2025-08-05
33 分钟Hello everyone,
I'm Stephen West. This is philosophize this patreon.com slash philosophize this Philosophical writing on substack at philosophize this on there.
I hope you love the show today So we seem to be the only kind of creature on this planet that regularly chooses self-destructive behavior on purpose Should be said there are some rare examples of this you can find in nature.
I mean elephants apparently have done this sort of thing in captivity.
You know, certain bees have to die to be able to sting someone, I guess.
But by and large, self-destructive behavior is a uniquely human activity.
For some reason,
people often make a choice to destroy a little piece of themselves just to feel a little bit better in the short term.
But why would anybody do this, realistically?
I mean, if what we are are rational, survival-oriented creatures,
shouldn't most of this behavior just be unthinkable to us?
Maybe that's the problem, that that's a horrible description of what being a human being is,
to be rational, survival-oriented.
There's a lot of theories out there about this stuff,
but there's two very interesting ones I'd like to tell you about today that make up what you could call a philosophy of self-destruction.
One can be found in the work of Dostoevsky in his book The Gambler.
It's a lesser-known work of his, and it'll help dramatize all the complex psychology behind this.
Give us a more existential take on why we do it.
And number two.
is going to be the philosophy of Georges Bataille,