started by Rohan Desai2 replies -
How does Ibn Sina’s proof of the Necessary Existent avoid the infinite regress problem?
I understand the basic structure: things that exist are either necessary in themselves or possible (contingent) in themselves. Contingent things need a cause. So there must be a necessary being. But why can't there be an infinite chain of contingent beings, each…
Started by Omar Ragab2 replies -
Reading group: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, propositions 1–3
A short, dense text, so let's go slowly. Use the Ogden translation (1922) or the Pears–McGuinness (1961). I'll quote proposition numbers, not pages. Plan: Week 1: 1–2.063. The world as the totality of facts, not things; objects; states of affairs. Week 2:…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak3 replies -
Fes, al-Qarawiyyin, and how medieval students learned to argue
Al-Qarawiyyin is a short walk from my school. Founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, it's often described as one of the oldest continuously operating institutions of learning in the world. What interests me is how teaching worked. Students learned not only texts…
Started by Youssef Berrada2 replies -
Can a translation of a poem be as beautiful as the original?
I translate my own Malayalam poems into English and they always lose something. Sometimes they gain something, which is stranger. Edward FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859) is a famous case: a very free version that many consider a great English poem…
Started by Kavya Menon3 replies -
Is there a coherent left-wing case for private property?
On the left, private property is usually treated as the problem. But there are traditions that defend it on egalitarian grounds: the small farmer's land, the artisan's workshop, the home that can't be taken from you. Rawls even argued for a "property-owning…
Started by Javier Ferrandis2 replies -
Teaching the Euthyphro to sixteen-year-olds: what works and what doesn’t?
The central question (10a) is whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved by the gods. My students grasp the dilemma in about four minutes. What they struggle with is the Greek…
Started by Giulia Ferrante4 replies -
Dōgen’s “being-time”: is time something things have, or something they are?
Dōgen (1200–1253), founder of the Sōtō Zen school in Japan, wrote a short and very strange essay in 1240 called "Uji", usually translated "Being-Time", which became part of his Shōbōgenzō. Its central claim is that time is not a container things exist…
Started by Reza Tehrani2 replies -
Does anger ever help? Seneca’s On Anger versus Aristotle
Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics IV.5, praises the person who gets angry at the right things, with the right people, to the right degree, at the right time. Not to be angry when you should be is a kind of slavishness. Seneca's On…
Started by Elif Yıldız3 replies -
The sorites paradox and my pile of exam scripts
It's marking season. A script with 33 marks out of 100 passes; one with 32 fails. My students ask: "Sir, what's the real difference between 32 and 33?" And I can't really answer. That's the sorites paradox, which goes back to Eubulides.…
Started by Vikram Sethi2 replies -
The translation movement: what was gained and lost between Greek, Syriac and Arabic?
Between the eighth and tenth centuries, a huge body of Greek philosophy, medicine and science was translated into Arabic, mostly in Baghdad. Many of the translators were Syriac-speaking Christians, and texts often passed through Syriac on the way. Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809–873)…
Started by Layla Sfeir3 replies -
What were Mencius and Xunzi arguing about when they disagreed about human nature?
I'm writing an essay comparing moral development theories, and my tutor suggested the debate between Mencius and Xunzi as a classical example. I understand Mencius said human nature is good and Xunzi said it is bad, but I've read that this is…
Started by Elif Yıldız2 replies -
What’s the difference between “deep ecology” and environmental ethics in general?
In conservation work, "deep ecology" is used both as a compliment and an insult. I know it comes from the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, but I'm not sure how it differs from other kinds of environmental ethics. Can someone explain?
Started by Anand Kurup2 replies -
Did Hume ever read al-Ghazali?
Last month I read al-Ghazālī's account of his crisis of doubt, and then went looking for more. I found the part of The Incoherence of the Philosophers about fire and cotton: we see the cotton burn when it touches the fire, but…
Started by Fajar Nugroho4 replies -
What does Merleau-Ponty mean by the “lived body”?
I am reading Phénoménologie de la perception (1945) in French and I keep circling the expression le corps propre, usually translated "one's own body" or "the lived body". I understand that he discusses the phantom limb and a patient called Schneider at…
Started by Claire Dubois3 replies -
Patients who pray: faith, placebo, and respect at the bedside
Many of the patients at my hospital pray. Some ask the staff to pray with them. Some refuse treatment until they've consulted a sheikh, or a priest. Some say their recovery is entirely God's will and the doctor's role is incidental. There…
Started by Omar Ragab2 replies -
Does an engineer’s training help or hurt in metaphysics?
When I read metaphysics, I notice an engineer's habits. I want to know the system boundary, the inputs and outputs, the failure modes. Sometimes this helps me see what an argument actually claims. Sometimes I think it makes me impatient with questions…
Started by Arjun Iyer4 replies -
Reading group: Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
A short essay, easily read in two sittings. Seneca addresses it to Paulinus, who was in charge of Rome's grain supply. His thesis is that life is not short; we make it short by wasting it. He describes the occupati, the busy…
Started by Elin Hedqvist3 replies -
Does a deterministic program “choose”?
A chess engine searches millions of positions, scores them and plays the best move. We naturally say it "chose" the knight move. Yet it's fully deterministic: same position, same settings, same move every time. Spinoza thought our sense of free will comes…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen4 replies -
Did Indian epistemologists anticipate the Gettier problem?
In 1963 Edmund Gettier's three-page paper showed that justified true belief isn't sufficient for knowledge. You can have a justified belief that's true by luck. Indian philosophers seem to have discussed cases like this centuries earlier. The Buddhist Dharmottara (eighth century) is…
Started by Meera Kulkarni2 replies