Would it matter if the entire human race became extinct?1 I ask this question not because of any hostility towards human beings – as is fashionable in some circles, humans being seen as the poisonous curse of the Earth it would be better without, nor any generalized misanthropy – rather the opposite. (more...)

There have been increasingly clamorous calls for the banning, removal, or controlling, or censoring of ‘misinformation’ as an enforced general policy. (more...)

Here, instead of five people versus one person, the trolley is heading toward N cows and diverting it will kill one person. (more...)

My question was – and still is – a short good life with a pain free death, or no life at all, which would you prefer? A reply to Petrică Nițoaia. (more...)

Ethical arguments against veganism are examined and refuted. (more...)

Just because we can automate something doesn’t mean that we won’t pay over the odds for an analogue version. (more...)

What could have led to the fact that the study of philosophy does not encourage independent thinking? (more...)

For a long time, we have been watching the public discussion on cultural appropriation. Many writers and philosophers, even guests we have interviewed here on Daily Philosophy, have been reluctant to discuss the topic in public. (more...)

Pessimism today has an ambivalent status. On the one hand, even a cursory glance at the world reveals a depressing abundance of dreadful events, tendencies, and phenomena. (more...)

Interview with Jean Arnaud, a pioneer of the digital renaissance in art, philosophy, technology, and education. (more...)

A comprehensive overview of Erich Fromm’s philosophy of happiness. We discuss his life, his ideas and his main works, both in their historical context and how they are still relevant for us today. (more...)

We think our beliefs and attitudes, and even our feelings and moods, are more determined by a reasoning process that brings us to them than they are. (more...)

Kant on using reason to critically examine our inclinations and uncover the forces that manipulate and misinform us. (more...)

Bonanno stands apart with his radical, borderline utopian critique of modern society. (more...)

In his book “The Art of Loving,” psychoanalyst and philosopher Erich Fromm discusses how love is misunderstood in modern societies. (more...)

1. What I wish to do is to look at the value of art in the wide human cultural context, most fundamentally indeed as part of the human condition. (more...)

Philosophy starts by questioning what the other sciences presuppose, the assumptions of all activity, cognition, and knowledge as a whole. (more...)

Humans are constitutively incapable of virtuous forms of life. Posthumans, of course, can aspire to much more. (more...)

Given that climate change is, quite literally, an existential problem, it’s strange that we’re not all rushing to solve it. (more...)

A Dialogue between Socrates and ChatGPT on Intelligence. (more...)

Technology might lead to widespread unemployment. But will this necessarily be a bad thing? Professor Michael Hauskeller on the future of work. (more...)

We all want our money to serve the right cause – but how can we make sure that it will? Catherine Greene on what is involved in ethical investing and ESG considerations. (more...)

Does an ‘engaged’ Buddhist really have to draw on this picture of the Buddha as a ‘social activist’ to find support for their own activism? (more...)

I focus in this final piece on a neglected aspect of Buddha’s teachings: the condemnation of social activism and political engagement. (more...)

Changing the world, challenging patriarchy, revolution, and the whole ethos of radical reformism is nothing like what the Buddha taught. (more...)

Buddhism is widely admired in the West for its commitments to progressive social activism. But is this really in the spirit of true Buddhism? (more...)

For many, quietly quitting work is the only answer to a job that is exploitative, meaningless and empty. But is quietly quitting really the best way to reclaim our lives? (more...)

I tried out Jasper AI, a computer program that generates natural language text. It turns out that it can create near-perfect output that would easily pass for a human-written undergraduate philosophy paper. (more...)

People as well as large-scale events, for example, the Durch Tulip Mania or the technology crash in the early 2000s, are sometimes said to be irrational. But what exactly do we mean by that? (more...)

Adam Davidson describes the “Passion Economy” in a book released in 2020. This article shows why Davidson’s proposal is not a sustainable solution to fix our current relationship with work. (more...)

How can we tell whether an AI program “thinks” or “feels”? In the recent debate of Blake Lemoine’s claims about LaMDA, a functionalist approach can help us understand machine consciousness and feelings. (more...)

A comprehensive overview of Epicurus’ philosophy of happiness. Epicurus is one of the few ancient philosophers who are more relevant today than they were in their own times. Learn all about him right here. (more...)

In 1964, Bertrand Russell wrote that the philosopher’s duty was now to forget philosophy and to study “the probable effects of a nuclear war.” (more...)

Are we driving ourselves insane? And have we been doing so for over a hundred years? To understand this, we need to understand how we came to think of ourselves as depressed. (more...)

The Frankfurt School is generally taken to mean a lose collection of thinkers who first congregated around the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. (more...)

What exactly do we mean when we say that “nothing matters”? More than sixty years ago, the British philosopher Richard Mervyn Hare attempted to answer this question in an early essay. (more...)

Luis de Miranda is the founder of the Philosophical Health movement, author of Being & Neonness (MIT Press) and Ensemblance (Edinburgh University Press). (more...)

We visit three very different hermits: Agafia Lykova in remote Siberia, Mauro Morandi on a Mediterranean island paradise, and Lincolnshire nun Rachel Denton. What unites them and gives their lives meaning? (more...)

Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy, professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Louisville, speaks about the future of AI. (more...)

Wael B. Hallaq (وائل حلاق‎) is a leading scholar of Islamic law and Islamic intellectual history at Columbia University. In this interview, we ask his opinion on the tension between Western and Islamic conceptions of governance and human rights. (more...)

The symbol #, which we today call the hashtag, has had a profound influence on our culture, from IRC and Twitter to #MeToo. It was invented on August 23, 2007. (more...)

Luca M. Possati is researcher at the University of Porto, Portugal. Educated as philosopher, he has been lecturer at the Institut Catholique de Paris and associate researcher of the Fonds Ricoeur and EHESS (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales). (more...)

For the first time in history, an AI called DABUS has been granted a patent in South Africa. This article analyses the metaphysics of attributing inventions to non-human agents. (more...)

In a book published in 2008, R. H. Thaler and C. R. Sunstein define nudges as “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way.” (more...)

If we are natural beings who evolved with everything else, why have we had such a hugely detrimental impact on that biosphere, which also happens to be our home? (more...)

Computers have a long history of being associated with evilness. Machine minds without emotions suggest cruelty, unflinching execution of inhuman orders. (more...)

Luis de Miranda lives in Sweden and is a philosophical practitioner, founder of the Philosophical Health movement. (more...)

The creation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds great promise, but with it also comes existential risk. (more...)

The rhetoric or metaphor of refuge from the world has largely disappeared from religious, social and ethical debate. The contrast with the past is striking. (more...)

So has Epicurean living become so expensive today as to exclude most of us from practising it? Does one need to be rich in order to be able to afford the simple life? (more...)

We’ve heard it all our lives — size matters and bigger is better. But David Velleman wants you to believe that shape can matter more! (more...)

Luddism is the thesis that technology must serve human life and that often the use of technologies does not make for better or happier societies. (more...)

In this episode, Ezechiel and Andy discuss the ethics of employing violence as a means of politics. Are we ever justified to use violent means in pursuit of political goals? (more...)

We are not water pills. We are highly scientific magic pills based on an ancient organic recipe. (more...)

In her book “Epicurean Simplicity,” author and activist Stephanie Mills analyses what is wrong with our modern way of life. (more...)

Imagine waking up every evening, putting on your happy face, walking over to your immaculately laid out recording studio and… Enthusiastically unwrapping that mysterious package someone just sent you… You have no idea what it is, no really! (more...)

In this episode, Ezechiel and Andy discuss the ethics of the death penalty, and particularly the question whether other countries have the right to withhold the drugs used in US executions. (more...)

If you explain to a friend that Hedonistic Egoism advocates the pursuit of one’s own pleasure, the first reaction you may get is: “so why not kill a person, steal his money and buy a new phone?” If you do get this reaction, it may be time to get a new friend. (more...)

In this episode, Ezechiel and Andy discuss the complex ethics of growing human organs in animal hosts. Are we in danger of creating human-like animals? Could such animals claim human rights? And are we sufficiently respecting the dignity of such animal hosts? (more...)

A cashless society seems convenient, but it has severe drawbacks, especially for the least privileged in society. (more...)

According to Psychological Hedonism, we are all just looking for fun. Psychological Hedonism is a theory about motivation. (more...)

The relevant philosophy podcast with Dr Ezechiel Thibaud and Dr Andreas Matthias. Two philosophers with cute accents and their guests discuss the intricacies of modern life. Brought to you by daily-philosophy.com. Every Tuesday. Today: Who owns space? (more...)

Can two people’s experiences and outlooks on life be so different that meaningful communication between them is impossible? Recent events suggest so. (more...)

Nozick asked readers to imagine a machine produced by “super-duper neuropsychologists” that could give you any experience you could think of without you realising it was all a computer simulation. He called it the Experience Machine. (more...)

The relevant philosophy podcast with Dr Ezechiel Thibaud and Dr Andreas Matthias. Two philosophers with cute accents and their guests discuss the intricacies of modern life. Brought to you by daily-philosophy.com. Every Tuesday. Today: Should we legalise drugs? (more...)

Hedonists believe that pleasure is the only thing that ultimately makes our lives go well for us and that pain is the only thing that ultimately makes our lives go badly for us. If that’s true, why are so many hedonists into BDSM? (more...)

The relevant philosophy podcast with Dr Ezechiel Thibaud and Dr Andreas Matthias. Two philosophers with cute accents and their guests discuss the intricacies of modern life. Brought to you by daily-philosophy.com. Every Tuesday. (more...)

Philosopher and social psychologist Erich Fromm analysed the problems of Western, capitalist societies. We look at his ideas for the perfect society. (more...)

One of his best known concepts of Marxism is the idea of “alienation” that describes how human beings get estranged from their work. (more...)

From Diogenes and Epicurus to Erich Fromm there is a long tradition suggesting that we might be happier with fewer material goods. (more...)

How should we go about distributing a scarce vaccine? Philosopher John Rawls formulated two principles of justice that we can use to guide our decisions. (more...)

If we want to declutter, we must, according to Erich Fromm, first change our relationship to the world. (more...)

Vaccination ethics is a surprisingly rich field of philosophical inquiry, and it covers issues from all major moral theories, reaching into world politics, poverty, the role of the state and the morality of taxation and car seat belts. (more...)

Erich Fromm distinguishes between two modes of existence. One can live one’s life in the “mode of having” or in the “mode of being”. (more...)

According to Erich Fromm, modern technology is to be blamed for constant surveillance, destruction of the planet, and widespread AI-caused unemployment. (more...)

According to philosopher Erich Fromm, the dream of endless technological development has led to a depletion of natural resources and the destruction of nature. (more...)

Erich Fromm claims that freedom itself can sometimes be the cause of fear and anxiety, forcing us to find ways to “escape from freedom.” Authoritarianism, destructiveness and automaton conformity are three ways how we try to cope with the freedom we fear. (more...)

Richard Taylor (1919–2003) thought that it’s creativity that makes us feel happy and fulfilled. According to Taylor, a life lived without exercising one’s creativity is a wasted life. (more...)

From ancient China and the European Middle Ages, to zombies, Frankenstein’s monster and HAL 9000, our literary tradition is full of robots – sometimes helpful, sometimes threatening, and always questioning what it really means to be human. (more...)

Erich Fromm points out that capitalism, in order to work, requires a large population of identical consumers with identical taste. (more...)

In “The Conquest of Happiness”, Russell argues that what makes us happy is an active life, directed by a deep and sustained interest in the world. (more...)

Bertrand Russell proposes happiness as an antidote to envy. Someone who is happy will be content with what they have and will not be looking to compare themselves with others. (more...)

Bertrand Russell’s book ‘The Conquest of Happiness’ (1930) attempts to analyse the conditions for happiness in our modern world, focusing on the different mindsets of the unhappy and the happy person. (more...)

Aristotle’s theory of happiness rests on three concepts: (1) the virtues; (2) phronesis or practical wisdom; and (3) eudaimonia or flourishing. (more...)

Daily Philosophy has an idea for this year’s resolution: live your life like a philosopher. Come along to the One Year, Six Ways project! (more...)

Erich Fromm and Richard Taylor on the perils of capitalism. (more...)

Technology, at least in the way that it is deployed in capitalism contradicts the essential simplicity of the ideal Epicurean life. (more...)

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) distinguishes three types of work; Labor, work, and action. (more...)

Are we ever allowed to kill one in order to save many lives? Utilitarianism would look at the overall benefit and conclude that this might be permissible. (more...)

Social media affect our society in many ways: addiction, democracy, the decline of journalism, privacy, surveillance, and effects on friendships. (more...)

Whistleblowing might be wrong because it violates one’s obligations to one’s friends, relatives, co-workers or superiors. (more...)

Eating small quantities of meat that was grown in a sustainable way might be morally justifiable, while large-scale animal farming is probably morally wrong. (more...)

For Erich Fromm, true activity means to fully use one’s talents in order to grow as a person. The mere display of business is not a sign of productive work. (more...)

For St Augustine, the pleasure inherent in any activity is good as long as the activity is performed because of its intended function. (more...)

Modern ecological ethics reaches back to Aristotle and his idea that the flourishing of any one thing is dependent on the flourishing of everything else. (more...)

Did you know that singer Olivia Newton-John is the granddaughter of the famous physicist Max Born, one of the two people who claimed to have discovered the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics? (more...)

Love is a very complex phenomenon that encompasses sex, friendship, self-love and selflessness, as well as God’s love in many religious traditions. (more...)

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), socialist revolutionary, once said: “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.” (more...)

Today marks the birthday of Sergey Brin of Google fame and the first public presentation of William Burroughs’ calculating machine in 1888. (more...)

It is too often assumed that hoarding commodities in a crisis is irrational and that everyone would be better off if nobody was hoarding things. But there are arguments to the contrary. (more...)