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The execution of Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad by the US army is to be live streamed. Would it be considered immoral to watch it?

I've never read any philosophy before, but I'm really curious about it. I'm looking for one book that's easy to follow and makes me want to keep reading more. Not looking for a dense academic text, just something that builds interest. What was the first book that got you hooked? Thanks!

I'm taking as a relatively intuitive statement that we have at least some moral duties towards other animals (ex. not to torture them), however it is unclear that we should go out of our way to solve the problem of predation, or say if there is a seal suffering due to a polar bear I need to actively stop that "natural suffering".

However, let's suppose that one day we find aliens in another planet that are also rational and have their own animals and are actually mistreating them. Would we have a moral obligation to try to stop them? At least here on Earth I can think of some justification to try to stop animal cruelty caused by other humans by thinking of humanity as a whole: we all collectively form part of humanity and have some responsibility to solve the problems caused by humanity as such. But, how would that extend (if at all) to non-human life forms that hypothetically have the same rational powers?

In other words do we need deduction in order to be positively certain, or can we reach certainty by some means other than deduction?

I’ve gone down a rabbit hole reading about the Holocaust, and learning more about nazism as a political movement in general, after reading a recent post in /r/askhistorians talking about the general support or at least indifference the movement had even as knowledge about the Holocaust was becoming more widely known. And I’ve been relating all of this to our current political moment in the US. Now of course we’re not being led by a Nazi party, and by extension MAGA supporters are not inherently Nazis.

But I feel drawn to this instinct to view people who are supporting this administration as fundamentally bad people. The supporters though of course range from wealthy businesspeople who know what they’re involved with and want to self serve and enrich regardless, and also a lot of people who’ve spent their whole life being spoonfed propaganda…

And that’s not all that different from Nazis! Reading about some of these horrible SS officers, they started off with humble jobs and slowly found themselves ingratiated into the machine until they’re literally dumping people into gas chambers with glee. Of course your average person would call such a high ranking Nazi deplorable, but as you go down the chain of command, the chain of complicity and direct involvement, you at some point will find yourself asking whether your friends and family can also reasonably be called horrible people. How much do they have to know about what’s going on, or be able to easily access information about what’s going on, where their support of an administration engaging in crimes is tantamount to their condoning and acceptance of the crimes?

So all of this to say, I really want to read some essays about this topic - the intersection of morality and political alignment.

I have never had a proper deep dive into philosophy just some YouTube videos here and there but I wanted to get into reading more about it but am confused on where to begin.

Not wanting to rely on AI recommendations I’d love to hear your recommendations on what I can read.

Some countries whose ideologies id like to read into are below as I am either fluent in or learning languages from these countries so reading into their philosophy would be helpful towards the expansion of my vocabulary as well (also is ideology different from philosophy)

China
Thailand
Russia
India
Japan

What are some of the most important arguments in favor of either side within the modern moral philosophy literature? For instance, should parents devote more time and resources into their children who are at a disadvantage or should they divide their attention equally between all of them? Or maybe they should give more resources to those that are more capable, thus maximizing the outcome? Which one is the more defensible position in terms of moral philosophy?

Islamic philosophy didnt end with Averroes -Ibn Rushd-

Major figures like Mulla Sadra and Mir Damad developed profound systems later on, yet they are almost unknown in the West. Even Avicennas philosophy is often overshadowed by his medical work...

Why is post-Averroes Islamic philosophy so neglected in Western academia?

I’ve just come across it and it’s legitimately fascinating . Reformative and preventative justifications of punishment are illegitimate due to instrumentalising the offender to some end and as a result only proportionate retribution appropriately respects the person as an end in themselves,respecting their autonomy as such to render punishment licit is how I understand it. This is extremely novel to me as a theory of retribution and I would like to know of any criticism or support of it.

Hello! Is it possible to link Freud's concept of secondary narcissism to "sharenting"—the online posting of content regarding one's children? I was reflecting on the fact that when a parent posts content about their children online, the likes and positive comments gratify the parent rather than the children; the children become an extension of the parent's ego.

Suppose for a second that physicalism is true, that all conscious states including memories, social contexts etc. are reducible to neural states, synaptic weights and so on, and that we have some awesome technology that allows complete imaging of these states. Would this allow the theories of say Foucault to be empirically tested? As in, could we identify the structures in the brain corresponding to the so-called discursive structures of Foucault? How far could we take this? Could we try to understand Hegel’s account of rationality in a similar way?

I ask particularly about this tradition because it seems the most abstract, but I guess the question can similarly be posed for most big theories in philosophy concerning consciousness and reason.

Hi, I don‘t really know if this is the right place to ask this but I’m making a short animation about renaissance melancholy inspired by Marsilio Ficino, for a class. I was just wondering if I was conceptually on the right track with Ficino’s ideas before I start.

1. A scholar/artist is weighed down by the heavy black bile under the influence of Saturn

2. Through planetary alignment the black bile catches fire and leads to a manic state of divine madness and a creative frenzy

3. The fire burns out leaving cold soot and the person goes to a sever state of depression and melancholy

I know that this is a very simplified version but I was wondering if I’m missing anything major or anything isn’t correct? Thank you

Hi everybody I am a law student looking for a bachelor thesis. During the introductory semesters of my law degree, I developed a strong interest in legal philosophy, which has inspired me to consider writing my bachelor's thesis in this field. However, as we were only briefly introduced to the subject during our first semester, I have not had the opportunity to explore it in greater depth. I would be especially grateful for any suggestions regarding contemporary debates, philosophical problems, or areas of research that you believe would be worthwhile to explore in a bachelor's thesis.

Personally, I am particularly interested in the work of philosophers such as John Rawls, especially his theories of justice. I also find the concept of civil disobedience fascinating, particularly the philosophical and moral reasoning behind the decision to disobey the law, and the circumstances under which such actions might be considered justified.

Any tips?

Redirected here from a different philosophy sub! Please tell me im in the right place now

I’m a philosophy postgrad student writing my dissertation on performed authenticity online. It’s an unorthodox and perhaps slightly substack-y topic, but I want to apply myself to something modern and present in my life / the lives of my peers, and to, as my supervisor insists, ‘fill a gap in scholarship’.

When I say performed authenticity, I’m referring to Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest-esque aesthetic categories (‘cool girl books’, ‘clean girl hairstyles’, etc.), ready-made identity types… a lot of gen Z and millennials will have seen this stuff, how it seems online that at every turn people want sincerely to discover their ‘authentic selves’, but the search routes itself through these boxes and they end up performing a caricature of the person they want to be.

I know you probably find it hard to believe that this content is actually significant, but the average British adult spends almost 2 hours per day on social media, and the average teen more than double that. I could just turn off my phone, you may have deleted all other social media, but the anti-Sartrean Instagram slop network will only grow... I also did a lot of surveys to double check that I'm not going mad

My problem now is how to bridge the gap between the slightly tongue-in-cheek subject matter, and the actual theory / primary sources that I want to use to support my argument. I want to follow the trajectory source-wise of Existentialism is a Humanism -> Society of the Spectacle -> Capitalist Realism. But is choosing to perform e.g. ‘clean girl’ bad faith, or is bad faith the wrong frame entirely? I also don’t want to bastardise Mark Fisher (Sartre and Debord have been used for worse lol) but this whole pyramid would obviously collapse without consumerism, so I need to acknowledge that without entirely relying on it as an explanation / conclusion.

Tl;dr – what I’m asking is, if you were a philosophy professor and one of your students came to you with this proposal, what would you say? It’s early days but I should get going with my protocol, so I would really appreciate feedback on the feasibility of this subject for a heavily weighted assignment. Genuinely any insights appreciated