LIVE AND LET LIVE

William James:
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.

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ON STUDYING KANT

Claire Messud:
A good friend of mine, a philosopher and a Kant scholar, has devoted the past twenty years to interpreting passages of Kant’s Critique of Judgment.

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CHANCE MEETINGS AND THE FORMING OF AN IDENTITY

Mark Twain celebrated his seventieth birthday at a fairly elaborate party, organized by the editor of Harper’s Weekly.

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THE MORE REFINED THE ERROR, THE MORE OBSCURED THE TRUTH

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing:
I do not know whether it be a duty to sacrifice happiness and life to truth.

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CARS AND THE TROLLEY PROBLEM

I suppose that most people are familiar with the trolley problem, an imagined scenario challenging someone with the choice between doing nothing and watching 5 people die and acting to save those five people, knowing that doing that will kill one person.

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WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO

Fyodor Dostoevsky:
Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest.

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