Philosophical Dictionary

Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language in one place: the picture theory of the Tractatus, meaning as use, the beetle in the box, and what the Sapir-Whorf debate says about whether language shapes thought.

Join us as we explore Descartes's philosophical revolution which is listed amongst the likes of Newton and Copernicus. Descartes, a Rationalist, sought to rebuild knowledge on the foundation of reason alone, famously using his method of Cartesian Doubt to discard uncertain beliefs making him an extremist Socratic reincarnation. We delve into his Meditations 6, particularly his exploration of the mind-body problem, where he argued for the distinct, yet interacting, substances of mind (res cogitans) and body (res extensa). We also look at criticisms of Descartes’ Dualism by figures like Princess Elizabeth and Gilbert Ryle, who mockingly called it the “Dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.” 

Camus ends a book about suicide with a man pushing a rock forever and calls him happy. Here is what “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” really means, the Greek myth behind it, what the French original says, how painters from Titian onward showed Sisyphus, the best objections from Taylor and Nagel, and why the meme says “asymptomatic”.

Kant proposed that our perception of the world is shaped by our senses and mental faculties, filtering reality into a comprehensible form. The "Thing-in-Itself," however, represents the elusive reality that lies beyond our perceptual limitations. By grasping this concept, you can challenge the boundaries of your own understanding and explore what lies beneath the surface of appearances.

Nietzsche’s Übermensch is quoted everywhere, from gyms to tech conferences, yet he wrote surprisingly little about it, and complained that readers took it for a half-saint, half-genius or the next stage of evolution. What does the overman in Thus Spoke Zarathustra actually stand for, and who is the last man the crowd prefers?

What is linguistic confusion? How the later Wittgenstein used language games, meaning as use and philosophy as therapy to dissolve philosophical problems, with everyday examples.