Episode · Modern Wisdom · 2025-10-27
Chris Williamson, Alex O’Connor & Joe Folley: books mentioned on Modern Wisdom #1012
Is Being Smart Worth the Depression? - Alex O’Connor & Joe Folley - #1012
Alex O’Connor is a YouTuber, writer and a podcaster. Joe Folley is a philosopher, writer, and host of the Unsolicited Advice YouTube channel.
Alex O’Connor recommended Nicomachean Ethics, and discussed THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus, The Rebel by Albert Camus and others, The Republic, Laws, Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, and Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Joe Folley discussed Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Existentialism Is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre, Better Never to Have Been by David Benatar, The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, An Inquiry concerning human understanding; by David Hume, and Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and others. Chris Williamson discussed Galileo's Error by Philip Goff.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Nicomachean Ethics
The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle is a foundational work of ancient Greek philosophy that examines virtue, human flourishing, moral character, and the ultimate pursuit of the good life.
Recommended“I mean, especially really with regards to something like Aristotle's ethics, you know, the Aristotle's book, The Nikameakian Ethics, is I would say, you know, even after over 2,000 years, the most useful book of philosophy for anyone to read.”
Where to get it
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Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein is a dense and revolutionary philosophical text exploring the intricate relationship between language, thought, and the boundaries of what can be meaningfully expressed.
Discussed“If you open Vickenstein's Tractus, the first line of the introduction is something like, "I don't think this book will be useful except to anybody who's already like in agreement with the things that it says."”
Where to get it
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Existentialism Is a Humanism
Discussed“Whereas if you just randomly pick one of the great philosophers, like if you just pick up Sartra, as I did the other day, I told you this, and read existential is existentialism is a humanism, and think this is complete nonsense.”
Where to get it
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Better Never to Have Been
Better Never to Have Been by David Benatar is a philosophical work that sets forth a rigorous anti-natalist argument regarding the harms of coming into existence.
Discussed“David Benitar is the sort of superstar of antiism. Um he wrote a book called Better Never to Have Been, which sounds like one of these sort of you know, I'm about to write about how terrible how terrible life is.”
Where to get it
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The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus is a prominent philosophical essay examining the absurdist condition, human suffering, and the search for meaning in a seemingly indifferent universe.
Discussed“I think Kimu talks about a few examples at the beginning of the myth of Sephus, doesn't he?”
Where to get it
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THE PLAGUE
The Plague by Albert Camus is a classic existentialist novel that uses the allegorical setting of a city struck by a deadly epidemic to explore profound themes of human suffering, absurdism, collective responsibility, and resilience.
Discussed“Oh, it's the difficult first album of of the outsider and and it's it's and it is, you know, I I've I like the mythosis partly because it's so counterintuitive, but some of his later works, things like The Plague, The Plague is an amazing novel. It sort of is it it became like a bestseller for obvious reasons.”
Where to get it
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The Rebel
The Rebel by Albert Camus is a profound philosophical essay that examines human revolt, historical rebellion, and the ways individuals can find meaning in an absurd universe.
Discussed“and then anonym writes the rebel which is one of his one of his later um works which is again discussing you know what can an absurdist coherently value without simply falling back onto a kind of leap of faith or something”
Where to get it
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An Inquiry concerning human understanding;
Discussed“And he later sort of revises his thoughts into the much shorter inquiry concerning human understanding.”
Where to get it
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The Republic
Plato's foundational classical text "The Republic" explores justice, political structures, and the nature of reality.
Discussed“Even even someone like Plato who we quite often think of as having a a very strong stable consistent set of made out of marble well as he if you if you you know is one of his earlier works which is both a kind of political treatise but also a theory of the human mind is called the republic”
Where to get it
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Laws
Discussed“Even even someone like Plato who we quite often think of as having a a very strong stable consistent set of made out of marble well as he if you if you you know is one of his earlier works which is both a kind of political treatise but also a theory of the human mind is called the republic”
Where to get it
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Leviathan
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes is a foundational 1651 political treatise arguing that human life in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, and that peace requires absolute submission to a strong central authority.
Discussed“Why does Thomas Hobbes write the Leviathan? Because he had to flee him being a royalist during the English Civil War. he has to flee to to France because of the English civil war and he writes this tract about how we should all submit to a to authoritarian dictator essentially”
Where to get it
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Notes from Underground
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a profound psychological novella that explores the tormented inner life, resentment, and irrational impulses of an isolated protagonist living in nineteenth-century Russia.
Discussed“Dosstofki, his notes from the underground, one of the most famous of his books because it's it's so short and easy to read, originally contained a chapter which essentially argued for the necessity of Christianity as Joski saw it, but it was censored and and taken out and so you end up with this sort of quite fully nihilistic tract.”
Where to get it
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Principia Mathematica
Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell is a massive, multi-volume foundational work in mathematical logic that famously attempted to prove the logical basis of mathematics, including taking hundreds of pages to formally demonstrate that one plus one equals two.
Discussed“And although his uh you wrote a three volume insane project um is it two or three volumes? I always get too confused. No, no, nobody's read the whole thing. This is like because it's it's deeply impenetrable. It takes like what 300 pages to prove that one ad one is two.”
Where to get it
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Galileo's Error
Galileo's Error by Philip Goff is an exploration of panpsychism and the philosophy of mind, arguing that standard physical science struggles to account for the intrinsic nature of human consciousness.
Discussed“Here is the interesting thing. Galileo's era one so that was it.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“And we just, you know, the myth of Sisphus is is one of the first things that Camu writes along with the the stranger.”