Often when people fear hell, they fear it in the sense of an afterlife of eternal torment, or, perhaps more sophisticatedly, eternal separation from God. As others have noted, though, hell exists on earth in a variety of forms. For example, you can read Sartre’s “No Exit” as making the case that “hell is other people.” As an introvert, I find that line of thinking attractive, but I think a more pressing form of hell on earth is putting one’s…
“…if I say again that the greatest human good is daily to converse about virtue [value/meaning], and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living – that you are still less likely to believe.” —Socrates in Plato’s Apology Others have written on this essay’s topic, likely better than I. And since my background is largely academic, I feel a pressing urge to research what they’ve said,…
In an attempt to get clearer, and less hyperbolic, about the value of suffering, I earlier suggested the idea of a suffering threshold, which is the “point” at which suffering loses its (positive) value and warrants easing. The idea of easing suffering leads directly to compassion/pity and this passage from section 338 of Nietzsche’s the Gay Science: The whole economy of my soul and the balance effected by “distress,” the way new springs and needs break open, the way in…
In the well-known parable of the arrow, the Buddha responds negatively to the usefulness of answering certain metaphysical questions. The point that he makes is that they are not important for furthering the goal of alleviating dukkha (suffering/existential dissatisfaction): Whether the view is held that the world is eternal or not, Malunkyaputta, there is still birth, old age, death, grief, suffering, sorrow and despair – and these can be destroyed in this life! I have not explained these other things…
It has long seemed to me folly to assume that one thing can determine the right or the good in all contexts in the way that, for example, Kantian deontologists and utilitarians claim. Each time I teach global ethics, this “feeling” is heightened. Why could it not be the case that in one context consequences are more relevant and in another intentions? For example, a person is careless while driving, looking at his iPod, and ends up killing someone, quite…
I have long been drawn to Buddhism and to Nietzsche’s ideas. After much thought, I propose a reconciliation; I propose the creation of a Nietzschean Buddhism. How could this be a possibility? After all, the third noble truth of Buddhism is that there is a way out of suffering, and the fourth noble truth gives us the way out. Suffering is optional, as is staying in samsara, the eternal recurrence of rebirth and a life of suffering. How is that…
In an earlier essay I raised some questions about the value of suffering, especially the default assumption that suffering is to be avoided and brought to a quick end when it does occur. In Nietzsche’s writing we find claims that suffering has instrumental value and intrinsic value, or at least it will to the higher types of human beings who have the appropriate will. Here I want to consider the claim that suffering has instrumental value and what that means…
The cessation of suffering is Buddhism’s end goal. The Buddha has discovered how to do it, according to Buddhism and Buddhists who have achieved the goal. A supposedly central requirement for achieving the goal is to realize the truth of no-self: there is no substantial self that endures over time. Leaving aside what exactly this means, an important question regards why one should accept the doctrine of no-self. The Buddha gave arguments for the view and later Buddhists gave still…
When doing philosophy, when trying to understand something better, one should optimally do a combination of the following: think about the topic, research what others have said, and talk to friends and colleagues about the topic. Here I’m writing the results of the first and hoping to engage in the third. I’m feeling a bit lazy about doing the second, at this point. Thinking about desire, I am fairly perplexed. One way to begin thinking about desire is to say…
In a recent essay, I made a distinction between what I called epistemic reasons and purely causal reasons. The former are potentially truth preserving (capable of providing epistemic justification) the latter are not even potentially truth preserving (and thus are incapable of providing epistemic justification). In this essay, I’m going to appeal to the same basic distinction regarding reasons that do and do not provide epistemic justification, but I’m going to refer to them simply as epistemic reasons (ERs) and…