When I try to picture what the determinist is telling me, I see myself in something like an x-ray view, a shadowy skull balanced on a skeleton, wiggling its jaw or moving about, but with the “person” absent.
By situating my own thinking within a broader historical tradition, I can see more clearly how my particular concerns and preoccupations are mine rather than just the objectively and timelessly important ones that all people with philosophical inclinations might turn themselves to.
I want to make a case for Shakespeare’s “great heart.” Then I’ll try to explain why Wittgenstein doesn’t see it.
Saying you love art but have no interest in religion is like saying you love EDM but have no interest in dancing.
I want to get clear on my place in a world that I inhabit with an animal body. That requires resisting attempts to inflate my significance beyond the animal. But it also requires resisting attempts to deflate it.
In technical terms, pretty much any PhD graduate leaves Plato in the dust. On the other hand, the Republic is a book I actually want to read.
When false reverence is rampant, renewed calls to reverence risk exacerbating the problem. Sometimes what’s needed is for someone to step in boldly and take the piss.
The questions prod respondents to think about philosophy in a certain way that many people—the authors presumably included—so take for granted that they don’t even notice that there’s prodding going on.
On a recent reading of the Analects, it struck me that Confucius has a lot in common with Don Quixote.