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‘Dao’ in Chinese Philosophy: Harmonizing with the Way

When we feel lost, tense, or uncertain, we may have become disconnected from what Chinese philosophers call ‘Dao’, often translated as ‘the way’. For Confucians, dao is specifically a moral way; but for Daoists, it’s the effortless, ineffable unfolding of the cosmos…

Erich Fromm on Why Love is Not About Finding ‘the One’

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True Wealth Lies in Friendship: Epicurus and Ho Kepos

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Kierkegaard: Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards, But It Must Be Lived Forwards

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Plato’s Scala Amoris: the Ladder of Love

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If a Tree Falls in the Forest, and There’s No One Around to Hear It, Does It Make a Sound?

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Thucydides’s Melian Dialogue: Can International Politics Be Fair?

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Nietzsche on Friends Growing Apart

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Fyodor Dostoevsky and Olaf Stapledon on True Security

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Hannah Arendt: 5 Insights into Totalitarianism

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What’s Made the World Wonderful Recently?

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Finding Rapture in the Humdrum: Cultivating Wonder for Everyday Life

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Nietzsche’s Perspectivism: What Does ‘Objective Truth’ Really Mean?

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Catherine of Siena on How Wealth Corrupts Justice

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How To Set Better New Year’s Resolutions: Focus On Processes, Not Outcomes

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Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness

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James Baldwin: Suffering Can Become a Force for Good

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The Stoics on What to Do When the World Feels Broken

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John Stuart Mill and Daniel Dennett on How to Critique ‘the Other Side’

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Laurie Ann Paul on How to Approach Transformative Decisions

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Hunter S. Thompson: Don’t Look for Goals, Look for a Way of Life

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Do You Recall Asking Philosophical Questions as a Child?

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Epicurus on the Arduous Task of Untroubling the Mind

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Anicca: Our Collective Way of Life Won’t Exist Soon

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Nietzsche On What ‘Finding Yourself’ Actually Means

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Albert Camus on Rebelling against Life’s Absurdity

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Hannah Arendt on the Human Condition: Productivity Will Replace Meaning

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Elizabeth Anderson on the Tyranny of Being Employed

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Hannah Arendt On Standing Up to the Banality of Evil

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Pantheism: Spinoza and the God that Einstein Believed In

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Mono No Aware: Beauty and Impermanence in Japanese Philosophy

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John Rawls: How a ‘Veil of Ignorance’ Can Help Us Build a Just Society

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Aristotle vs the Stoics: What Does Happiness Require?

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5 Existential Problems All Humans Share

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The Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: the Cure for Suffering

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Compatibilism: Philosophy’s Favorite Answer to the Free Will Debate

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The Last Time Meditation: a Stoic Tool for Living in the Present

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Nietzsche On Why Suffering is Necessary for Greatness

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How to Live a Fulfilling Life, According to Philosophy Break Subscribers

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Enrich Your Personal Philosophy with these 6 Major Philosophies for Life

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Heidegger On Being Authentic in an Inauthentic World

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Iris Murdoch on the Morality of Attention, and the Hostile Mother-in-Law

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The Apollonian and Dionysian: Nietzsche On Art and the Psyche

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The Sublime: Edmund Burke on the Feeling Thunderstorms Give You

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Why Nature vs. Nurture is a False Dichotomy: Mary Midgley

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Peter Singer On the Life You Can (and Should) Save

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What Happens When Machines Become Smarter than People?

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Aldous Huxley: Other People’s Lives are Ultimately Unknowable

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Nozick’s Experience Machine: Does it Refute Hedonism?

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Authentic Love: Simone de Beauvoir on What Makes a Healthy Relationship

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Do Neurons Push Thoughts Around? Or Do Thoughts Push Neurons Around?

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Marcus Aurelius: To Live a Good Life, Practice Kindness

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Iris Murdoch: ‘Unselfing’ is Crucial for Living a Good Life

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The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number: What Bentham Really Meant

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Amor Fati: the Stoics’ and Nietzsche’s Different Takes on Loving Fate

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The Porcupine’s Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Wistful Parable On Human Connection

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Sartre’s Waiter, ‘Bad Faith’, and the Harms of Inauthenticity

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Byung-Chul Han’s Burnout Society: Our Only Imperative is to Achieve

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Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: the ‘Copernican Revolution’ of Philosophy

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Seneca: To Find Peace, Stop Chasing Unfulfillable Desires

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Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance Summary (and PDF): Become Your Own Person

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I Think Therefore I Am: Descartes’ Cogito Ergo Sum Explained

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Mengzi vs. Xunzi On Human Nature: Are We Good or Evil?

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Friedrich Nietzsche’s Life, Insanity, and Legacy

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Stoicism and Emotion: Don’t Repress Your Feelings, Reframe Them

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On Living Meaningfully in a Vast Universe: Robert Nozick

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Existence Precedes Essence: What Sartre Really Meant

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The Dichotomy of Control: a Stoic Device for a Tranquil Mind

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Isaiah Berlin On Why the Pursuit of the Ideal is Dangerous

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Confucius: Rituals Grind Our Characters Like Pieces of Jade

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The Buddha On Ending Suffering: the Parable of the Poisoned Arrow

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Aristotle On the 3 Types of Friendship (and How Each Enriches Life)

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Kierkegaard On Finding the Meaning of Life

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Anātman, the Buddhist Doctrine of No-Self: Why ‘You’ Do Not Really Exist

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The 4 Cardinal Virtues: Stoicism’s Roadmap to the Best Life Possible

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Epicureanism Defined: Philosophy is a Form of Therapy

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The ‘Golden Mean’: Aristotle’s Guide to Living Excellently

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Fear of Black Consciousness: Lewis Gordon Interview

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Aristotle On Why Leisure Defines Us More than Work

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Life is Hard: Interview with Philosopher Kieran Setiya

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Epicurus’s Principal Doctrines: 40 Aphorisms for Living Well

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Eternal Recurrence: What Did Nietzsche Really Mean?

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David Deutsch On Why It’s False to Say Our Lives Don’t Matter

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Übermensch Explained: the Meaning of Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’

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Solipsism Definition: Your Mind Is the Only Thing that Exists

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Why Children Make Great Philosophers: Interview with Scott Hershovitz

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Nietzsche Quotes: 97 of his Cleverest Statements

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A Defense of the Unmodified Body: Clare Chambers Interview

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God is Dead: Nietzsche’s Most Famous Statement Explained

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The Good Life Method: Interview with Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko

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Epicurus On Why Death Should Not Concern Us

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Metaphysics: What Is It? Why Is It Important Today?

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Socratic Method: What Is It and How Can You Use It?

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Seneca On Coping with the Shortness of Life

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Mind Chat’s Philip Goff and Keith Frankish On Why We Are Conscious

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What is Existentialism? 3 Core Principles of Existentialist Philosophy

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George Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism: The World Is In Our Minds

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John Locke’s Empiricism: Why We Are All Tabula Rasas (Blank Slates)

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Why You Should Care About Philosophy: Jonny Thomson Interview

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Is the World Around Us ‘Real’?

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Why Does Anything Exist?

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Socrates and the Socratic Paradox: I Know That I Know Nothing

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Why Death is Nothing to Fear: Lucretius and Epicureanism

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Thomas Nagel On Why Humor is the Best Response to Life's Absurdity

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Kierkegaard On Why Busy People Are Ridiculous

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Why ‘Zombies’ Cause Problems for Brain Science and Consciousness

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Bertrand Russell On Why Philosophy Matters

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What is Consciousness?

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Where Do Morals Come From?

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How the Languages We Speak Shape Our Realities

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Why You Probably Don't Have Free Will

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Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?

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Dancing with Nietzsche

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