Philosophy for Lunch

Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep pulling away from people who get close, or clinging to people who are unavailable, or trusting people who do not deserve it? Why do I seem to have the same relationship over and...

When you see a red apple and I see a red apple, we agree on the word. But is the inner experience — the actual felt quality of redness as it appears to your consciousness — the same as mine? Philosophers have generated...

Imagine a scholar sets out to find the one moral principle that every major civilization in human history has independently arrived at — not through contact or borrowing, but through its own philosophical and religious...

There is a sentence that sounds simple and turns out to be one of the most destabilizing claims in the history of philosophy. Existence precedes essence. Four words. The argument embedded in them upends centuries of...

Here is a question that sounds like it should have an obvious answer. Was mathematics invented or discovered? Did humans create the number two the way we created the word for it? Or did the number two exist before any...

If someone described a philosophy whose central teachings were: live simply, eat bread and water, cultivate close friendships, manage your desires so they never exceed what is easily available, and spend time thinking...

<p>Imagine you are standing at the edge of a chasm. You need to get to the other side. The leap is possible — just barely — but you cannot know in advance whether you will make it. Does believing you can make the leap...

Imagine you are standing at the edge of a chasm. You need to get to the other side. The leap is possible — just barely — but you cannot know in advance whether you will make it. Does believing you can make the leap make...

There is a question that arrives most forcefully when circumstances are at their worst. Not why is this happening in the causal sense, but the question underneath that one: what does this mean? Is there anything here...

<p>There is a question that arrives most forcefully when circumstances are at their worst. Not why is this happening in the causal sense, but the question underneath that one: what does this mean? Is there anything here...

Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. That sentence is probably the most quoted in the history of philosophy. But the popular interpretation — that you should think more and be more self-aware — is true...

<p>Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. That sentence is probably the most quoted in the history of philosophy. But the popular interpretation — that you should think more and be more self-aware — is...

In 1961, a political philosopher traveled to Jerusalem to cover a trial for The New Yorker. The man on trial was Adolf Eichmann — one of the primary administrators of the Holocaust. She expected a monster. What she...

<p>In 1961, a political philosopher traveled to Jerusalem to cover a trial for The New Yorker. The man on trial was Adolf Eichmann — one of the primary administrators of the Holocaust. She expected a monster. What she...

<p>DESCRIPTION</p><p>You have probably heard the trolley problem. A runaway trolley, five people on the tracks, a lever that will divert it — but kill one person instead. Most people say pull the lever. Then comes the...