Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
“If our need for status is a fixed thing, we nevertheless retain all say over where we will fulfil that need. We are at liberty to ensure that our worries about being disgraced will arise principally in relation to an audience whose methods of judgement we both understand and respect. Status anxiety may be defined as problematic only insofar as it
... See moreSo without knowing what the greatest and most important things are, without unifying ideas, without infallibly coherent ideologies, what is to be done? What are people going to have, as we say, in common, or what are they going to want to have in common? And when, to paraphrase Kafka, we have so little in common with ourselves; why we have so littl
... See moreAdam Phillips • On Giving Up
You might think you are guided by moral laws, he was saying to them, or that you act in certain ways because of your psychological make-up or past experiences, or because of what is happening around you. These factors can play a role, but the whole mixture merely adds up to the ‘situation’ out of which you must act. Even if the situation is unbeara
... See moreSarah Bakewell • At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others
given the secular view of the universe, the conclusion of love or social justice is no more logical than the conclusion to hate or destroy. These two sets of beliefs—in a thorough-going scientific materialism and in a liberal humanism—simply do not fit with one another. Each set of beliefs is evidence against the other. Many would call this a deepl
... See moreTimothy Keller • Making Sense of God: Finding God in the Modern World
With the renewed interest in how we might live most happily, and the establishing of institutions such as Alain de Botton’s School of Life in London and abroad, it may be that philosophy and psychology are finding their way back together again after their time apart.
Derren Brown • Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine
Meanwhile, in the other camp, public philosophers such as Alain de Botton have sometimes risked derision to publish books or establish institutions designed to take a dry and analytical field back to its humanitarian roots. They have dared to remind us how the great thinkers of history might help us navigate our modern world contentedly and with mi
... See moreDerren Brown • Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine
