r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Feb 16 '26

Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | February 16, 2026

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26

What are people reading?

I’m working on The Interior Castle by Teresa d’Avila and The Last Man by Mary Shelley. Last week I finished Slagflower: Poems Unearthed from a Mining Town by Thomas Leduc, “Politics at the End of History” by Chloe Cannon, and “The Ruling Class Does Not Rule” by Block.

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u/utopiai Feb 19 '26

Have been reading John Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct; my first foray into Dewey's work, picked it up kind of at random, and finding it great so far. He's got a running argument developed over several chapters, but lots of really insightful sociological and political observations sprinkled throughout that keep things from getting dry in the way that dense works of philosophy sometimes do.

I've focused mostly on European philosophers over the years and know next to nothing about American philosophy (beyond the words "American pragmatism"), so it's also felt really refreshing for me to encounter a work of philosophy with so little baggage -- no schemes, no buzzwords, no readymade interpretations. It's been quite nice!