Get Your Smart On
A recording from Philosophy Publics' live video, with Mona Mona. Topics: On Friendship and more.
Thank you , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. --- Transcript: Hello everyone. Welcome, welcome. This is our first live. I am Mona Mona. I...
From the annals of our top fifty books in Philosophy originally published on Goodreads.
A Thousand Plateaus is the second volume of the Capitalism and Schizophrenia project (the first is Anti-Oedipus) by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari. This is a very...
How friendship becomes us. The new, rewritten Part Two of our series on Friendship.
In What Are Friends For? (1993), Marilyn Friedman offers an analysis of friendship in its moral, epistemological, and political dimensions. Her work is clear and analytic, and particularly useful for...
Luce Irigaray's metaphysical framing of the woman question.
"Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our 'salvation' if we thought it through." — Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference In An Ethics of Sexual Difference...
Announcing a weekend AMA (Ask Me Anything), round-up of posts, plus philosophical shadow journal questions from our chat space.
Hello Frens! Here is your round-up of Philosophy Publics posts going back a few weeks. Much of this content was in response to requests that came from y’all — keep the great suggestions coming! I’ve...
What the incorporation of women's friendship ideals into companionable marriage can teach us about the radical potential of women's friendships.
It is 1792. Mary Wollstonecraft has just published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a precursor text for a first wave of feminism that will not begin for at least another fifty years.1 Her...
Quick post for a fren, in no particular order...
--- 1. $1 a secret plotCritical Theory - Journalism - ArtBy Tom Pazderka --- 1. $1 Critical Theory & Burning QuestionsCritical Theory & Burning Questions is a Marxist-Leninist publication dedicated...
On the relationship between Phenomenology and Psychology, and a recent attempt to bring them together.
On first glance, Phenomenology and Psychology may seem like similar disciplines, and the relationship between them is super interesting, so thank you anon subscriber for asking after this. Here is my...
Practical tips for establishing a philosophy reading practice and keeping an ideas notebook.
If I were to ask you, do you know how to read? You would probably say, “Oh, yes, of course, I’ve been reading since grade school. I’m a very confident reader!” But the thing is, if it is philosophy...
Part 4 of our series thinking through the most challenging aspects of being human right now.
1. The most challenging aspect of being human right now? > “Being human itself. Belonging to the human race. With its violence, prejudice, evil, greediness and shortsightedness. For 2025 I might get...
A response to The Drill by @jenesaisjj on the political use of the feeling of relief
In the video linked below, TikTok user @jenesaisjj reminds us that Jim Jones, leader of the Jonestown cult, held what he called “White Night” drills, where his followers were instructed to drink...
A guide to commenting on Philosophy and other non-fiction writing on Substack.
I recently announced in our subscriber chat that I would trade one critique for a monthly subscription (see above). It is my way to make Philosophy Publics accessible as I begin to paywall some...
The growing desire for community and our commitment to individualism. Part 3 of thinking through the most challenging aspects of being human right now.
We have watched the price of food rise over the past few years, and so many of us have had to ask ourselves if we can afford our usual groceries. The price we pay for shelter is becoming prohibitive,...
With the TikTok ban hanging over our heads, we have Gamestopped it.
It had been defeated, but popped back up again, twice by my count. And it looks like this time, the TikTok ban will go through. People on TikTok seemed resigned to this almost too quickly, and after...
On information overwhelm and the difficulty knowing what is true, real, and good online. Part 2 of thinking about the most challenging aspects of being human right now.
In our subscriber chat, many of you shared some significant challenges of being human right now: feelings of isolation; information overload; difficulties in building community; and misanthropic...
Announcing the Philosophy Publics chat discussion questions for the month of January.
Hi Frens, We have been having a lot of fun with the philosophy discussion questions in the subscriber Chat. I thought it would be useful to normalize this practice. I am going to post these...
Working through your answers to the question of the single most challenging aspect of being human right now.
In our subscriber chat I asked y’all what you thought was the single most challenging aspect of being human right now, and your answers really capture where we are in this moment. I responded to some...
Empathy is a skill that begins with learning to listen. Here are three personal accounts that open us up to empathy.
1. The Value of Empathy Mike’s SubstackEmpathyAs a young pre-school boy, some of my earliest memories were of time spent fossicking within the ‘benign’ fenced in paradise that was our back garden....
Philosophy is preparation for death, so how have philosophers faced death throughout the millennia?
Philosophy is preparation for death, so said Socrates, the Greek philosopher par excellence, a martyr to the cause, executed by the state in BC for corrupting the youth. According to his pupil Plato,...
A response to Gurwinder's Why Empathy Makes Us Cruel & Irrational
In "Why Empathy Makes Us Cruel & Irrational," author characterizes empathy as an emotionally transmitted disease, a virus, and as a parasite. He claims that empathy debilitates thought, makes us...