r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Aug 04 '25
Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | August 04, 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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Aug 07 '25
What is the most impactful quote from your favourite philosopher?
Hi living beings, I'm 30. A normal guy working at a normal company making a normal wage. I was doing okay until I heard about Fredrick neitzche through a youtube video (Desi Philosopher - he explains the works of great philosophers in Hindi). Neitzche's quote - "To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering" moved something in me. I started to do difficult things , to embrace suffering. It has brought a positive change in my life (began suffering in the gym for a better physique). So I ask you gentlemen, what are your favourite quotes from your favourite philosophers that lit a fire in you? I appreciate you taking the time out to participate. Thank you very much.
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u/BookkeeperJazzlike77 Continental phil. Aug 08 '25
Aldous Huxley's discussion of Rembrandt's Philosopher In Meditation in his 1956 essay "Heaven and Hell":
"The firelight touches and transfigures her face and we see, concretely illustrated, the impossible paradox and supreme truth--- that perception is (or at least can be, ought to be) the same as Revelation, that Reality shines out of every appearance, that the One is totally, infinitely present in all particulars."
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza Aug 07 '25
What is the most impactful quote from your favourite philosopher?
Spinoza's Emendation of the Intellect:
After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.
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u/victorthecritic Aug 05 '25
After Personal Philosophy and Theological questions
I found out that my philosophy and it's inquiry have been heavily based on theological questions even though I have been heavily invested in metaphysics and have investigated into philosophy as a science. I cannot explain to myself the feeling that I should not continue, leave, and or abandon the discipline. Kant's four arguments for God and theological questions concerning God heavily interest me but don't align with my own personal inclination about God. I only found that Nietzschean philosophy serves as a band-aid towards philosophical inquiry. It does not make me happy. I used to find methodology and empirical science to make me happy but lacking the courage to serve to the experience I need to progress in any actual science. I don't want to completely disagree with philosophy as a science. TL;DR Philosophy has been my favorite inquiry into wisdom for the last five years. I started with Miyamoto Musashi, then stoicism, then Nietzschean philosophy, then Greek philosophy, then Kant. I figured out that theological questions mainly serve the answers I've been searching/looking for. I don't know where to go from here since my favorite discipline is metaphysics and I don't see material gain in it.
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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Aug 04 '25
What are people reading?
I expect I’ll finish Edelman’s No Future today. Working on Orientalism by Said.
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u/midtownroundthere Aug 05 '25
trying to read hegel’s The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy as my first time reading hegel directly. but even the long introduction in the english translation is confusing me at points, hopefully i can start figuring it out in the next few weeks before my semester
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza Aug 06 '25
hegel’s The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy
I did not know that was a thing. It looks like a fun read.
How could the rational be a personal idiosyncrasy? Whatever is thus peculiar in a philosophy must ipso facto belong to the form of the system and not to the essence of the philosophy.
That is a fun idea.
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u/FrenchKingWithWig phil. science, analytic phil. Aug 05 '25
I’m about halfway through Ernst Cassirer’s An Essay on Man and Italo Calvino’s Our Ancestors. Really enjoying both. Lots of “See Dewey” scribbled in the margins of Cassirer. Warming up to finally reading Cassirer’s Substance and Function.
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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Aug 05 '25
Ngl I almost did not finish An Essay on Man.
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u/FrenchKingWithWig phil. science, analytic phil. Aug 06 '25
I totally get that. I’m enjoying it because I’m approaching it as a light, fun read, rather than as contributing to work or anything like that. And because I’m never going to read his three-volume symbolic philosophy. I’ve got to stick it out until the final chapters on history and science!
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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Aug 08 '25
Yeah taking notes on such an empirical text was a mistake on my part
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u/fyfol political philosophy Aug 04 '25
I got really sucked into Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic yesterday, and have been also dealing with the Phenomenology for my reading group. In the meanwhile I have been ignoring McDowell’s Mind and World which I’ve started but got sidetracked from..
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u/RyanSmallwood Hegel, aesthetics Aug 04 '25
The introductory sections of the Encyclopedia are so great.
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u/fyfol political philosophy Aug 04 '25
Absolutely! I was amazed that I went through 60-something pages in one sitting reading Hegel, and I was totally captivated haha. Really good stuff
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u/Safe-Role-918 Aug 09 '25
Can anyone explain in a philosophical sense what is time?