Philosophical Perspectives on Meaning, Mortality, and Reality

Vocabulary flashcards covering primary textual excerpts and commentaries on ancient Egyptian literature, narrative ethics, Daoism, Buddhism, Epicureanism, and Spinozist metaphysics.

A Dispute Between a Man and His Ba

An ancient text contemplating the destruction of granite pyramids and altars, human misery for lack of a friend, and the arrival of death like a clearing sky.

World-Repair (Anna Gotlib)

The difficult process of restoring meaning through work, relationships, and direct engagement with suffering, grounded in deliberate action affirming shared humanity rather than denying trauma.

Narrative World-Remaking (Anna Gotlib)

The practice of integrating worst experiences into evolving stories of personal identity, enabling human beings to coexist with and flourish despite their trauma.

Storytelling (Abigail Tulenko)

A mode of inquiry that engages with the contextual, messy specificity of the real, offering a more thoroughly examined path to the universal than the pristine structures of philosophy.

Zhuangzi's Epistemology of Action and Language

The philosophical position that courses are formed by walking them, and things acquire their nature by being called so.

Zhuangzi's Dream Argument

The realization of epistemic uncertainty demonstrated by the fact that one does not know they are dreaming while dreaming—even interpreting dreams within dreams—until waking up.

The Personal Realm (Tao Jiang)

An imagined space of personal freedom advocated by Zhuangzi that exists separate from the sociopolitical domain, leaving behind political constraints and rejecting mainstream parameters of humaneness and justice.

Compounded Things (Buddhist Texts)

Transient, unattractive physical phenomena—described as a decrepit heap, a house with plaster fallen off, or an evaporated mirage—to which the wise mind cleaves not at all.

Ethical Discipline (Sonam Kachru)

The ongoing control of habits of thought, speech, and action through critical self-reflection, preventing destructive feelings like cruelty, anger, pride, and jealousy from hindering moral responsiveness.

Death (Epicurus)

The privation of all awareness, which is nothing to human beings because good and evil require awareness; recognizing this frees life from the yearning for immortality.

Sober Reasoning (Epicurus)

The intellectual investigation into the grounds of every choice and avoidance that banishes disturbing beliefs of the soul, producing a truly pleasant life rather than sensual indulgence.

Real Enjoyment (Catherine Wilson)

Satisfaction arising from activities that activate concentration, demand practice and skill, and deliver sensory enjoyment, complemented by innocent pleasures such as studying nature and conversing with friends.

Nature (Benedict de Spinoza)

The unified whole in which human minds and bodies exist as modified parts, possessing neither inherent beauty, ugliness, order, nor confusion except relative to human imagination.

Self-Realisation (Helen De Cruz)

A unified state of acting and knowing where an individual accurately grasps themselves as part of a vast, interconnected universe rather than as a narrow, isolated ego.

Non-Trivial Eternity (Helen De Cruz)

The reality that although an individual human being experiences physical death, they remain eternal because the one enduring substance of nature—of which they are an expression—persists.