@philosophybreak

💡 Take a philosophy break 🚀 Get one famous philosophical idea distilled to your inbox every Sunday (free): https://xitter.cf/t.co/cpI5e5jrrO

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Joined January 2019
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11Media
Win capitalism, lose at life? Or was Marx just not very good with money..? 😅 Either way, a great passage to send to anyone who accuses you of financial frivolity.
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"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary." — H. L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (1918)
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Ruth Chang suggests if we’re stuck in a hard life choice, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking there must be a ‘best’ path; often there are simply different paths, which will change us in different ways. We can move forward by introspecting deeply on who we wish to become...
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Today on Philosophy Break: Ruth Chang on Making Difficult Life Decisions philosophybreak.com/articles


Ruth Chang on Making Difficult Life Decisions | Philosophy Break

Contemporary philosopher Ruth Chang suggests if we’re stuck in a hard life choice, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking there must be a ‘best’ path; often there are simply different paths, which...

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“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” — Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

ALT “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” — Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

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In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein suggests the meaning of a language is always rooted in a distinctive “form of life”. If alien intelligences live and perceive the world differently enough, understanding their messages may be forever beyond our reach.
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Today on Philosophy Break... Wittgenstein: If a Lion Could Talk, We Could Not Understand Him philosophybreak.com/articles


Wittgenstein: If a Lion Could Talk, We Could Not Understand Him | Philosophy Break

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein suggests the meaning of a language is always rooted in a distinctive “form of life”. If alien intelligences live and perceive the world differently...

philosophybreak.com
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“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — FrĂ©dĂ©ric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms (1847)
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“The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens (‘wise man’). In any case it’s an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.” — Terry Pratchett
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How are we supposed to live when the world feels broken? The Stoics, Toni Morrison, C.S. Lewis, and Jane Goodall on facing uncertain times with collective strength and understanding, rather than isolated fear and despair... philosophybreak.com/articles


How Can We Live When the World Feels Broken? The Stoics: By Carrying On | Philosophy Break

The Stoics, Toni Morrison, C.S. Lewis, and Jane Goodall on facing uncertain times with collective strength, rather than isolated fear...

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“Everybody’s hurt,” James Baldwin reminds us. “What is important, what corrals you, what bullwhips you, what drives you, torments you, is that you must find some way of using this to connect you with everyone else alive
 philosophybreak.com/articles


James Baldwin: Suffering Can Become a Force for Good | Philosophy Break

20th-century thinker James Baldwin brilliantly articulates how we can ease our personal and shared suffering by harnessing our pain as a force for good.

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“Because technology advances, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress all along the line. Because we have considerable power over inanimate nature, we are convinced that we are the self-sufficient masters of our fate and captains of our souls; and because cleverness has given us technology and power, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way to achieve social order, international peace, and personal happiness.” — The Perennial Philosophy (1945)

ALT “Because technology advances, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress all along the line. Because we have considerable power over inanimate nature, we are convinced that we are the self-sufficient masters of our fate and captains of our souls; and because cleverness has given us technology and power, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way to achieve social order, international peace, and personal happiness.” — The Perennial Philosophy (1945)

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The gargantuan scope of the universe need not diminish us, argues the philosopher Robert Nozick. We can identify our lives as part of this vast and continuing natural process. philosophybreak.com/articles


On Reconciling Ourselves to the Vastness of Space: Robert Nozick | Philosophy Break

The gargantuan scope of the universe need not diminish us, argues the philosopher Robert Nozick. We can identify our lives as part of this vast and continuing natural process.

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The philosopher Iris Murdoch thought our inner lives are too often clogged by the “fat, relentless ego”. By contemplating beauty in nature and art, however, we can deflate this ego (a process Murdoch describes as “unselfing”) and open our eyes to reality.
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Today on Philosophy Break... Iris Murdoch: ‘Unselfing’ is Crucial for Living a Good Life philosophybreak.com/articles


Iris Murdoch: ‘Unselfing’ is Crucial for Living a Good Life | Philosophy Break

Iris Murdoch thought our inner lives are too often clogged by the “fat, relentless ego”. By contemplating beauty in nature and art, however, we can deflate this ego (a process Murdoch describes as...

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In Against Narrativity, the philosopher Galen Strawson challenges the popular idea that living well requires a coherent life story. Human life far exceeds the narratives we construct, he argues, and some of us don’t experience ourselves narratively at all. philosophybreak.com/articles


Galen Strawson: Our Lives Are Not Stories | Philosophy Break

In Against Narrativity, the philosopher Galen Strawson challenges the popular idea that living well requires a coherent life story. Human life far exceeds the narratives we construct, he argues, and...

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