52 ideas
| 20455 | Philosophy really got started as the rival mode of discourse to tragedy [Critchley] |
| 20446 | Philosophy begins in disappointment, notably in religion and politics [Critchley] |
| 6848 | Humour is practically enacted philosophy [Critchley] |
| 6847 | Humour can give a phenomenological account of existence, and point to change [Critchley] |
| 7068 | If infatuation with science leads to bad scientism, its rejection leads to obscurantism [Critchley] |
| 6844 | Scientism is the view that everything can be explained causally through scientific method [Critchley] |
| 20449 | Science gives us an excessively theoretical view of life [Critchley] |
| 7075 | To meet the division in our life, try the Subject, Nature, Spirit, Will, Power, Praxis, Unconscious, or Being [Critchley] |
| 7069 | The French keep returning, to Hegel or Nietzsche or Marx [Critchley] |
| 6835 | German idealism aimed to find a unifying principle for Kant's various dualisms [Critchley] |
| 6837 | Since Hegel, continental philosophy has been linked with social and historical enquiry. [Critchley] |
| 6836 | Continental philosophy fights the threatened nihilism in the critique of reason [Critchley] |
| 6838 | Continental philosophy is based on critique, praxis and emancipation [Critchley] |
| 6845 | Continental philosophy has a bad tendency to offer 'one big thing' to explain everything [Critchley] |
| 6846 | Phenomenology is a technique of redescription which clarifies our social world [Critchley] |
| 20448 | Phenomenology uncovers and redescribes the pre-theoretical layer of life [Critchley] |
| 5311 | If observation goes up a level, we expect the laws of the lower level to remain in force [Wilson,EO] |
| 5312 | A child first sees objects as distinct, and later as members of groups [Wilson,EO] |
| 5309 | Beliefs are really enabling mechanisms for survival [Wilson,EO] |
| 6685 | 'Subjectivism' is an extension of relativism from the social group to the individual [Graham] |
| 20454 | Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley] |
| 20456 | Interesting art is always organised around ethical demands [Critchley] |
| 5310 | Philosophers study the consequences of ethics instead of its origins [Wilson,EO] |
| 20447 | The problems is not justifying ethics, but motivating it. Why should a self seek its good? [Critchley] |
| 6699 | The chain of consequences may not be the same as the chain of responsibility [Graham] |
| 22187 | Genetic behaviours that have enhanced human success include aggression, rape and xenophobia [Wilson,EO, by Okasha] |
| 5313 | The rules of human decision-making converge and overlap in a 'human nature' [Wilson,EO] |
| 7067 | Food first, then ethics [Critchley] |
| 5316 | We undermine altruism by rewarding it, but we reward it to encourage it [Wilson,EO] |
| 5318 | Pure hard-core altruism based on kin selection is the enemy of civilisation [Wilson,EO] |
| 6698 | Negative consequences are very hard (and possibly impossible) to assess [Graham] |
| 6700 | We can't criticise people because of unforeseeable consequences [Graham] |
| 6704 | Egoism submits to desires, but cannot help form them [Graham] |
| 5317 | The actor is most convincing who believes that his performance is real [Wilson,EO] |
| 6701 | Rescue operations need spontaneous benevolence, not careful thought [Graham] |
| 6693 | 'What if everybody did that?' rather misses the point as an objection to cheating [Graham] |
| 6691 | It is more plausible to say people can choose between values, than that they can create them [Graham] |
| 6688 | Life is only absurd if you expected an explanation and none turns up [Graham] |
| 6843 | Perceiving meaninglessness is an achievement, which can transform daily life [Critchley] |
| 6705 | Existentialism may transcend our nature, unlike eudaimonism [Graham] |
| 6690 | A standard problem for existentialism is the 'sincere Nazi' [Graham] |
| 6689 | The key to existentialism: the way you make choices is more important than what you choose [Graham] |
| 20662 | The biology of societies: kin selection, parenting, mating; status, territory, contracts [Wilson,EO] |
| 20452 | Anarchism used to be libertarian (especially for sexuality), but now concerns responsibility [Critchley] |
| 20450 | The state, law, bureaucracy and capital are limitations on life, so I prefer federalist anarchism [Critchley] |
| 20451 | Belief that humans are wicked leads to authoritarian politics [Critchley] |
| 5308 | The only human purpose is that created by our genetic history [Wilson,EO] |
| 5314 | Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and fast, biological evolution is Darwinian and slow [Wilson,EO] |
| 5315 | Over 99 percent of human evolution has been in the hunter-gatherer phase [Wilson,EO] |
| 5320 | It is estimated that mankind has produced 100,000 religions [Wilson,EO] |
| 6706 | The great religions are much more concerned with the religious life than with ethics [Graham] |
| 6709 | Western religion saves us from death; Eastern religion saves us from immortality [Graham] |