What is it about them philosophers?

Voltaire and Diderot at the Cafe Procope

Do philosophers today

know what they say;

or do they conspire

to make us tire

of frumpery and fog,

to feel like a cog

and slip a gear

from some primal fear

that every word

is genuinely dear

—or simply absurd?

– RDG

Polling Today’s Philosophers about What They Believe

Want to know what today’s philosophers believe? Anthony Gottlieb reports results of a poll taken by Australian philosopher David Chalmers. The Chalmers poll probes philosophers’ beliefs about

Arthur Schopenhauer’s Penchant for Animals

Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

I don’t know whether Arthur Schopenhauer liked animals, but he sure did talk about them a lot. And what he had to say makes you wonder if he wasn’t Plato come back as a 19th-century zoologist pretending to be a philosopher.

If his philosophical theory is right, he really had no choice.

Sources:

• The World as Will and Representation (1818/1819)
• On the Freedom of the Will (1839)