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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?

The age-old question of whether a falling tree makes a sound when there’s no one around to hear it exploits the tension between perception and reality. This article explores possible answers and their consequences.

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

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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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