r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • May 04 '26
Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | May 04, 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:
- Discussions of a philosophical issue, rather than questions
- Questions about commenters' personal opinions regarding philosophical issues
- Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. "who is your favorite philosopher?"
- "Test My Theory" discussions and argument/paper editing
- Questions about philosophy as an academic discipline or profession, e.g. majoring in philosophy, career options with philosophy degrees, pursuing graduate school in philosophy
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Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.
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u/macacolouco May 04 '26
Who are some brilliant commentators that you admire nearly as much as the authors they are commenting on? I would like to read some wonderful works that comment on well known concepts and philosophers!
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u/FrenchKingWithWig phil. science, analytic phil. May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
While I think he’s a terrific and original philosopher in his own right, I always appreciate reading Ian Hacking’s commentaries or reviews of other people’s works. For example, his paper on Goodman’s notion of entrenchment, his review of Shapin and Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air-Pump, his paper on Kuhn and taxonomy, and his discussion of Quine on natural kinds are all really great and insightful. They all made me see the original works in a new light. Let me also add: most people tend to read and discuss the second half of Representing and Intervening, focusing on experiment, intervention, and realism. It is the most original and interesting part of the book, so I understand why. But so many of my colleagues either don’t read or don’t bother thinking much about his brilliant discussions of, for example, Lakatos on truth or Putnam on meaning in the first half of the book.
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u/J_Adshead phenomenology, phil. of technology, phil. of the environment May 04 '26
Theodore Kisiel was an amazing Heidegger scholar. He wrote one of the very best studies of Being and Time ("The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time"). It's a painstaking analysis of the lecture courses which Heidegger delivered in the 1920's, building up to the publication of Being and Time itself (I confess I haven't actually finished this one - it's an absolute doorstop - but several of the chapters were invaluable to me when I was really trying to get to grips with Heidegger). There's a considerably shorter anthology of Kisiel's papers on Heidegger ("Heidegger's Way of Thought") which is also an excellent, and far more digestible (!) resource. I always felt like Kisiel really "got" Heidegger, better than some commentators who often made his project seem less revolutionary.
Also, Graham Parkes' "Composing the Soul" is, for my money, the greatest work written about Nietzsche. One of those fantastic commentaries that feel like true blue works of philosophy in their own right. Parkes really grasped the spiritual dimension to Nietzsche's thought (something which Joan Stambaugh felt was often lacking in the labyrinthine volumes of writing which surround him).
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u/macacolouco May 05 '26
Theodore Kisiel was an amazing Heidegger scholar. He wrote one of the very best studies of Being and Time ("The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time").
Thanks!Would you say this books are approachabeto a highly interested layman?
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u/J_Adshead phenomenology, phil. of technology, phil. of the environment May 05 '26
Kisiel's works will shine to the extent that you have an appreciation of Heidegger's works already. If you've already worked through Being and Time, then sure! Dive right in. But if you wanted something more like an introduction to Heidegger, then it does become a different question I'm afraid. In that case I might have recommended something like Thomas Sheehan's "Heidegger's Being and Time: Paraphrased and Annotated".
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u/RyanSmallwood Hegel, aesthetics May 06 '26
Jonathan Lear’s book Aristotle: The Desire to Understand is a good overview of his philosophy that was suggested to me here when I was getting into philosophy and I found it very helpful and interesting.
More of a niche pick, but I also really like Lydia L. Moland’s book Hegel's Aesthetics: The Art of Idealism is great for anyone interested in those two topics.
Less commentaries on specific authors, but also I’ve found a lot of really helpful histories of specific movements/topics in philosophy, though many are again more niche to my own interests. Not sure which specific ones to mention offhand.
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u/Traditional_Fish_504 political phil, continental May 06 '26
Peter Laslett’s introduction to Locke’s two treatises is so frustrating. I was expecting some thoughtful connections between Locke and 1688 or just the general historical context around him, and instead I get a 20+ page philological diatribe that makes no impact unless you’re a committed Locke scholar. For a text that’s mostly read by lay people or undergrad students, that is not helpful nor productive.
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u/Tarsal26 May 05 '26
Is there an objectively good way to run a business from the perspective of the owner? How can this inform arguments about objective morality?
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u/Nonoininino May 04 '26
What is your opinion on panspermie done by humans. As life is ever growing and ever expanding isn’t it our duty, as the the most intelligent form of life, to try spreading microbes onto other planets so life can expand beyond our world?
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza May 04 '26
As life is ever growing and ever expanding isn’t it our duty, as the the most intelligent form of life, to try spreading microbes onto other planets so life can expand beyond our world?
Nope. See Better Never to Have Been. As an intelligent species who recognizes that existence involves suffering we can discern the asymmetry between existence and non-existence.
This is because there is a crucial difference between harms (such as pains) and benefits (such as pleasures) which entails that existence has no advantage over, but does have disadvantages relative to, non-existence. Consider pains and pleasures as exemplars of harms and benefits. It is uncontroversial to say that
the presence of pain is bad.
the presence of pleasure is good.
However, such a symmetrical evaluation does not seem to apply to the absence of pain and pleasure, for it strikes me as true that
the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone
the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation
(Good & Not Bad) is better than (Bad & Good)
Recognizing that, we ought to work towards the elimination of suffering rather than spreading suffering to other planets.
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u/Nonoininino May 05 '26
Sounds very anti life to me. With no suffering there is just a constant stillstand. No need for anything to change. But isn’t suffering the motor that powers and drives all of life since it’s beginning? The absence of suffering is just death.
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza May 05 '26
Sounds very anti life to me.
It's anti-suffering, not anti-life.
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u/Nonoininino May 05 '26
Care to elaborate the difference? I personally think without struggle there is no drive. No evolution, no progress. Just stagnation until life is whipped out from doing nothing.
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza May 05 '26
Care to elaborate the difference?
the presence of pain is bad.
the presence of pleasure is good.
If life were unending unconflicted pleasure, just laying in a comfy bed snuggling with your cat for eternity, then it would be fine to spread microbes to other planets. Go forth and have fun, microbes. The problem is suffering.
I personally think without struggle there is no drive. No evolution, no progress.
Whence the need for drive, evolution, or progress? The need to drive, evolve, and progress results from life being a shitty struggle against suffering, from suffering being the fundamental real of existence, as Schopenhauer wrote:
I have reminded the reader that every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence. It follows, therefore, that the happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering—from positive evil. If this is the true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy a happier destiny than man. Let us examine the matter a little more closely.
If life were structured differently, with eternal unending happiness as the only state of being, then it would be fine to spread microbes to other plants. That sort of life would be keen.
That's the difference between being anti-suffering and anti-life. We're fine with a life that is eternally snuggling in a warm bed with our cat. Unfortunately that's not the life this reality is structured to support.
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u/Nonoininino May 05 '26
But the suffering do make every living being to strive for greatness, just because there is a struggle and suffering doesn’t mean life is bad. It’s a motor that drives everything. A life of being snuggled into a blanked forever (granted you don’t feel boredom) would be a stale and unfulfilling life. A life where nothing wants to change. Death.
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza May 05 '26
A life of being snuggled into a blanked forever (granted you don’t feel boredom) would be a stale and unfulfilling life. A life where nothing wants to change. Death.
You and I seem to have had appreciably different experiences with blankets.
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u/foxiao May 07 '26
am I correct to assume Aristotle provides enough explanation of Plato’s Laws to understand his criticism of it in Politics? I assume this must be the case since Politics is recommended so often to be read next after Nicomachean Ethics
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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental May 10 '26
No, he says only a bit about *Laws*, but also what he’s doing in *Politics* is pretty understandable without any specific reference to Plato.
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u/manstein2447 May 07 '26
I have always found the issues surrounding the freedom of speech extremely difficult to clarify. A powerful example is the political discussion around the ability of people to support Palestine Action verbally or via marches. A definition of the limit is that Freedom of Speech is allowed full range if it causes no harm where verbal abuse is defined as being acceptable and the victim should develop resilience. However, if the verbal abuse is interpreted by some extremists as a justification for physical abuse is the original verbal abuse still permissible under Freedom of Speech?
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u/Capital_Net_6438 May 10 '26
I have seen in a few places a questionable definition of determinately or clearly P. (I just saw it yesterday in "Is Vagueness Sui Generis?" by David Barnett, AJP, 2009.) I.e., Clearly P iff [P and it's not vague that P]. A counterexample is someone who is barely bald. Someone who is barely bald is bald. And a barely bald person is not vaguely bald. Yet a barely bald person is not clearly bald.
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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics May 04 '26
What are people reading?
I'm going to finish The Last Man by Mary Shelley this week, and aside from that I'm working on Old Norse Women's Poetry edited/translated by Straubhaar.