r/askphilosophy

I hope this question is alright. So here's the thing, I've read Musashi Miyamoto's book and I've read parts of Seneca, and those were pretty easy to understand. But all I got from the first bit of The Myth of Sisyphus was, don't kill yourself, it's dumb and there's no good reason. Like I could tell there was more but I just didn't get it. Am I dumb or is it really this large of a jump, secondly, yall got any tips to make this a bit easier?

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Early thirties guy here in the US. I served a two year Christian mission and have read countless philosophy and religion books trying to solve the question of god since I was a kid (what, who is it, does god exist and in what way ect.)

In 2026, I focused on Hinduism and so far it feels the most “true” of anything I’ve encountered. I’ve read the Gita 16 times, the Upanishads 4 times and the Dhammapada once, and I just can’t get enough . It’s so good and has been so helpful and comforting.

Still… Any suggestions on modern philosophers I could read? Maybe someone familiar with world religions?

I’m so frustrated all the time at the same questions about life and god’s existence (or lack thereof). Just fishing for anything here, something to help. I’m amazed at history and how many humans have lived and asked these questions and then find myself frustrated once again that everyone has asked and seemingly no one has an answer that works for everyone and everything. Any of you annoyed that no one really knows? Doesn’t that bother you immensely?

Please help. I’m happy to answer follow up questions. Just need some support here.

One of the issues with non-scholarly answers is the underdetermination of a proper answer. Faced with different candidates we need a reliable way to sort out the noise from the meaningful, the good and the bad. That is why we accept the answers of experts: they stand for the proper and reliable methodology to derive the best answers.

Yet, it is my experience that there's plenty of underdetermination within scholarship. It even seems that plurality of interpretations, even to the point of giving mutually explicit answers is common.

For example, if I want to know how for Kant appearances stand in relation to things-in-themselves, there is the two worlds interpretation, or one object two aspects, the distinction being metaphysical vs epistemic(amongst other candidates, like T K Seung who not uncompellingly for me argues for Kant as Platonic, as weird as this sounds).

Or if I want to know Locke, some scholars read him saying that not all knowledge comes from experience in a strong sense, others take the classical reading of him as a representationalist, others as a direct realist, others in a third way.

What is fascism? What is modernity? What is idealism? What is realism? What is the ontological status of moral duties? Is Hegel a radical empirist(even a materialist as I read an expert comment), a rationalist, is his Absolute Spirit theological? Political? Something else?

It seems that whenever I try to determine something, when consulting scholarship the answer(sometimes explicitly so) is: experts differ. Which does not allow determination of the topic. And the disagreements are major and foundational, which gives radically different determinations. This is not like the odd biologist who may disagree with evolution. What is a lay guy like me to do?

I remember being particular confused(and frustrated) reading Vere Chappel's "The Cambridge Companion to Locke". Different authors(all considered, obviously, expert enough to appear on the Cambridge Companion) present a radically different Locke. After reading it, I was unclear as to what Locke even intended, much less so what he argued for. I was left with a Locke that was at the same time: an indirect realist, a skeptical/veil of perception representationalist, a direct presentational realist, and intermediate combinations between them. This not only in relation to his epistemology but as well to his morality, his religiosity and to his politics.

And this seems to be a pattern. It seems that for nearly all topic I reach for it's: "in this interpretative line which is foundational, there is both A, !A and an intermediary which is both and neither A or !A", which is entirely undetermined. Imagine I were to go to a car mechanic asking advice for which oil to use on my car, and one expert told me "do not use X oil, if you do so you will screw the motor", another says "you must use X oil, it is the best for your motor", and another say "it could be or could not be", another saying "it is good but not the optimal one", and another saying "it is bad but it will not destroy the motor, it will merely run less efficiently".

I need a reliable methodology to then distinguish scholars. I cannot treat them all equally. But this already seems a very problematic task. How do I know without being a scholar myself what is the proper determination(which is the entire point of consulting experts in the first place) for scholar selection? It not necessarily would be the most common view(which is already hard to know for there are, as far as I'm aware, no such granular surveys), or the latest view, or the most radical view. I think in other fields it can be easier, as if Feynman tells me X about physics, I know nearly for a fact that X about physics is true. My physics teacher may disagree, another scholar may disagree, but I stand on solid ground listening to Feynman. There are some leading figures in different fields within philosophy, such as making this easier(I can reliably trust their expertise on the consensus of a field), but fewer that one may wish for.

So, what is the realistic way for a layperson to get reliable and sound determinations of topics despite the plural indetermination in the literature?

I'm asking this as a philosophical question about autonomy and consent.

We generally respect a competent adult's right to make decisions about their own body, even when those decisions can result in death. Someone can refuse chemotherapy, blood transfusions, or other life saving treatment, and we usually respect that choice.

So why is intentionally choosing death treated differently?

I understand that suicidal decisions are often influenced by depression, psychosis, trauma, temporary crises, or impaired judgment. In those cases, intervention seems more justified because autonomy may be compromised.

But what about a hypothetical person who is sober, mentally competent, uncoerced, understands the consequences, has considered the decision for years, and consistently wants to die? What gives society the moral authority to override their decision simply because the decision is to die?If human life has value independent of what the individual wants, what is the philosophical basis for that value? And if autonomy matters, where exactly should the line be drawn between protecting someone from an impaired decision and paternalistically forcing a competent person to remain alive?

I'm not arguing that suicide or assisted suicide should necessarily be legal. I'm asking what the strongest argument against it actually is.

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I am studying philosophy in highschool, so I am not - by any means - appropriately educated to claim that I have any deep understanding of any philosophy or philosopher.

I often ask find myself very annoyed when books or teachers compare philosophers and say that one "surpasses", "defeats" or "proves" wrong another one. I think there is just no such thing as a more correct philosophy. We've recently studied Hegel, so I will use the comparison between Kant and Hegel as an example.

Kant claims that there some things that are unknowable due to limits of reason; he supports this claim with the existence of antinomies, that supposedly prove that reason can fail. Hegel argues that the contraddictions that Kant found are not final, but are just a part of the dialectical process, which makes everything, including conscience possible. So contraddictions aren't just possible, they're necessary.

I hold Kant and Hegel in the highest respect for their intellectual productions and endeavors, but to me it seems really wrong comparing their philosophies. They are indubitably very smart individuals, but they have founded their philosophies and constructed their lines of reasoning on completely different premises, observations and intuitions. So it doesn't really make sense to state something like:

Hegel surpassed the limits that Kant had postulated.

Or even worse:

Hegel proves that the noumena are impossible.

It's not fair to dismiss Kant's conclusions and reasoning using a completely different system which is just as arbitrary as the one he used. Hegel and Kant believed very different things and used very different arguments to explain their thought processes. I think that comparing Kant's and Hegel philosophy is like comparing apples to oranges, meaning that it's a comparison that doesn't make sense and whatever result you may gather from that comparison is worthless (because the comparison itself is nonsensical).

Am I wrong to believe that philosophical discussion between two very different philosophies is kind of pointless because they affirm truths that are equally as valid and as undeniable in their own realm? The discussion produces nothing in the absolute, because there is no philosophically inferable absolute truth, so is it just a way for the philosophical standpoints themselves to be explained even more deeply?

I think that philosophy (like art) is intrinsically beautiful and that it is infinitely valuable even though it doesn't always have practical applications (especially in the case of metaphysics) just like pure mathematics. But what I am really asking is does it make sense from a purely speculative perspective to compare different philosophies and to claim that one has some weaknesses compared to another one (or, even more bluntly, that one is "better")?

TLDR- we can't know any fact for certain, therefore we can be certain of the fact that we can't know anything for certain. Paradox?

Hello, complete dummy here. I've just been thinking, there is no way that anything can be proved 100%, right? Any claim that is made can be argued that it was not conclusive. Anyone can say "No, that's not true, we just live in a simulation/ the light simply bent in a way that made it look like that" Any infinitely rare claim can be made to show that it was wrong, and even if you prove that second claim to be wrong, it can always be argued that the second result isn't real from some minutely small possibility. Since this loop can go on forever of being skeptic of the result with no way of ultimately proving anyone right, is it fair to say that we know anything for certain?

If this proves that we cannot know anything for certain, is it therefore not a fact that we can know for certain.

I'm not really sure what im asking with this. I guess I'm just wondering if this is a thing that other people have written about before. I definitely dont think I'm some genius who's come up with something no one else has, I'm just curious

I picked up the myth of sisyphus because the subject matter interested me however, it feels like everything is going over my head I wanted to read it fully before looking anything up so I could read it without other people opinions impacting how I think about it untill I was done. Is there a easier book I could start with and build up to the myth of sisyphus or should I do some research first about the book and try reading it again? Thanks