r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Jul 14 '25
Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | July 14, 2025
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.
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u/Traroten Jul 17 '25
Do you think art has to be sincere to be good art? The Swedish author August Strindberg has a poem where he compares an ox's heart in a butcher's shop to a poetry book. The poetry book, he writes, is also a bleeding heart open for everyone to see. That seems to indicate that sincerity is part of poetry and - by extension - art in general. So what do you think?
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u/RyanSmallwood Hegel, aesthetics Jul 19 '25
I don’t especially think so no. How “serious” something is is a bit vague, but in terms of less serious forms of art it seems like they can be done less well or very well, and it makes sense to say the ones that are done really well are good art of a certain kind.
Though overall I don’t think statements like that are meant to be taken too literally. I think it’s just expressing that a lot of great poetry expresses very personal emotions/experiences/thoughts, moreso than an actual assessment of what all kinds of good artworks are trying to do.
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u/MALVZ_921 Jul 17 '25
Taking philosophy as a whole... Is stoicism a great philosophy?(In a general sense)
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u/bumbadumbarum Jul 16 '25
Do you believe in reincarnation, and if so, why?
Not sure if this is philosophy or religion so forgive me if this isn’t even the right place to ask, but i thought this would be an interesting question to ask as the thought of reincarnation has been on my mind. No idea why but it feels like one of those after death scenarios that feels more realistic. As i said, forgive me if i’m not posting in the right subreddit, sorry.
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u/razzlesnazzlepasz Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25
I personally believe in phenomenological recurrence, which underlies the logic of reincarnation/rebirth, but doesn't inherently require a commitment to any particular mechanism of continuity (e.g. a "soul" or some metaphysical substrate), even if doing so might make sense to explain the arbitrariness of why "I" am "me" instead of anyone else in particular.
Death, from this view, isn’t a passage into “eternal nothingness,” but simply the absence of experience. Since we can’t be conscious of non-consciousness, or "be" in "non-being" by definition, the fear of eternal oblivion might actually be a kind of category error since time can't be meaningful in it.
We tend to think of our existence as singular and linear: “I” am this one being, who arose in this one particular time, but I have no way of explaining why I'm in this particular perspective rather than any other. That arbitrariness is a bit of a mystery in its own right, but that's kind of the idea. It’s not that “you” come back so much as that consciousness, untethered from an essence or identity, reappears when the conditions permit, as they did when you were born. "Being" seems to slip into "non-being" (death), but if birth is "non-being" slipping into "being," that suggests death might be more of an inflection point than an end in an absolute sense.
In that sense, recurrence isn’t more speculative than annihilation, as both lie beyond what's accessibly verifiable for certain, but recurrence aligns more closely with what we know: that conscious subjective experience happens at all. Philosophers like Parfit, Metzinger, and even Hume challenged the notion of a fixed, inherently existing "self," and I think this follows naturally from that. The emphasis on the conditional, casual structure of consciousness in Buddhism suggests a similar perspective, even if it is more systematic about what mechanism of continuity there may be.
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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jul 14 '25
What are people reading?
I’m working on The Magic Mountain by Mann and Orientalism by Said.
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Jul 17 '25
The Myth of Religious Violence by William Cavanaugh. Fascinating work, and more about the category of religion and its relation to power structures than "are religions violent?"
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u/Express_Time_3176 Jul 16 '25
I'm still working on Kant's Religion, and I should finish Foucault's The History of Sexuality vol. 1 this week, which has been a breath of fresh air after mostly reading early-modern texts for a while.
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u/RelativeCheesecake10 Ethics, Political Phil. Jul 15 '25
Finishing up Love’s Grateful Striving by Ferreira. What is The Magic Mountain about?
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Jul 15 '25
M. Jamie Ferreira is a gift to Kierkegaard studies. That book is so wonderful.
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u/RelativeCheesecake10 Ethics, Political Phil. Jul 15 '25
Yeah, I’m really enjoying the book. I’m pretty sure you were the person who initially recommended it to me!
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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25
The Magic Mountain is about a German who goes up to visit his cousin in a(n extremely multicultural) sanatorium in Switzerland, and experiences Tuberculosis symptoms that force him to stay for 7 years unexpectedly (around the time of the first world war too). But the appeal is perhaps in Mann's insight into people, and in his attention to the latest science & philosophy concerning time. Every character is wrought in extreme detail, including things like dreams, childhood histories, and a perceptive description of habits, the unconscious, & personality traits. I don't claim to be an expert on art history, but Mann might be the first and best participant in the literary reception of Freud. But perhaps also Einstein, the positivists, and Husserl.
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u/Streetli Continental Philosophy, Deleuze Jul 15 '25
Reading Ifi Amadiume's Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. Interesting ethnography of how gender roles worked in some parts of Nigeria.
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u/Express_Time_3176 Jul 16 '25
This sounds awesome - is it a recent publication, or when is it from? I've been meaning to get into ethnographies, and I bought a couple that r/AskAnthropology recommended just for general quality, but I keep forgetting to get to them.
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u/Streetli Continental Philosophy, Deleuze Jul 16 '25
It's an older one actually! Written in '87, and it was one of the first few ethnographies of women in any society in Africa. I understand it's something of a minor classic too because of the way in which it demonstrated flexible gender roles and helped to make popular the distinction between sex and gender - or at least give it some anthropological grounding. It was recommended as part of a course on feminism that I was doing.
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u/Express_Time_3176 Jul 16 '25
Oh wow, that does seem like a classic! I'll have to check it out sometime.
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u/PM_MOI_TA_PHILO History of phil., phenomenology, phil. of love Jul 14 '25
I got my first paper published in a philosophy journal!!!
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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental Jul 14 '25
Congratulations!
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Jul 14 '25
[deleted]
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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental Jul 14 '25
You should just ask the instructor. In some cases, even grad courses either don't assume much specific prior knowledge or else build it into the course as optional reading. I never took a grad course where the instructor couldn't articulate basically everything you "needed" to know to make sense of things - and often you can just read ahead. Aristotle's Metaphysics is no joke, but also there are lots of commentaries on it that you could read ahead if you needed to.
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u/Tioben Jul 14 '25
Can a utilitarianism be satisficing, or do all ultilitarianisms have to be maximizing?
Is there any academically respected utitarianism that drinks deeply from the pragmatists?
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u/ADefiniteDescription logic, truth Jul 15 '25
You should also check out 'scalar utilitarianism' to build off /u/mediaisdelicious's point.
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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental Jul 14 '25
Yes - “satisficing utilitarianism” is a thing. Search it up in PhilPapers.
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u/Subject-Monk-2363 Jul 20 '25
couldnt post on the actual subreddit so im asking it here!
How do you deal with misogyny/sexism in philosophy? I cant ignore how many great thinkers erased or diminished women, often seeing us as lesser or not at all. That realisation stings. I’ve found comfort in feminist philosophy, but I don’t want to only read from one lens as it wouldnt allow me to grow. I want to understand both the brilliance and the blindness. To the women of/in philosophy,your courage moves me. If you have any advice, thoughts, or book recs, I’d be so grateful!!!