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Existential Comics
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Yes, that is exactly what Rousseau meant by "forced to be free".
Hobbes and Rousseau had somewhat different definitions of freedom, with Hobbes giving a very narrow view, claiming that freedom was doing what you wish without physical restraint, even going so far as saying someone would be free to choose in a "money or your life" situation.
Rousseau, on the other hand, thought freedom was using your reason to give your freedom over your own base animal instincts. So the robber himself wouldn't be free in the situation, because a rational being would exist in society peacefully by rationally agreeing to obey the general will.
Both were social contract theorists and thought the State had legitimate power to force its citizens to obey, in various ways.
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Forwarded from Existential Comics
Yeah, Ancient Greek philosophers laid the foundation for modern thought, but they were also weird as hell when you get down to it.
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Forwarded from Existential Comics
Empedocles was an ancient Greek philosopher, best known for his classic idea that everyone was composed of the four primary elements, that are still used in video games and things: Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. He also thought Love and Strife were the real divine roots of reality. He was reacting against the monism of Parmenides, and perhaps the atomism of Anaxagoras and others. Those two had the much more common idea that there was either only one ultimate substance, or an infinite amount. Saying there are exactly "four" things is pretty rare.
He was also a bit of a mystic, similar to Pythagoras, his tutor. He believed in reincarnation, performed miracles, and claimed he was a god. According to one story, in order to "prove" he was a God he was going to disappear entirely after he died (kind of like Yoda does), and did this by jumping into a volcano. I guess the volcano left his iconic bronze sandals, disproving that he was a God. Not 100% clear on the logic of that one, but Ancient Greeks thought a little differently than we do today.
Find out more about him on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
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Forwarded from Existential Comics
Ten minutes later, when Pierre shows up: "Sartre, what are you doing?"
Sartre: "You can't fool me, you aren't Pierre, you are a body-snatcher! What have you done with Pierre! I can percieve his absence in you!"
Pierre: "Okay Sartre, how much did you take?"
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Forwarded from Existential Comics
A big part of Sartre's phenomenology is the fact that absence itself is perceived by us.. He gives an example about going to a cafe expecting to meet his friend Pierre there. He can't find Pierre, and he noticed that "not Pierre" appears everywhere to him in the cafe, in a visceral way. The chairs, tables, and people all take on an extra property in his perception, "not Pierre". Similar there is a classic joke about Sartre: he is at a cafe (pretty much everything about Sartre always happens at cafes, he was very French), and orders a coffee without cream. The waiter apologizes and says they don't have any cream, and asks if he would like his coffee without milk instead.
Like a suspicious amount of Sartre's thought experiments, it also sounds a bit like a drug trip, possible because it was.
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Socrates: "when you think about it I'm the most humble person in the world. By far, really."
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To be fair if a philosopher of any kind is drowning you should probably just let them.
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This is a parody of Peter Singer's Drowning Child thought experiment. He asks us to imagine someone who sees a child drowning, and doesn't help them because they can't be bothered. He claims there is no logical difference between a child drowning 10 yards away, and one starving on the other side of the world, so we are equally obligated to help both.
The argument giving by the bystanders that he is old and no longer working, and therefore a drain on society, is similar to his arguments that we should perhaps euthanize severely disabled people (via abortion), because the resources spent to care for them could be spent to help many more people, which causes more global good.
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