Modern Philosophy & Existentialism
Explore the profound questions of existence, freedom, and human nature through modern philosophical giants.
- Philosophy
- Existentialism
- Modern Thought
- Freedom
Some of the stories included
The Chinese Room ArgumentJohn Searle's 1980 thought experiment about a man following rules to answer in Chinese, which argues that running a program is not the same as understanding, and the replies critics made.
Jean Meslier, the Priest Who Secretly Denounced GodFrench village priest Jean Meslier served his parish for 40 years while secretly writing an atheist, revolutionary testament that was found only after his death in 1729.
Viktor Frankl and Meaning in SufferingPsychiatrist Viktor Frankl survived Auschwitz and argued that the primary human drive is not pleasure or power, but a will to meaning.
Occam's RazorThe philosophical principle that the simplest explanation, the one with the fewest assumptions, is usually the right one to test first.
SisyphusThe myth of the king who cheated death twice and the punishment of the boulder, re-examined by philosopher Albert Camus in 1942.
Sartre and Radical FreedomJean-Paul Sartre's existentialism: the idea that we are 'condemned to be free' and must make ourselves through our choices.
Blaise PascalThe life of Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and religious thinker behind the Pascaline calculator, the Puy de Dôme air-pressure experiment, early probability theory and the Pensées.
Hegel and the End of HistoryHegel finished the main text of the Phenomenology of Spirit in Jena in October 1806, as Napoleon's army took the city. He wrote that he had seen the emperor, "this world-soul", ride through.
The Trolley ProblemThe famous trolley problem explained, from its 1967 origins to why most people refuse to push a man to save five lives.
Spinoza: God or NatureExcommunicated at 23 for "evil opinions," Baruch Spinoza lived as a lens grinder while arguing that God and nature are one.
Schopenhauer's PessimismIn 1818, Schopenhauer published a book claiming a single thought solved existence: the world is a blind, insatiable Will that causes suffering.
Karl Marx and CapitalKarl Marx's Capital argued profit comes from unpaid labor. This is his theory of class conflict and why capitalism was doomed to fail.
René Descartes and the Birth of Modern ThoughtHow René Descartes doubted his own senses to build a new foundation for science on the single certainty: 'I think, therefore I am'.
Nietzsche and the Death of GodIn 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche declared 'God is dead,' not as a boast, but as a warning for a world that had lost its moral compass.
Kant's Copernican RevolutionImmanuel Kant's idea that the mind shapes how we experience the world: space, time and cause are the lenses we see through.
Pascal's WagerBlaise Pascal's argument that believing in God is the rational bet, a concept born from a 1654 gambling dispute that founded probability theory.
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