Why does the wealth of capital owners grow faster than income from work?
When capital returns outpace economic growth, accumulated wealth compounds on its own, faster than wages can grow.
Thomas Piketty · Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Why do communication systems add extra information when transmitting each digit?
Communication succeeds when the message chosen at one end reaches the other, regardless of meaning, and the amount of information can be measured.
Claude Shannon · The Mathematical Theory of Communication
Why does Finnegans Wake have neither a real beginning nor a real end?
Finnegans Wake is a circular book: its last sentence runs into its first, like history which, after Vico, starts over again.
James Joyce · Finnegans Wake
What links Finnegans Wake to Star Wars?
The word «monomyth» comes from Finnegans Wake, and Campbell turned it into the hero's pattern that George Lucas put into Star Wars.
Joseph Campbell · The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Why can science formulate laws that are universally valid about experience?
The mind does not conform to the world; the known world conforms to the mind's forms.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii pure
What happens if you treat a metaphysical answer as certain when reason cannot actually resolve the question?
Reason asks questions it cannot answer, because its own structure demands them.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii pure
Why can a state work even if people are not moral?
A good constitution needs no virtuous people, only intelligent ones: mechanisms make even devils cooperate.
Immanuel Kant · Ideea unei istorii universale din perspectivă cosmopolită
What happens when people live together with no power to constrain them?
Freedom without a common authority becomes a war of all against all.
Immanuel Kant · Ideea unei istorii universale din perspectivă cosmopolită
What happens to a perfect political project when it meets real, self-interested, fearful people?
Plans that require perfect people fail; institutions must be built for humans as they are.
Immanuel Kant · Ideea unei istorii universale din perspectivă cosmopolită
What happens to sensations if they cannot be linked to a single 'I think'?
Perceptions become experience only when one self binds them into a story.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii pure
What happens to the dove flying in a vacuum, without the air's resistance?
The resistance that seems to hold you back is precisely what keeps you aloft.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii pure
Why does Kant limit science instead of attacking it?
When proof becomes impossible, faith does not die; it becomes a practical decision guided by moral law.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii pure
What happens to a debate where no side can be verified through experience?
Without a shared test of truth, philosophical disputes never close — they only perpetuate themselves.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii pure
Why is the conscience of duty the only proof we have that we are free?
We cannot prove freedom, but the feeling of duty is its only proof.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii practice
Why can't happiness, for Kant, be a principle of morality?
Happiness means the world bending to your desires, and that cannot be a law of morality, because desires keep changing.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii practice
Why can't a law produced by one's own reason be avoided, unlike an imposed rule?
The moral law binds precisely because rational will gives it to itself.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii practice
What happens if we define the good first, starting from desires and consequences?
Moral law does not presuppose the good but defines it: duty first, good only after.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii practice
What happens when someone denies that binding moral rules exist?
The moral law is not proven but observed: denying it already affirms it.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii practice
What happens to an immoral rule when you universalize it, according to Kant's test?
An action is moral only if its rule could become a law for everyone without destroying itself.
Immanuel Kant · Critica rațiunii practice
Why does Dostoevsky call beauty terrible, not only saving?
Beauty proves nothing: what charms us also disarms us, and judgment remains our job.
Fiodor Dostoievski · Idiotul