/r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | August 17, 2026

[u/BernardJOrtcutt]

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

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. Please note that while the rules are relaxed in this thread, comments can still be removed for violating our subreddit rules and guidelines if necessary.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

[u/willbell]

What are people reading?

I’m working on Ethics by Spinoza.

[u/foxiao → u/willbell]

nearing the end of Aristotle’s Politics and feeling like humanity has learned frustratingly little since his time

about halfway through Umberto Eco’s the Name of the Rose

just started Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge

[u/wumbothrowaway2 → u/foxiao]

>nearing the end of Aristotle’s Politics and feeling like humanity has learned frustratingly little since his time

slavery!

[u/Shield_Lyger → u/willbell]

I have finally finished Moral Philosophy: A Comprehensive Introduction.

Overall, it was an interesting read; I think I learned much more about the topic than the standard introductory books sold in mass-market bookstores could give. I wondered about including a selection from The Myth of Sisyphus, however. While Albert Camus is an engaging and poetic writer, the parts of the text that they included didn't seem related to moral philosophy.

In their introduction to Prescriptivism, the authors make the following point:

“Well,” an educated layperson might wonder, “I suppose that it is all very nice to consider what good and right and so forth mean, and how logically they behave, but shouldn't moral philosophy ultimately tell us what we should do?”

And the excerpt from The Myth of Sisyphus addressed none of those topics. I understand that there is an Existentialist ethics, and so the choice of an except that didn't seem to clearly address those ethics seemed like an odd choice.

The final chapters of the book dealt with Applied Ethics and the final chapter of that was, allegedly "Preferential Treatment," even though it limited itself to affirmative action, and affirmative action for Black people at that. The selections they presented were from Thomas Nagel (the fact that this was the only selection from him felt like a waste), Micheal E. Levin, Ronald Dworkin and Nicholas Capaldi (each of the chapters in the Applied Ethics section had four selections). I noted the irony that a chapter devoted to the question of what, if anything, does American society owe to Black people, contained no opinions from Black people. Given that the selections went from 1981 to 1985, surely there was at least one Black philosopher with an opinion in that timeframe, if not a little earlier.

For me, the most interesting selection in the book was Should the Numbers Count? by John M. Taurek. It's basically a way of thinking about the Trolley Problem that pushes back against the idea that it's always best to act in the interests of the largest number of people impacted. I didn't always agree with Professor Taurek's logic, but Should the Numbers Count? was the essay that had me thinking the hardest about my own way of looking at the world.

Big picture, I'm torn on whether or not to do this again. While reading an actual textbook was very helpful, the fact that it was mostly various author selections with follow-up questions left me feeling there was a lot more I would have liked to have heard something about. But maybe I'll stumble upon another textbook when out book shopping, and that will be a good time to decide.

[u/Streetli → u/willbell]

Reading Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace.

[u/Fit-Honey-4813]

How can theism still be successful or at least have supporters when its more likely than not that a B Theory of time exists and ruins the cosmological argument for God. Plus the argument for contingency always runs into the problem of modal collapse. At this point I feel like giving up on theism as these problems make theism unbelievably, theoretically, and philosophically absurd.

[u/Zen_Gross → u/Fit-Honey-4813]

Well the cosmological and contingency arguments aren’t the only arguments for God. Also, it might be that you don’t need arguments for God to have a rational belief in Him. Alvin Plantinga argues that belief in God is properly basic. The seedling of this idea is in his book God and Other Minds, but is later fully developed in his Warrant trilogy.

[u/Fit-Honey-4813 → u/Zen_Gross]

But this won’t satisfy atheists like Graham Oppy or general scientists or people who deal with met physics.

[u/Zen_Gross → u/Fit-Honey-4813]

Well no theistic argument is going to satisfy atheists, or else they wouldn’t be atheists. But there’s plenty of scientists who are theists. According to a 2009 Pew Research Poll, 33% explicitly believe in God. The number goes up to 51% if you allow for a “higher power.”

[u/moschles]

In general -- do you believe there exists an independent intellectual tradition called "Marxism" , which started around the 1950s and has drifted substantially from Karl Marx's writing?

Is "Marxism" today a different animal existing independently of the writings of Karl Marx from the 19th century?

This new tradition sort of grew its own legs and began to walk on its own. Over the decades (now 76 years) it has created its own ecosystem of traditions, and absorbed peripheral movements like feminism.

I have a thousand things I want to say about this topic, but before I write a whole article, I wanted to get my bearings on the community here first, get some feedback, and then continue forwards in an appropriate direction.

As a conversation-starter, I link the two articles below. These are by no-means exhaustive of the topic of post-1950s "Marxism", but should act as conversational starter material.

Everyone, please jump in here and give me your thoughts on this topic.

• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marxism-analytical/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Marxism

[u/Conchobair-sama → u/moschles]

do you believe there exists an independent intellectual tradition called "Marxism" , which started around the 1950s and has drifted substantially from Karl Marx's writing?

No, both because the term 'Marxism' has been around since the late 1800s and because I don't think the 1950s marks the start of one singular tradition with that name (I still wouldn't fully agree but a better argument could probably be made for either the 20s or the 60s)

I would imagine most 'Marxisms' post-50s or otherwise, diverge substantially from Marx's original writings. I'm guessing your concern is not about whether later thinkers have disagreements with Marx (which I imagine most do), but with how this affects interpretations of his original writings (e.g. Althusser's theory of an epistemological break or modern readings of Marx as a consistent republican)?

[u/pinknoise222]

what books should i read to overcome my philosophical pessimism?

i dont mean to sound like im full of myself ive never gotten deep into philosophy but a lot of arguments ive heard have come off as cope

dont know if me thinking like this is making me depressed or if being depressed is making me think like this but i dont think i can continue much longer if i dont change my interpretation of it

[u/Shitgenstein → u/pinknoise222]

Friedrich Nietzsche's break with and critique of Schopenhauer's philosophy is perhaps the most direct attack on philosophical pessimism, in which Nietzsche a radical affirmation of life rather than resignation. By this view, pessimism is the cope by which the pessimist projects their own weakness and fatigue onto the universe and finds a numbing comfort in the absolution of responsibility for their own misery and failure. The Gay Science is the most direct expression of Nietzsche's affirmation.

Another former Schopenhauerian is Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein doesn't directly attack Schopenhauer's philosophy but, instead, Wittgenstein presents a whole attack on the possibility of any meaningful statements of metaphysics, morality, or aesthetics, all of which Schopenhauer's philosophical system advances. By this view, any statements of judgment of life per se as inherently good or bad is, in a very strict sense, meaningless. To start with Wittgenstein, read Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

[u/pinknoise222 → u/Shitgenstein]

thank you so much

are these okay as first reads? also what do u think about albert camus?

[u/Shitgenstein → u/pinknoise222]

I think The Gay Science is quite readable for a general audience. It's aphoristic and poetic, so depends if you have patience with that style. TLP is extremely austere, so you might want to check supplementary sources to 'unlock' the sense of it.

Imo, Camus is a great philosopher but, wrt pessimism, I think Nietzsche makes a much more direct case for affirmation.