#1012 - Alex O’Connor & Joe Folley - Is Being Smart Worth the Depression?

“Aristotle in some ways following in the footsteps of some of you as thinkers like Epicurus is a very, very big fan of friendship. It's in two. It's book eight and nine of the Nicomachean Ethics.”

“Camus talks about a few examples at the beginning of the myth of Sisyphus, mentioning philosophers who wrote tracts and then killed themselves to bring attention to their work.”

“His first book is called On The Heights Of Despair. It's, you know, truly melodramatic.”

“He wrote a book called Better Never to Have Been, which sounds like one of these sort of, you know, I'm about to write about how terrible how terrible life is.”

“Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground originally contained a chapter arguing for the necessity of Christianity, which was censored.”

“The Plague is an amazing novel that became a bestseller during COVID, exploring how people cope with a plague in Oran.”

“Hobbes writes The Leviathan, advocating for submission to an authoritarian dictator during the English Civil War.”

“One's called The Trouble With Being Born. Another's called A Short History Of Decay.”

“Camus writes The Rebel, discussing what an absurdist can coherently value without falling back on a leap of faith.”

“One's called The Trouble With Being Born. Another's called A Short History Of Decay.”

“Camus writes a play called Caligula, which explores the consequences of his earlier philosophical ideas.”

“Plato's The Republic is a political treatise that also explores the theory of the human mind.”

“In The Laws, Plato focuses on how to keep everyone in check rather than what makes a good ruler.”

“David Hume writes The Treatise Concerning Human Nature, which he later revises into a shorter work.”

“Hume revises his thoughts into the much shorter Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, posited as an update.”

“The excerpt discusses an example from Jonathan Haidt's book, which involves consequentialists and a theoretical scenario regarding incest.”

“Philip was the first guy I had an entire conversation with about, and that was on his first book.”

“Stendhal, the French author, travels around Europe and in his little notes, he talks about the spirit of the German and the spirit of Italy.”