In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human being.
Philosophy
Questions about knowledge, fairness and how to live.
53 passages
Philosophy passages
And now let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened.
We tend to treat attention as if it were free, as if we could spend it everywhere at once and lose nothing.
Doubt has a bad reputation.
Boredom can feel like an empty room, and our first instinct is to fill it.
Imagine a wooden ship kept in a harbor as a monument.
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus distinguished what depends on our own judgment and choice from what does not depend on us alone.
A community library receives six identical art kits.
When two explanations both fit the facts, which should you believe?
Suppose you were asked to design the rules of a society, including its laws and distribution of resources, but with one strange condition.
A philosophical puzzle describes a wooden ship preserved in a harbour.
In Plato's writings, Socrates asks people to examine ideas they use confidently, such as courage and justice.
Epictetus was born into slavery in the Roman Empire and was later freed.
In the Republic, Plato asks his readers to imagine prisoners who have spent their whole lives chained in a cave, facing a blank wall.
In A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume noticed a shift in moral arguments.
In 1971 the political philosopher John Rawls proposed a test for fair rules.
A short story near the end of the second chapter of the Zhuangzi describes a striking dream.
Take ten thousand grains of sand piled on a table.
In 1974 the philosopher Robert Nozick described a machine that could give you any experience you wanted.
A saying associated with ubuntu is often rendered in English as: a person is a person through other persons.
Suppose you pass a shallow pond and see a small child drowning.
In Aristotle's account, moral virtue develops through habituation.
The philosopher Iris Murdoch imagined a mother-in-law, M, who behaves faultlessly toward her son's wife, D, while privately finding her shallow, pushy, and beneath him.
Suppose Mira must decide whether to approve a proposal.
Imagine a person blind from birth but able to recognize a cube and a sphere by touch.
Imagine Mara, a scientist who studies color vision in a room where everything is black, white, or gray.
Imagine a hungry donkey standing exactly between two equal piles of hay.
Imagine that Arun and Bela enter a machine.
Can an all-powerful being create a stone so heavy that the being cannot lift it?
Imagine someone inside a closed room who does not understand Chinese.
Imagine a transporter that scans Leila, destroys the original, and builds a version on Mars.
Consider this sentence: “This sentence is false.”
Mara enters the library and sees a wall clock showing 8:15.
A dirt path crosses the corner of a public green.
A trail is often treated as an invitation: the ground is open, so anyone may pass.
A map can tell you where a marsh begins, a field guide can name its reeds, and a forecast can predict tomorrow's rain.
A rule feels easy when it helps us.
People sometimes imagine a strong belief as a door bolted shut.
A single observation can fit more than one explanation.
Imagine that Niko paints a blue circle on a gate and decides it means meet here at noon.
A meeting room contains one thermostat and twelve people.
Four neighbors create a rhythm for a street play.
When Lila promises to unlock the workshop at eight, her sentence changes other people’s plans.
People often ask whether their work is meaningful, but the question can hide different demands.
A person often helps someone nearby before helping a stranger far away.
A person promises today to finish a difficult community project next year.
Every choice closes some doors.
A friend shows you a painting and asks whether it is good.
Today’s decision can shape distant lives.
We cannot enter another creature's mind.
A thousand visitors each step off a marked trail once.
Milo returns a lost wallet.
People praise an “authentic” life, guided from within rather than performed for approval.
More passages
Want a passage picked for you?
Reading comprehension gives you a passage at the level you choose, timed, with its questions one at a time.