American political commentator Charlie Kirk was shot on a college campus earlier today, and although his death is unconfirmed, I would be shocked if he survived. I never agreed with a word out of his mouth, and I don't believe he was a good person, but does that justify his (potential) murder? If so, why? If not, then when is assassination justified? What is the morality of assassinating a harmful political commentator vs. a harmful politician? I know this is a controversial subject, and I condemn any political violence, but I am curious as to what certain philosophical beliefs would have to contribute to a conversation like this, not just because I think it would be interesting but also because I know next to nothing about philosophy. Please let me know because this has been racking my brain for the past few hours and I think it's an important conversation in America's political climate.

Edit: I understand I worded this question poorly. By no means do I want to see anyone die or justify any assassination. That wasn’t the nature of my question, and I apologize for poorly articulating my curiosity. I wanted to know when, if ever, an assassination like the one on Kirk could ever be morally okay from a variety of different philosophies. I appreciate all the helpful replies but please I’m not pro murder😭😭😭

I’m really into philosophy, but I’ve never liked that overly complicated style of writing where everything is symbolic or metaphorical and you have to dig for the meaning instead of it just being clearly stated (I’ve always hated English class more than anything). I’ve mainly tried to read some Nietzsche and from what I’ve read and heard beforehand, a lot of their ideas are super interesting. But I’ve been finding myself struggling to really understand their work not because their ideas are too complicated, but because reaching their ideas feels like going through a maze of unnecessary jargon to reach them, and by the time I’ve made it through all that, I’m just too mentally drained to even digest what they’re really saying tbh. Is there any hope for me or is philosophy just not the right hobby for me?

Hi, new to this sub but I had this thought lingering for a while.

In terms of things people can do within a game, like GTA for example, murder is never seen as an "immoral" act however committing rape in a game is very immoral. In the real world, both things are just as bad so what makes them both different in video games?

I'm not looking for any justification of murder or rape in video games but just the philosophical idea behind allowing murder but not rape.

I wouldn’t be doing that if I was radically free.

CEO of UnitedHealth was killed, and the amount of most upvoted comments here on reddit saying something like "he deserved that" is insane. I started questioning myself, since often I think what's most upvoted is also true, but now I'm not so sure. What I'm sure though is that I wouldn't wish death even for a person that killed 100,000 other people. Maybe it's because I never experienced violence, I have the best family I could have and I live in one of the safest countries in the world... But maybe I'm the weird?

Many people have experienced having to put down a beloved pet. Maybe it was growing old or had some brutal, pain-inflicting disease. Whatever the reason, it was taken away from its suffering. Yes, it hurt to lose something so dear, but surely it hurt more watching the pet struggle.

So why doesn’t the same apply for humans? If anything, wouldn’t euthanasia be more “morally justified” for people since unlike our pets, we’re able to consciously make the decision? Personally, I believe that hospitals should administer euthanasia with the consent of the patient .Why does the world try so hard to keep people alive when they’re miserable?

Everyone says “things will get better” and “life’s worth living”, but that’s not true for everyone. For some, there’s no solutions to end their suffering other than death. Suicidal people are called “self-centered”, but maybe the real selfish ones are those who try to keep them alive, despite knowing their existence is a pain.

This is coming from someone suffering.

Some might say that this question belongs in an anthropological, sociological, historical or some other sub, but I disagree. I think it is a genuine philosophical question (which is not to say that philosophers shouldn’t rely on sciences and humanities in dealing with it.) How have we come to this point?

EDIT: I must sincerely say that I haven’t expected so many (and substantive at that) replies.

Thank you! I have already read Fisher’s book, merely for the record, and recommend it to everyone. I hope this thread will be as useful to others as it has been for me!

Genuine question. I genuinely don't get it. We go out of our way to convince them not to kill themselves, but we actively don't do anything when they are alive. Wouldn't it be mercy if we just allow them to choose for themselves?

They all have stern looking greek statues as thumbnails and other meaningless imagery in the video. They all (or at least many) use obvious AI-voices (and potentially AI-text too). They all seem to massively oversimplify the cornerstones. They all seem to aim to provide excuses to dismiss people or unpleasant events. And they're all followed by people who call themselves "entrepreneurs" who deal in tech hypes and financial grifts. Can somebody explain what's happening?

The exact quote is:

He struck me as completely amoral, I'd never met anyone who was so totally amoral [...] I mean, I liked him personally, it's just that I couldn't make sense of him. It's as if he was from a different species, or something.

I'm confused. Was Chomsky trying to say that Foucault's post-modernism leads to "amoralism"?

Lately, I’ve been stuck on a philosophical problem and I’m wondering how others approach it. I just want to preface by mentioning I'm a biologist with very little formal philosophical background but am interested to learn more where I can.

I have a close frien, very smart, logical, and a fellow scientist, who grew up in a very different country and culture than I did. We have great conversations about our research, but sometimes he expresses views (like admiration for certain controversial political figures) that clash with everything I’ve learned. To me, it’s easy to think he’s been influenced by state propaganda or cultural indoctrination.

But here’s where it gets tricky: if I apply the same critical lens to my own views, how can I be sure that I’m not also a product of my environment? He likely sees me as the one who’s been influenced or misled.

So I’m left with this question: If two people, both rational and educated, come to opposite conclusions and each assumes the other is misinformed, how can either of them know who is right? Or is the idea of “being right” just another culturally relative belief?

It feels like there’s no solid ground to stand on—no objective place outside of our upbringing or context to evaluate whose beliefs are closer to the truth. And if that’s the case, what’s the point of even searching for truth at all?

This always pushes me into a depression when I think about it too much. I struggle to watch the news or talk about current events with friends without being bugged by these issues.

He seemed to have successfully destroyed my world view which was Christianity, and then suggested a constructive philosophy which does not resonate with me at all. i.e, creating our own values, being a bridge to the Overman, and living in a way that would be fantastic if it were to occur infinitely.

I find it to be unrealistic and impossible. I’m only a small brain that has been alive for 24 years and that’s my task? I know his philosophy is elitist, and if I’m just not good enough for it then so be it.

So here I am, I don’t understand how anyone could possibly subjectively create their own meaning and actually be so arrogant as to believe that what they come up with is anything of any value or sophistication.

Why does it need to be valuable and sophisticated? Well I don’t know, but I would constantly be critiquing my own values like an artist to their painting.

I’m just struggling with the subjective meaning thing. For me it just can’t replace the objective values given to you by something metaphysically superordinate.

So, who should I read next? And are my worries misguided?

My 8 year old nephew went to school the other day and his teacher made an interesting comment about mathematics, she said that everything that we know about mathematics might be wrong , even the simplest things like 1+1=2 , she tried to "prove" this by grabbing a pencil(1) and a small purse(1) and that would naturally mean she is holding 2 things. But she put the pencil inside the purse and asked the students: now is it one thing or two things? It was a very interesting take , and my nephew asked me the same question she asked , and I couldn't answer. How would philosophers answer this question ? And was that whole stunt the teacher made a philosophical blunder or a real problem philosophers grapple with ? Thanks

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and just keep ending up in circles. If someone can transition from one gender to another, which may mean transitioning to a marginalized group how would someone who does the same with race different? There is not one single experience or expression of race or gender, there are just cultural expectations based on physical traits if I am understanding that correctly. So for someone to identify as a different gender, regardless of how it’s expressed, could not someone identify as a different race? If someone gets surgeries or other medical assistance in wanting to present a certain way to feel more comfortable presenting as a certain gender, regardless of having dysphoria or not, would that not be the same as someone getting procedures to have certain ethnic features?

I ask these questions not to push any sort of narrative or as any kind of “gotcha!” Moment. I genuinely am just curious and I can’t figure this out on my own.

So I know this may sound like a really really stupid/absurd question, but I swear by the end of this it might make just a tad bit more sense to you.

So me and my friend were having a debate on objective v subjective morality, and they made the point that only some arguments can only be proved by theological based arguments, while I was in the side which morality always should be founded and proved using logic.

Now the conversation kind of got more absurd when we started talking about beastiality and how that is morally wrong. To be clear we are both against it and find it morally wrong. We were mostly using dogs as our example. But she stated a secular argument against beastiality cannot truly ever be made. I stayed it can and tried to say a dog lacks the capacity for consent and engaging in such would obviously hurt the well being of the dog. But then she mentioned the initial peanut butter prompt, she asked “why consent would matter in that case”, and also saying “the well-being of the dog is not affected, if anything, it’s a positive for the dog”.

I couldn’t come up with an answer to why this may be morally wrong so I turn to you guys and girls, please help me out or just add thoughts to it, thank you so much.

Nietzsche expresses the former idea well: ``That which does not kill me makes me stronger'' and ``Spirits grow and courage increases through wounds''. An ubiquitous theme in narratives is that characters face adversity and grow as a result. Many authors (particularly Dostoevsky comes to mind) also see suffering as a way through redemption may be achieved.

However, real life shows the opposite as often. Many people are embittered by negative things that have happened to them in the past. Likewise, some forms of suffering can induce serious psychological trauma.

I am trying to understand what factors (mental, emotional, or external) decide the psychological reaction of people. What decides whether people come out of suffering stronger or weaker?

POV: a burnt out undergraduate student

I have grown sick of trying to find a justification for every single thing, having to defend myself from counter-arguments, having to find holes and flaws in another’s argument, having to state my arguments as clear as possible, upholding maximum cautiousness with what I say or speak to reduce the possibility of attracting counter-arguments — doesn’t it ever feel so violent?

There are days where it feels like a war of reason; attack after attack, refutation after refutation. It’s all about finding what is wrong with what one said, and having to defend myself from another’s attack. Even as I write this right now, several counter-arguments pop into my head to prove I am wrong in thinking this way or that I’m wording things ambiguously.

I know it may sound insensitive to frame it as a ‘war,’ considering everything happening in the world right now, but I couldn’t think of anything else that appropriately encapsulates what I am feeling at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely see the value and importance of doing all these things, but I was just wondering if anybody else feels this way sometimes.

May I know if anyone has ever written about this?

Why isn’t philosophy communication a thing, the same way science communication is a thing?

I come from a scientific and engineering background. In these fields, science communication is something that most understand as an important undertaking. Science communication is even taught as a course to many graduate students. There are famous science communicators like bill nye, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bryan Green, and more. That’s just in physics. There are tons of pop science books on pretty much any niche topic of science that make these topics easy to understand and are written in engaging ways for the non-scientific public.

Why is philosophy not like this?

Im currently reading Nick Bostrom’s book, Superintelligence and also reading Luciano Floridi’s book, The 4th revolution. Both of these books are meant for the lay public. That said, Bostrom’s book reads like a stale pack of saltines. It’s amazing to me how he could take a topic like AI and super-intelligence and make it so dry and boring. Same with Floridi’s book which is also targeted to the lay public. It even says in the description that this book is supposed to be an introductory text on information philosophy for a general audience. Not so. This book is written primarily in an academic style with a few splashes of story and anecdote attempting to spice it up. If the target of these books are a non-academic audience, both of these books are failures in my eyes. There are tons of reviews of these books that seem to agree.

Obviously it’s not just Bostrom and Floridi I’m knocking. Philosophical source text, even modern ones, are notoriously difficult to read.

From my understanding, it hasn’t always been this way. Plato famously wrote for a general audience and seemed to succeed in his time in doing so. It used to be common for philosophers to express their ideas in poetry, story, or even write in hexambic pentameter which at the time was considered entertaining to read.

Why don’t modern philosophers make any serious attempts to communicate these extremely important ideas in an engaging and easy to understand way?

EDIT: Downvoted to oblivion! Seems like the consensus here is that philosophy does a great job of communicating its ideas to the general public.

EDIT: There are more philosophy communicators out there than I thought. Thanks for answering my question, philosophers!

EDIT: thanks everyone for the great discussion. Definitely answered my question and opened my eyes to new resources. Also, the downvoting clearly didn’t last. Don’t know why this post got early hate.

I have terminal cancer in my mid thirties and I’m looking for suggestions of what to read or listen to to guide me through this time.

I’ve done a bit of work studying philosophy in the past and have leant towards stoicism but I’m happy to dip into anything.

Even though I’ve read and listened to quite a bit previously I’m happy to go over anything again you think could be helpful or inspiring. Books, articles, podcasts, shows, meditations are all welcome.

Hi there,

a student of mine brought up the quote in the title, citing it to Platos "Republic". I tried to backtrack its origins but couldt find a decent translation, that directly gave me that quote. Do you guys know, what the exact wording in Plato is (if it actually exist like that)? I am not a native english speaker, so I am more familiar with Platos works in German, but even there I couldnt get a direct hit...

Thanks for yout help!

I’m a lay person who enjoys reading philosophy but I’m finding Rand to be advocating a lack of empathy as a way of life. I get that it’s called ‘objectivity’ but I don’t think I see it that way. I also think conservatives have embraced this lack of empathy in government. Even Trump said his favorite novel is Fountainhead which I find disturbing (as a woman & rape survivor). But am I reading this wrong? Is Rand supporting psychopathy? Or am I missing something?

AKA - If you're so smart, why do you write like shit?

I'm an economics major and I've been wondering why Marx is still so popular in philosophy circles despite being basically non-existent in economics. Why is he and his ideas still so popular?