Philosophy vs. Cinema

Why Intuitions Are More Persuasive Than Arguments

“They’re so cold, these scholars!
May lightning strike their food
so that their mouths learn how
to eat fire!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Academic philosophy is particularly bad at changing society for the better because, in order to have access to it, one has to first get through a lot of unnecessary jargon, swim through the rubble, and then translate their insights into modern English using anecdotes that people who live in the 21st century can understand. Today, there are simpler and more effective ways of influencing society.

Protect the Animals

We can see this most when we compare the arguments made by moral philosophers with the impact of documentaries or films that urge the same/similar conclusion. So, let’s briefly turn to morality and, in particular, some moral philosophy.

Moral philosophy questions the reasons to behave morally in the world. Consequentialists argue that the primary determinant for whether to act ethically is based on the consequences of a given action. So, if we were to choose (as the Trolley Problem illustrates) between the death of two people and five people, we would rightly…