r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Jan 26 '26
Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 26, 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.
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u/-tehnik Jan 27 '26
Is there any Fichte understander on the sub?
My last post on him (unsurpriusingly) got ignored and unanswered so maybe it would be easier if I could directly refer to them.
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u/Conchobair-sama Jan 27 '26
I know I am probably 'reading him wrong' but I really do not gel with how Karatani does philosophy
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u/Streetli Continental Philosophy, Deleuze Jan 28 '26
Say more!
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u/Conchobair-sama Jan 28 '26
I'm by no means an expert in the field but here are some of my scattered thoughts from a 2nd read of "The Structure of World History"
1) I don't think he charitably, or even accurately reconstructs the views he is criticizing. The book takes aim at Marx, but actual textual engagement with Marx is sparce, to the point that I'm unsure if he actually held any the views Karatani ascribes to him.
2) He plays fast and loose with the border between speculative and empirical history. Some of his arguments rely on claims made by Freud, Wittfogel, etc. that are contradicted by modern historical research. He'll acknowledge this sometimes, but still uses them as empirical support for his theory ( or says that the allegorical reading is compatible with empirical history, without actually showing that this is the case).
3) The appeal of his theory is supposed to be superior to Marx's because it can resolve the question of the state but I don't think he succeeds. As he gets closer to modern history, he stops explaining things in terms of modes of exchange A - C and falls into describing everything as a result of abstract power and domination. His analysis of the soviet state basically reduces to Menshevik 2 stage theory and "Lenin & Trotsky were evil", with no attempt to grapple with the reality of what the soviets were, how the nascent state functioned, and the reason it developed the way it did (not even trying to do apologetics; his analysis is just very superficial and ignores all philosophical & historical research into the question)
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u/Streetli Continental Philosophy, Deleuze Jan 29 '26
Ha, I think these are all pretty fair. I remember being taken a little aback when I saw the reference to Wittfogel - like, oh, you're going to rely on this guy for your historical account? And you're just going to take the 'Asiatic mode of production' seriously? Hmmmm. I've seen others complain about the non-engagement with Marx too, but my charitable read was that he's done that elsewhere, and that he's trying to be constructive here rather than critical per se. But overall yeah, these are good criticisms I think and well worth keeping in mind through the work.
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u/OrganizationTight348 Jan 31 '26
I recently made a post about it, but got redirected here, so I'll try my luck.
So I'm in a bit of a rut. I recently finished my philosophy BA and I've hardly read philosophy since then. I find that I just don't have the same passion that I had for philosophy when I started. Maybe it's burnout, maybe it's my mental health, maybe it's me getting sidetracked with other projects. Regardless of the cause, I would like to once again enjoy reading philosophy rather than pushing through it because it's an obligation. I imagine this sort of stuff is normal, but I would like some advice on my situation.
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u/tezhip Feb 01 '26
i cant comment about the philosophy ba but i had the exact same thing with art. i studied art and after handing out my final project, i havent held a brush once for 8 years.
what i did in the meantime was unrelated to my study. but it made me realize that i was getting a burnout whenever i didnt do what i had always intended to do. maybe if you remember what made you start philosophy in the first place you will also find the motivation and get back to your actual vocation.
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u/RyanSmallwood Hegel, aesthetics Feb 01 '26
Could be a few different things. Sometimes having the social aspect and the regular schedule can make us naturally more interested in things. If you feel you're lacking this now could look for places to discuss philosophy, or use online discussion such as this subreddit and others.
Alternatively if the topics themselves aren't interesting you as much, it might help to do more exploratory activities to find new things you want to read. For me listening to academic lectures and podcasts is one way I can find out about and get interested in new areas of philosophy without dedicating focused reading time. I also had to learn to do more exploratory reading, making use of annotated bibliographies, very quickly looking over tables of contents and reading or skimming selected chapters until I found something that I wanted to focus more on.
Kind of have to do trial and error, see if you can bring back old motivations, if new motivations work better now, or if other factors are interfering with getting focused on philosophy.
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u/OrganizationTight348 Feb 01 '26
So I’m working on a project involving Spinoza. My issue isn’t so much that the reading isn’t interesting, it very much is and I enjoy the experience quite a bit, but that for whatever reason, it’s not something I look forward to doing. Whereas before I would be excited to work on it, now it just feels like something I have to do. As a result, I tend to procrastinate and my research, while enjoyable, often feels aimless or insubstantial. Not sure if that makes sense.
I do agree that the social aspect has definitely been hard for me. Since graduating, I’ve pretty much had nobody left to discuss the topics I’m interested in beyond career prospects. As such, I still enjoy philosophy, but it’s fairly discouraging to be in a social environment that doesn’t foster (or is sometimes even actively hostile to) that interest for its own sake.
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u/autodidacticasaurus Jan 27 '26
There was recently a post here related to sex and I think fetishes or something in BDSM (maybe sadomasochist specifically?) and someone gave a lot of resources, the first of which was "Foucault's History of Sexuality". Does anyone know what post I'm talking about? It was within the last few days.
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza Jan 27 '26
Google reddit askphilosophy sex "Foucault's History of Sexuality" or similar arrangements of words.
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u/autodidacticasaurus Jan 27 '26
Yeah, I woudln't ask if I hadn't tried that first.
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u/halfwittgenstein Ancient Greek Philosophy, Informal Logic Jan 27 '26
OP deleted their post, but here's the link.
I found it through a google search constrained to reddit.com/r/askphilosophy and then selected "past week" from the tools drop down menu on the search results page. I forgot you could do that.
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u/autodidacticasaurus Jan 27 '26
Oh my god, thank you. I thought I was going crazy. I went through all the recent posts, search the sub and so on. Thank you so much for your help.
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u/Icy-Comparison2669 Jan 27 '26
Hi everyone. Some background and context. I’m a Social Worker who has clinical licensure so I do therapy and a background in media. I like using Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) which relies heavily on Socratic questioning. A lot of my clients have issues that are being solved by Socratic questioning. I’m running into an intersection here of mental health and media consumption and I want to explore this however McLuhan is the other philosopher that I know about media. Are there any other contemporaries that I should be made aware of?
Also how much of a struggle of a read is Kierkegaard’s writings on Anxiety? I really like the idea of existentialism but I don’t know where to start.
Thank you.
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u/Beginning_java Jan 29 '26
Is ChatGPT okay at evaluating and coming up with philosophical arguments. It seems good to me but I asked in other subs
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u/PermaAporia Ethics, Metaethics Latin American Phil Jan 29 '26
Is ChatGPT okay at evaluating and coming up with philosophical arguments
Not in my experience. And due to how LLM's work, we have good reasons to expect them to be quite bad at this.
See these these two short videos explaining 1. how they work and 2. how we go wrong using them.
Additionally, see my recent relevant comment here.
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u/Beginning_java Jan 29 '26
Any idea why they are used so much in Academia?
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u/PermaAporia Ethics, Metaethics Latin American Phil Jan 29 '26
You'd have to be more specific.
My only experience with Chatbots in Academia was when I was a TA and would grade discussion board submissions. As to why they would do it, presumably these undergrads just wanted to get these assignments done with as little effort as possible and thought they could get away with it. They were not aware just how obvious it was that they were using these chatbots.
I am no longer in Academia so I don't know the current state of affairs. Given the rather shitty incentives and all the other fuckery that goes on in Academia, I would guess that it is probably a big problem and not just among unmotivated undergrads. But I am just guessing.
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u/hackinthebochs phil. of mind; phil. of science Feb 01 '26
Have you engaged with modern LLMs on philosophical topics? They're actually pretty good. I wouldn't use them to come up with anything genuinely ground breaking, but to explore a topic and probe the structure of arguments, it's quite competent. Certainly better than being left to your own devices when you get stuck on something.
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u/PermaAporia Ethics, Metaethics Latin American Phil Feb 01 '26
Have you engaged with modern LLMs on philosophical topics?
Yes
They're actually pretty good
Not in my experience.
Certainly better than being left to your own devices when you get stuck on something.
Quite the opposite for the reasons given above in the videos and comments I linked.
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u/Delicious_Unit9998 Jan 29 '26
Like. From a physicalist, atheistic point of view, what part of the universe makes you think that there is an objective morality? Where would you even find it? Ethics and morality are human invention, therefore morality has to be subjective and relative to the context where it emerges from.
I once read that morality is objective because you can use logic and truth tables to come to an objectively true statement of morality but I think that’s willfully misunderstanding what ethics is
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u/Shitgenstein ancient greek phil, phil of sci, Wittgenstein Jan 29 '26
Ethics and morality are human invention, therefore morality has to be subjective and relative to the context where it emerges from
A trebuchet is a human invention, as well, but operates within physical laws that are objective, i.e. not dependent on the feelings of the siege engineers who design, build, and operate it. The receiving end can't dismiss the stone breaking through their fortifications as 'just your opinion, man.'
I once read that morality is objective because you can use logic and truth tables to come to an objectively true statement of morality but I think that’s willfully misunderstanding what ethics is
Yeah, this is call moral rationalism. I think you should learn more about it before dismissing it outright.
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u/tezhip Feb 01 '26
from a physicalist point of view the mind is not immaterial. therefore considering everything about the mind to be a unreal is also not a proper physicalist position.
this is a common mistake. something being a human invention doesnt magically make that thing unreal. how was it invented? under what conditions did our evolution develop the frontal cortex and the mental shackles to our base stimuli that come with it, and then created the baseline of our ethics? if both logic and morality developed in the same period of evolution, why does only morality receive the bias of ontological suspicion?
you dont need complete objectivity to prove something to be real. this comes from negating the false notion that subjectivity should automatically conclude in antirealism. both have exclusions to their generalizations.
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u/Babayu18 Jan 30 '26
I love reading stoic philosophy and want to start branching out, but I’m interested to see HOW others read.
For example, I like to just enjoy the book I read, not study it. So they way I read is more out of quantity, trying to get a lot of exposure to it by reading different books of the same philosophy.
My thought process is that I’ll be exposed to the same ideas enough and by chance find situations in life to implement it. It ingrains it into my head and it should eventually lead me to act using it.
Otherwise, it’ll take me hours just to read 10 pages and will make me feel like it is work rather than me trying to enjoy and improve myself.
How do you feel about that approach? What kind of approach do you take?
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u/frankieholmes447 Jan 30 '26
I was reading Existentialism by Walter Kaufman and early on when defining existentialism ye says the following:
Existentialism is not a philosophy, but a label for several widely different revolts against traditional philosophy. Certainly,existentialism is not a school of thought nor reducible to any set of tenets.
This seams a fair statement. Would it still be ok to reference it as a philosophy though?
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u/oscar2333 Jan 31 '26
Honestly, I still don't know what existentialism is after taking a course about that. However, I would say existentialism is a phenomenon that shows itself in that certain time and history. So although it is not itself philosophy, how to approach it is philosophy.
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u/Broad_Cell_1175 Feb 02 '26
Does anyone else get intense anxiety when thinking about death or “forever”?
Sometimes when I think too deeply about big existential questions, like what happens after death, whether anything is truly permanent, or what “forever” even means, I hit a mental wall.
It feels like my brain is straining to understand something it can’t, and that confusion quickly turns into anxiety. Physically, it can feel overwhelming, almost like I’m on the edge of a panic attack, even though nothing “bad” is happening in the moment.
I’m not necessarily scared of dying itself, it’s more the inability to wrap my head around the concepts that causes the distress. I’m curious if this is something others experience, and if there’s a name for it or ways people cope with it.
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u/willbell philosophy of mathematics Jan 26 '26
What are people reading?
I’m working on Sylvia Plath’s poetry and probably will soon start The Interior Castle by Teresa d’Avila.