A quick addition: there are online, email based reading groups. These involve people all over the world slowly reading their way through and discussing a text of mutual interest.

A quick addition to Professor Heck's response. Most but not all of the usual list of 'great' philosophers have been travellers. Kant is the most notorious exception. But he lived in a cosmopolitan sea-port, and 'cultural immersion' came to him rather than he to it. I say this only in order to remind us that knowledge of other places and peoples does not have travel as either a necessary or perhaps even a sufficient condition. To broaden your excellent question, it is also the case that many philosophers have had second jobs, so to speak. (Or even that philosophy was never their first 'job'.) It is a relatively recent phenomenon that a philosopher will be attached to an institution of higher education, and that she will pretty much only teach philosophy at that institution. If travel and cultural immersion tends to be a good thing for philosophers, it might also be worth asking whether working in Universities tends not to be.

Well, yes and no. What is likely the case is that our actions all have many motives, only some of which we become aware. Holding open the door could be habit, and in that sense motiveless; or the motive could be the negative one of guilt at not holding it open; or the other person could be attractive, or important; or, as you say, the motive could be the reception of thanks; or it could be a dutiful, selfless act. This complex of motives yields at least two interesting philosophical problems: first, if and how one can train one's habits and develop one's virtues, so that non-moral motives have less effect upon one's actions. In short, so that one is not a slave to one's own impulses. Second, the question of whether a genuinely selfless motive is possible at all, and whether it could ever be a dominant or determining motive. Your 'every scenario' argument seems to be a good one, but can be turned around. Many a scenario in which you see a selfish motive - such as greed - could be read...

Gosh, plenty, although it does depend upon how strictly you are defining ‘objective’ and ‘religious’. Let us say by ‘objective’ we mean: not entirely dependent upon an individual’s whims, circumstances, or desires; and by ‘not religious’ we mean: not justified through faith in a divine being. Then, Aristotle’s ethics (virtue ethics), Kant’s, and Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism all qualify. However, if by objective you mean ‘an object of scientific enquiry’; and if by ‘not religious’ you mean ‘unrelated to any idea of spirituality whatsoever’, then the list is a shorter. Utilitarianism might still qualify. Some would call that its great strength; others its great weakness. Aristotle, on some interpretations, might squeak through; Kant would not. Interestingly, Nietzsche lumps all of these together with more obviously religious beliefs, because for example they all involve idealisation, which he argues itself can only be justified through a kind of faith. On the other hand, he says...

Consider the following quotation from Kant: There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. […] [I]t does not follow that it all arises out of experience . ( Critique of Pure Reason , B1) The point being made is that, of course, your unfortunate child would have nothing to think about without sensory input. But nevertheless, given experience, it may be that the mind makes an a priori contribution to that experience. By the way, I must disagree slightly with my colleagues writing below, at least as far as the interpretation of Kant . From the point of view of Kant, the justification account in Frege oversimplifies matters. This for three reasons. First, because on Kant's analysis there must be at least two distinct a priori grounds, neither of which can ground the other (sensibility and understanding). Thus, for Kant, we must not conflate the distinctions a priori/ a posteriori and analytic/ synthetic. Second, because an analysis of these grounds...

A great question! There may be a middle ground to the answer. Beautiful natural objects, and beautiful poetic objects, might both be considered beautiful because of complex or harmonious formal properties that evoke certain responses (this is, roughly, Kant). If this is the case, the a beautiful poem about something ugly would function differently from a beautiful poem about something beautiful. In the former case, the beauty would be purely formal; in the latter, it would be in part representational. Again, a great question, although I suspect it might also be misleading. Many well-known poems about nature are not actually about nature in a straightforward sense. Poems are rarely like landscape paintings. (Come to think of it, neither are landscape paintings.)

I'm not convinced that European music ever had the clear periodisation that you describe. 'Baroque', 'Classical' and so forth tend to be descriptions applied by historians of music after the fact. In fact, at any one time, there were thousands of composers, working to specialised markets, with different players (large, small, amateur, professional, private, or public) and publishers in mind, with regional styles, and so forth. It may well be that the music scene you describe will, a generation from now, be seen as much more simple and homogeneous than it now appears. History naturally simplifies music just as it naturally simplifies philosophy. Is there more variety now, do genres ‘fragment’ more quickly? Probably, but this may be only a matter of degree, rather than an essential change. Nor am I convinced by the argument that the pursuit of a public, or the employment of new technology, are new phenomena. There were, and still are, ‘artists’ more concerned with making music than with having...

A fascinating question. I suspect that art appreciation might well be important, although perhaps only as a symptom of an underlying difference. Let's look at the question more generally. It is important for us to know what are the essential differences between humans and other animals for two reasons. First, because it is an important part of understanding who we are. Second, because we eat animals, wear their skins, keep them in zoos, experiment on them and so forth -- all things that we tend to feel are morally wrong with respect to human beings. Philosophers, then, tend to be divided into three very general camps. 1. Those who believe that there are morally significant differences between human beings and animals. 2. Those who believe that there are not such differences, and thus tend to argue for animal rights. 3. Those who feel this is the wrong question to be asking. Here, we'll ignore the third group, for simplicity. The most common distinctions given by...

You are right, it is confusing, isn’t it? I guess the simplest answer is that theology is thinking of a broadly philosophical type that takes place within the framework of a given religion or set of beliefs. Whereas, the philosophy of religion is thinking that takes place, as far as possible, outside of or independently from any particular theology. Within the European tradition, and prior to the Reformation, by far the dominant religion was Christianity, and it was at least to some degree homogeneous in its beliefs. So, up until the 15 th Century or so, theology and philosophy of religion overlapped so much as to be often indistinguishable. After the Reformation, however, it became necessary for philosophers to think about religion from a point of view outside either Catholicism or Protestantism, and a more recognisable form of philosophy of religion emerged.

As always with Nietzsche the context needs to be reconstructed. The passage as a whole is addressed to physicians, but the claim you quote is addressed to ‘pessimists’; to those who would renounce life and its values, while continuing to live . Nietzsche is simply asking such pessimists to take seriously their own position. However, we shouldn’t miss the irony of the last phrase: ‘one almost earns the right to live’. Pessimism, on Nietzsche’s analysis, is actually a kind of perverse clinging to life, defending one’s mode of life. So, to be capable of ending it would also mean to not be a pessimist. It would be a contradiction in act. To my mind, the dominant idea in this section, and a beautiful one at that, is the notion of ‘death at the right time’, earlier. This is an affirmation of a generalised suicide, of ‘death chosen freely …[that] makes it possible to have a real leave-taking’. He contrasts this with a Christian attitude towards death, as the last chance to repent, as the...