A few weeks ago, I asked 10,000 people this question and got thousands of replies back. Some, of course, were funny: "A job," "Some money," and a "girlfriend." Some were predictably context-appropriate: "An unanswerable question," "Time to think," and "A deep conversation." Others were oddly mundane: "Socks," "A mug," or a "book." When Diego said "a comb," I think he was getting personal. (You can find the best of the rest over on Substack.)
'More songs about Buildings and Food' was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don't sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce's 1976 hit 'Car Wash' are the exception.
Dictators like to move people around. Stalin, for instance. From the summer of 1941 through the fall of 1942, with the Russian front facing massive bombardment and Nazi troops on the ground, he decided to relocate civilians, and entire industries, to safer regions in the eastern Soviet Union. The Urals, Siberia, the middle Volga, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan eventually received sixteen million evacuees, perhaps the most ever moved across land by a single directive.
The student is Maggie Resnick, played by the dependably charismatic Ayo Edebiri. She's a struggling doctoral candidate in the philosophy department at Yale, and she puts her request to Alma Imhoff, brought to life by a striking Julia Roberts, over dinner. The pair are sitting in Alma's elegant apartment, a tasteful space warmed by rich wood paneling, amber light sources, and distinctive sconces.
The best horror stories are those that don't rely on jump scares or bloodied campground killers to frighten. The scariest part of The Wicker Man isn't its eponymous effigy; it's realizing what the natives of Summerisle will do to placate their gods. And while the ghosts haunting the Overlook Hotel may unnerve readers of The Shining, it is Jack Torrance's maniacal relapse that truly grips the spine.
Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce's 1976 hit 'Car Wash' are the exception. Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally great minds stray from their turf and write about other matters, for example buildings (Martin Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Robert Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristotle).
You have probably lost track of the number of articles about people who have jettisoned family members over contradictory and reprehensible political views. How do we get to the point that educated people, some skilled in philosophical argumentation, fail to make communicative progress with others? As the U.S. sinks further into fascism, why haven't philosophers' arguments against fascism caused fascists to do a regretful volte-face? Are non-fascist philosophers ill-equipped to deal with fascism? I ask those questions mindful of Stanley Cavell's statement that "Nothing a philosopher says can insure that you will not act immorally."
One of the biggest gripes I have about my academic field of social science is that it explains a lot about human behavior but is very short on prescriptions for how to live day to day. Even when it does have something suggestive to offer, the research almost never supplies evidence of whether its widespread adoption would have a positive effect. The same deficiency is even truer for philosophy, a realm in which big thoughts about life usually remain abstract ideas.
Anger is a bad habit that people tend to pick up from their parents. When a child who was raised at Plato's house was returned to his parents and witnessed his father shouting, he said, 'I never saw this at Plato's house.'
What if, like food or life itself, money carried an expiration date - forcing it to flow rather than accumulate? Could changing the very nature of money reshape our values and bind communities together - instead of often driving them apart?
Improvisation as a musical practice transcends mechanical routines, emphasizing coherence in musical articulations over mere recall of scales or fixed phrases, which leads to true artistic expression.
Philosophers like John Locke and David Hume have historically debated the legitimacy and implications of intellectual property rights, questioning whether owning an idea is akin to owning physical property. Locke's theory emphasizes individual labor as the basis of property ownership, while Hume challenges the notion of ownership tied solely to intellectual creation. In contrast, contemporary discussions highlight the complexities of this issue in the digital age, particularly regarding the accessibility of knowledge versus incentivizing innovation.
In that sense, it's not so different from a lab experiment, where researchers set the stage and observe what unfolds. The aim of these often fantastical scenarios is just as serious: to test, stretch, or even shatter our intuitions about how the world works.
"Each of Hanneke's illustrations features the detachment of selves, allowing her figures to float through a metaphysical world that only the cartoon logic can allow; a ballooned, ghost-like ego floating above someone at a computer; or heads lined up in the form of a train's body, their thought bubbles becoming smoke stacks."
Clothes serve three basic purposes: protection, modesty and decoration. Each purpose raises deep philosophical questions regarding their significance and impact on identity and expression.
Rivers, on a long view, are alive. They are born; they change; they shift their channels; they forge new routes to the sea; they move both gradually and violently; they teem (usually) with life; they may die a quasi-natural death; they are frequently maimed and even murdered.
Some Silicon Valley leaders have a bizarre adoration for philosophers like Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and Friedrich Hayek. Alongside these thinkers, Friedrich Nietzsche is frequently mentioned in tech circles.
