Memento mori is Latin for remember that you must die. A scary thought at first – contemplating the inevitability of death can make you desperate, frustrated and anxious. To be Stoic is to accept things…
Author: Drazen
Hermann Hesse on Knowledge and Wisdom in Two Powerful Quotes from Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse should be on any soul-searcher’s reading list. Hesse’s novels, each exploring one’s authenticity and path to self knowledge, help you question, understand and appreciate the uniqueness of everyone’s path in life. All across…
José Ortega y Gasset – Barbarism of Specialization [Revolt of the Masses chapter summary]
In his 1930 book The Revolt of the Masses (Spanish: La rebelión de las masas) José Ortega y Gasset deals with the rise of mass-man and the question of how around the turn of the…
The Value of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
“That’s a philosophical question!” – have you ever received such a response when questioning underlying reasons of some practical matters? Such a question will often be dismissed as impractical, unhelpful or completely unrelated to the…
Karl Popper on the Difference Between Successful and Creative Thinking
“It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover”, said Henri Poincaré, a famous French mathematician. As an expansion on Poincaré’s succinct thought, Popper gives an unsurprising explanation of the intuition part of creativity…
Jiddu Krishnamurti on Fear – What is Behind the Fear of the Unknown?
The First and Last Freedom is an odd book. Being a collection excerpts from Krishnamurti’s public talks and discussions, its conversational style of writing makes me read it hastily, inevitably returning to reread each paragraph.…
Isaiah Berlin on The Pillars of Western Rationalism (from The Roots Of Romanticism)
In The Roots of Romanticism, Isaiah Berlin argues that Romanticism is, among thought movements in recent history, the one that most strongly shaped the history of the Western world. And not only in the arts,…
Robert M. Pirsig – The Metaphor of a Spiritual Mountain
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, a philosophical novel and a fictionalized autobiography, Robert M. Pirsig uses a journey through mountains as an elegant metaphor for one’s spiritual journey through…
Richard Schweder’s Three Ethics That Help Understand Culture Wars
Many of the key battles in the American culture war are essentially about whether some aspect of life should be structured by the ethic of autonomy or by the ethic of divinity…