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Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, edited
Tractatus Logico-philosophicus By Ludwig Wittgenstein The book deals with the problems of philosophy, and shows, I believe, that the reason why these problems are posed is that the logic of our language is misunderstood. The whole sense of the book might be summed up the following words: what can be said at all can be [...]
Hobbes’ Leviathan, edited
CHAPTER XIII: OF THE NATURAL CONDITION OF MANKIND AS CONCERNING THEIR FELICITY AND MISERY NATURE hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between [...]
Hobbes’ Leviathan, decoded
CHAPTER XIII: How miserable and happy people generally are. Every man is weak while he is asleep. Certainly, some men are stronger or smarter than others but no man is so strong or so smart that he can never be outsmarted or defeated. The weak and the dumb can band together to defeat even the [...]
John Stuart Mill, bio
John Stuart Mill Mill was one of the most rock-and-roll guys of the nineteenth century. He learned to speak ancient Greek before he was three years old. By the time he was eight, he was reading the old geometers in Latin. He was a brilliant logician and economist by his teens. To call him a [...]
Mill: Utilitarianism, Chapter 2
What Utilitarianism Is. Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility, meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, [...]
Mill’s Utilitarianism. Chapter 2, decoded
Most people define utility as ‘usefulness’, and they think that useful things are better than merely pleasurable, ornamental, or beautiful things. Utilitarians say that utility is pleasure, and insist that something useful is something pleasurable—and something pleasurable is useful, even if it is ‘merely’ ornamental or beautiful. The Greatest Happiness Principle is this: actions are [...]
Marx’s Communist Manifesto, decoded
A spectre is haunting Europe. It is the spectre of communism. We communists are everywhere. It is now time to tell you what we think. I: Bourgeois and Proletarians Real history is the history of class struggles. Real history is the story of the rich screwing the poor and the poor fighting back. History has [...]
Marx’s Communist Manifesto, edited
1: Proletarians and Communists A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now [...]
Karl Marx’ bio
It’s hard to like Karl Marx. His ideas have led to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Stalin and Mao starved and tortured their people while mouthing phrases from the Manifesto. Of course, Marx can hardly be held culpable for the sins of his followers. Yet Marx was himself an ass. He kept [...]
Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals I-II, decoded
First Section The only good thing is a good will. Intelligence, wit, courage and wealth can be abused. A good will cannot be abused. A good will shines like a jewel, even if bad luck leads it to bad effects. Many people take joy in being kind to others. I maintain that actions like this [...]