“It doesn’t have to be this way” could be the rallying cry of existentialism. You’re free to live otherwise than you do, and if you hew to the life you’re leading, that, too, is your choice, and that choice is your responsibility. This sort of thinking didn’t burst onto the scene in the nineteenth century.
The point of climbing a mountain isn’t so much about reaching the summit as in what you bring down from it. Once you’ve caught a view of the limits of what’s possible you can explore the domain of the possible with greater freedom and understanding.
Sometimes I wonder if philosophy is a big waste of time. Or worse than that, an impediment that keeps me from living well.
Philosophy only flourishes because certain brave, queer souls have looked on the world as it is and wondered why it might not have been some other way.
One way to understand existentialism is as an attempt to find meaning in a world that’s lost its faith.
It’s not nice to think of yourself as a monster. There’s a strong tendency to want to harmonize the monstrous jumbling of categories in our self-understanding. But doing so creates further problems.
Although I have my misanthropic moods, I mostly really like people, and a significant part of that liking involves aesthetic appreciation.
Literacy is one of the most transformative technologies that humans have ever invented. So transformative is it that it’s hard to imagine your way into an oral mindset from a literate perspective.
You don’t get to choose whether or not to make choices. As Sartre memorably puts it, we are condemned to be free.
We’re used to being the smartest things on the planet. What happens when that’s no longer the case?