All tagged Philosophy

Plural Logic by Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley

Plural Logic by Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley

Kristopia
Non Fiction

When singularists attempt to address multiple things at once, they create this ambiguous interpretation. The sentences above contain collective predicates, which apply to their arguments collectively, not individually. As a result, the theory of plural quantification stated that plurals cannot be satisfactorily analyzed in terms of the singular. Thus, plural reference, plural quantification, and plural predication must be recognized as primitive. They can then form part of genuinely plural logics.

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Humans are dedicated to suffering.

Various reasons to be inconsolable abound: the frailty of our bodies, the feebleness of our souls, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of relationships, the deadening effects of habits. In the face of such perpetual ills, one might see that no event would be awaited with greater anticipation than the moment of our own death.

The question is: How to suffer successfully?

Basic Writings of Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche

Basic Writings of Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Ever since he went insane and silent in 1889, Nietzsche’s ideas have been most things to most men. Devout Christians can hardly derive any comfort from Nietzsche’s writings, which are centrally preoccupied with a destructive analysis of Christianity, its birth, its triumph, its unfortunate longevity; nor could principled democrats find much to please them in his political views. However, nihilists and existentialists, cosmopolitans and chauvinists, followers of Freud and his critics, Anti-Semites and Philo-Semites, Francophiles and professional Teutons, nature worshipers and pragmatists have all been struggling over Nietzsche’s legacy for a century and more.

Resistance, Rebellion and Death Essays by Albert Camus

Resistance, Rebellion and Death Essays by Albert Camus

Kristopia
Non Fiction

There is nothing in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death of the metaphysical Camus; all the subjects are socio-political, and the essay topics vary from the French Spirit, European civilization, colonial warfare in Algeria, to the social cancer of capital punishment, death, resistance, rebellion, and freedom. In this Camus is relatable, not because we necessarily are in concord his views or values, but because consistently and without rest man lived the views and values.

But What If We're Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman

But What If We're Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman

Kristopia
Non Fiction

The modern problem is that reevaluating what we consider “true” or “facts” is becoming increasingly difficult. In a frame work where public consensus has become the ultimate arbiter of validity. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to ask “What if”. Certainty can often be paralyzing. It locks us into paths that may not be preferable. The problem is never about finding what is right, but realizing oneself can be wrong even when proven right.

The Black Swan

The Black Swan

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Until the 19th century, people were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of white swans…. Then boom! There comes the discovery of mutant black swans in Australia.

The Rebel by Albert Camus

The Rebel by Albert Camus

Kristopia
Non Fiction

One may be surprised that Albert Camus, a known existentialist philosopher, was quite familiar with anarchism, and he not only openly supported anarchist-syndicalist organizing, but also was excommunicated by the existentialists for criticizing their Marxist tendencies. Soon after reading The Stranger, I gladly discovered that Camus had in fact, already dealt thoroughly with the questions of nihilism, rebellion, revolutionary politics, and anarchism.

Against Method by Paul Feyerabend

Against Method by Paul Feyerabend

Kristopia
Non Fiction

In a science dominated society, it is easy to forget that science and their methods are not inherently objective. Science is a tradition, with its own method of conceptualizing problems and deriving conclusions. Science is hypothetico-deductive. Scientists frame conjectures and test their logical consequences. A proposition is scientific if only it is falsifiable, otherwise it is metaphysical. However, there is no perfect method. The concept that a single method contains firm, unchangeable and binding principles in all situations is perilous.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Kristopia
Fiction

Published in Kundera’s exile in 1984, and without betraying the title, there is certainly a fundamental weightlessness to this book. Even after the third read, I can only recall fragments about the characters. A tangible milieu, a well-paced plot, and the extended passages of straightforward philosophical and political speculation, made it clear that this is not for readers who prefer the conventional storytelling.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Brooding rumination. That’s what people usually get into when they were awakened by absurdity. Once we cross that invisible line in front of our unwary feet, the world falls on its stunned head, and orientation is anyone’s guess. Just as Roquentin said, where truth lies now is in unending aporia. Yet, Camus posits a way out of despair by objectively exploring the Absurd, the topic of suicide, and the dilemma of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning.

L’Étranger by Albert Camus.

L’Étranger by Albert Camus.

Kristopia
Fiction, Character Analysis

My favorite novel about Absurdism.

Just like his existentialist comrades, Mersault is buffeted like wreckage in the indifferent waves of the ocean. He is neither cynical nor optimistic. He demands nothing from life or people, and cultivates nothing. His indifference is not stoicism, for he buys into to no larger sense of nature. Nor is he a recalcitrant Diogenes, sneering at convention with derision…….

Stoicism by George Tanner

Stoicism by George Tanner

Kristopia
Non Fiction

George Tanner provides a lucid, comprehensive introduction to stoicism, adapting the history, philosophy and practices of Stoicism from a weighty and distressing academic venture into a manageable and overall pleasant literary experience.