My character is shaped by the people around me and the prevailing norms of my culture. If I throw myself into a line of work in which profit maximization overrides all other interests, I’m unlikely to be unchanged by the experience.
Critical thinking has an important dispositional element. You need to feel the right way about a problem if you’re going to think well about it.
I’ll outline the main features of animal welfare and animal rights arguments. At the end, I’ll mention some dissenting voices from both of these strands.
The position that I have free will seems untenable for anyone less mighty than God. The position that I don’t have free will seems so far from being right that it isn’t even wrong.
Should we identify what gives meaning to our lives and pursue that? Or should we try to wean ourselves from the felt need for meaning?
Is death a misfortune at all? The Greek philosopher Epicurus thought not. Death can’t be bad for you, he argued, because you don’t experience its badness.
How can you learn anything from a book full of events that, by the author’s own admission, are completely made up?
A lively philosophical personality shines through the text. Zhuangzi has the serene vision of a mystic and the lively wit of an inveterate jokester.
Both Socrates and Oedipus receive oracular answers that tell them who they are, and these obscure answers launch them on a quest of self-understanding.
Suppose you could remove all the obstacles to a free and happy life: what would you do then? This is the question Aristotle wants to focus us on.