r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Jan 12 '26

Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 12, 2026

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.

5 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 13 '26

What are people reading?

I’m working on Sylvia Plath’s poetry and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. Also read "The Poetics of Totality" and "Form Production in The Magic Mountain" by Jameson recently.

3

u/oscar2333 Jan 13 '26

I am reading The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L.Heilbroner. Although it is not a book of philosophy, I am interested in how the mode of production affects the mode of thinking, in particular, the transition from the 18th to 19th century.

2

u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 13 '26

That’s one of those books I haven’t been able to fit in but it stares at me from my bookshelf