Philosophical Dictionary

The “existence is suffering” meme seals a small leak with the biggest claim in Buddhism. The Buddha’s first sermon, SN 56.11, gives the first noble truth a list that includes not getting what you want, a summary clause most people skip, and three more truths that come with instructions. So what does dukkha mean?

It sounds like a riddle: you can do what you want, but you can’t want what you want. Schopenhauer meant the idea literally, and Einstein found it consoling. We trace the line to the 1839 essay behind it, unpack his theory of will, motive and character, and ask: if you never chose your wants, who is to blame?

Last Thursdayism says the universe was created last Thursday, memories included. It began as a joke about a Victorian naturalist who gave Adam a navel and the earth fossils it never needed. Bertrand Russell turned it into a puzzle about memory. Why can no evidence refute it, and why do we still not believe it?

Plenty of people online call themselves free thinkers. The word became a battle cry in 1713, Nietzsche wanted nothing to do with it, and Socrates offered his poverty as proof of honesty while Spinoza turned down a professorship. Can you think freely when someone pays you, and who pays the free thinkers?

In the meme, the rest of academia asks philosophy to do something about its superiority complex, and philosophy calmly replies that it is superior. Philosophy was once called the queen of the sciences, physicists have declared it dead, and the term “superiority complex” comes from a psychologist. So who is right?

In the split screen meme, Plato sits high and Aristotle sits on the floor, cardboard between their halves of the TV. The joke goes back to Raphael’s School of Athens in the Vatican and two hand gestures. Behind them is a 2,300-year argument about Forms, property and ethics. Who won, and was Plato even Plato?