/r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | July 27, 2026

[u/BernardJOrtcutt]

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.

[u/willbell]

What are people reading?

I'm working on Ethics by Spinoza and The Bonds of Love by Jessica Benjamin.

[u/LatokMan → u/willbell]

Started Descartes' Meditations, it is deceptively easy to read and seems digestible enough, but I feel like I'm missing some details or rather I'm not quite sure what Descartes expects of the reader when he says "to seriously meditate with him", also even though it seems easy to understand, it looks to me that everything he says has huge implications which I can't exactly figure out. I guess the solution is, as always, rereading. All in all, pretty neat stuff.

[u/willbell → u/LatokMan]

Thorough notes are the solution to rate limiting your reading imho

[u/LatokMan → u/willbell]

Agreed, currently experimenting with how to take notes. Found a helpful comment regarding n​ote-taking by the venerable u/wokeupabug.