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What we can know, and what we owe each other.
Philosophy asks what we can know, how we should live and why there is anything at all. It starts from the assumptions other fields leave alone.
A question to sit with
Why is there experience at all?
Most explanations describe how things work. This question asks why there is an inner life in the first place, and whether any explanation could reach it.
Three ways in
One topic, three angles.
Knowledge
What can we know?
Epistemology asks what counts as knowing, and how far doubt can be pushed before anything is left standing.
Ethics
How should we live?
Ethics asks what we owe one another and what makes a life go well, across traditions that do not always agree.
Being
Why anything at all?
Metaphysics asks what exists and why. It covers minds, time, freedom and the nature of the self.
Further reading
Where to read more.
TextApology
Plato, c. 399 BCE
Socrates defends a life of questioning at his trial.
TextMeditations on First Philosophy
René Descartes, 1641
Doubts everything it can in search of something certain.
BookThe Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus, 1942
An essay on whether life has meaning when the universe offers none.
Background reading on the topic. Not a recommendation by SoulToRole.
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