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I asked Philosophy Break’s 27,000+ subscribers how they cultivate wonder within everyday life.

How, even as seasoned veterans of experience, can we preserve a sense of wonder throughout our lives?

With his ‘perspectivism’, Nietzsche claims no one can ever escape their own perspective.

Around 700 years ago, Catherine of Siena wrote a letter outlining why justice works differently for the wealthy and the poor... do you think her analysis still holds today?

As many of us set New Year’s resolutions for 2025, MIT philosophy professor Kieran Setiya argues that we might better serve ourselves by focusing on the quality of processes, not just the result of projects.

The great philosopher Bertrand Russell claims that it’s in leisure, not work, that humanity best expresses itself.

20th-century thinker James Baldwin brilliantly articulates how we can ease our personal and shared suffering by harnessing our pain as a force for good.

Rules of engagement from John Stuart Mill and Daniel Dennett: if you don’t try to understand the opposing view, then you don’t understand your own...

When faced with ‘transformative’ decisions like becoming a parent, Laurie Ann Paul thinks it’s irrational to base them on which path will make us happiest, for we cannot know.

How can we gain more meaning and fulfillment from life?

If there was a day before yesterday, and a day before that, and a day before that, does that mean you can keep going back forever?

We suffer more in our imaginations than in reality, Epicurus says: by exposing our false beliefs, we can get closer to achieving tranquility.

While day-to-day life might disguise itself behind a mask of repetitive cyclicity, the Buddhist concept of anicca is coming for us all...

For 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, our ‘true selves’ are not hidden within us: they are something ever above us, something we must actively work towards.

Occasionally, we might be struck by a disturbing feeling: that life is absurd, and nothing we do matters.

For 20th-century German philosopher Hannah Arendt, most evil is committed by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

A quick introduction to the philosophical doctrine of pantheism, and the God that Albert Einstein believed in.

The way we organize society, argues 20th-century political philosopher John Rawls, is best considered under a ‘veil of ignorance’.

Does living a good, happy life depend in part on external circumstances?

Though we may all be unique individuals – from different backgrounds, living in different circumstances – we find common ground in the feelings of pain, isolation, and existential angst that structure our shared human condition.

Around 2,500 years ago, the Buddha offered his Four Noble Truths: that we live in an ongoing state of dissatisfaction, that this dissatisfaction has a cause, that it can cease, and that there is a path to bringing about its cessation...

Popular claims that free will is an illusion tend to miss that, within philosophy, the debate hinges not on whether determinism is true, but on whether determinism and free will are compatible – and most philosophers working today think they are.

How many things have you done for the last ever time, without knowing it was the last ever time?

I asked Philosophy Break’s 27,000+ subscribers what makes life worth living.

Build and enrich your personal philosophy with the help of 6 of the world's wisest philosophies for living, including Stoicism, Buddhism, and Existentialism.

Heidegger on “everydayness”, the anonymous “They”, and how we can cultivate authenticity in a world that is constantly trying to make us something else.

With her famous example of the hostile mother-in-law, Iris Murdoch argues that moral life involves more than good decision-making and behavior; attention itself has a moral dimension.

Since the time of Socrates, Nietzsche claims that Western culture has generally been too biased towards the ‘Apollonian’ (representing order and rationality) over the ‘Dionysian’ (chaos and vitality) – to the great detriment of art, truth, and the human p…

Have you ever felt a thrill during a thunderstorm?

Both sides of the nature vs. nurture debate get it wrong, claims the philosopher Mary Midgley.

Whose responsibility is it to improve society?

Philosopher Daniel Dennett on why the real danger of AI is not its potential hyper-intelligence.

Simone de Beauvoir suggests that for a relationship to be healthy, it must augment the freedom of those involved, rather than diminish it.

The great Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius on why living a good life comes down to one simple principle: practicing kindness.

With his famous formulation of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham suggests moral acts are those that have the highest positive impact on the world.

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s dilemma of the prickly porcupine is his wistful parable on the fraughtness of human connection: in seeking intimacy, we inevitably push each other away.

With his famous discussion of a waiter, Sartre argues that to limit ourselves to predefined social roles is to live in ‘bad faith’.

In his 2015 work Burnout Society, the philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues a cult of individual achievement has led to mass burnout and depression across society.

Just as Copernicus solved lots of astronomy’s problems by hypothesizing that the earth orbits the sun, rather than the other way round, Kant claims to solve philosophy’s problems by arguing our minds are shaped not by reality, but that reality is shaped by

Seneca argues that chasing things like wealth or fame will result in a life that feels perpetually unfinished: “if, no matter how far you travel, there always seems to be some further place you need to reach, that is a sure sign that the desire is contrary

In his famous 1841 essay Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson argues that society is in conspiracy against our individuality.

The two ancient Confucian philosophers hold famously opposed views on human nature.

While Nietzsche was in search of one kind of madness – i.e. the euphoric affirmation of life – he tragically fell victim to another.

Despite the modern use of the word ‘stoic’, Stoicism does not tell us to repress our feelings, rather it tells us to use our judgment to accept and reframe them.

There is no human nature, Jean-Paul Sartre argues, there is only a human condition.

With his dichotomy of control, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus argues that the surest path to an untroubled mind is to work out what we can and can’t change, focus on the former, and embrace the latter.

In his fantastic 1988 essay The Pursuit of the Ideal, Isaiah Berlin argues utopian visions of society, while inspiring in theory, have in practice the potential to do serious harm.

If we are to develop ourselves morally, ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius argues, it is not just our individual habits that matter: our shared, cultural habits play a crucial role.

A lesson from the Buddha on why solving the immediate problem of suffering is the only philosophical pursuit that should command our attention.

Scientific explanations of reality will never provide us with purpose, Kierkegaard argues, for by abstracting away our subjectivity we strip the world of meaning.