Philosophy on Dinko Pehar

Diogenes

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Diogenes of Sinope was the most famous Cynic philosopher. His philosophy was not a theoretical system like Plato’s or Aristotle’s. It was a radical way of living.

Core idea #

Diogenes believed that most people are enslaved by fake needs: money, status, reputation, luxury, social approval, politics, and comfort.

For him, the good life meant living simply, needing little, obeying nature, and ignoring stupid social conventions. He wanted to expose how much of civilized life is artificial.

Cynicism #

Today, cynical usually means distrustful or bitter. Ancient Cynicism meant something different.

The Cynics believed virtue was enough for happiness. A person does not need wealth, fame, career, beauty, luxury, or public respect. A person needs self-control, freedom, courage, and honesty.

Diogenes pushed this idea to the extreme.

How Diogenes lived #

Diogenes lived in radical poverty, supposedly in a large ceramic jar or barrel. He owned almost nothing. One story says he threw away his cup after seeing a child drink water with his hands, because he realized even the cup was unnecessary.

The point was not poverty for its own sake. The point was freedom. If you need very little, nobody can control you easily.

Main beliefs #

Freedom from desire #

Most people are trapped because they want too much. Diogenes thought desire makes people weak. A person who needs comfort, praise, money, and approval becomes dependent on others. A person who needs almost nothing becomes hard to manipulate.

Living according to nature #

Diogenes thought humans should live more naturally, like animals in some ways: directly, honestly, and without shame about basic needs.

He believed many social rules are fake. People pretend to be noble, but are often vain, greedy, cowardly, and hypocritical.

Contempt for status #

Diogenes mocked kings, rich men, philosophers, and politicians.

In a famous story, Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked if he wanted anything. Diogenes supposedly replied: “Stand out of my sunlight.”

The meaning is direct: even the most powerful man in the world had nothing Diogenes needed.

Brutal honesty #

Diogenes practiced parrhesia, or fearless speech. He said what he thought directly, even when it offended people.

He used jokes, insults, public behavior, and shocking actions as philosophical tools. His goal was to reveal hypocrisy.

Philosophy as practice #

Diogenes would have hated philosophy that remained only abstract discussion. He believed philosophy should change how a person lives.

The question was not: can you explain virtue?

The question was: can you live without being owned by fear, comfort, money, reputation, and other people’s opinions?

Famous stories #

One story says Diogenes walked around Athens with a lantern in daylight, saying he was looking for an honest man. The point was that society is full of people, but few are truly honest or free.

Another story says Plato defined man as a featherless biped. Diogenes brought a plucked chicken and said, “Here is Plato’s man.” Plato then had to revise the definition.

These stories show his style: anti-pretentious, mocking, practical, and aggressive.

Difference from Socrates #

Diogenes admired Socrates, but took Socrates’s simplicity much further.

Socrates questioned people. Diogenes humiliated illusions publicly. Socrates still participated in city life. Diogenes stood outside polite society and attacked it.

Plato allegedly called Diogenes “Socrates gone mad.” That is probably the best short description.

What he wanted to teach #

Diogenes wanted people to ask:

Why do I need so much?
Why do I care what people think?
Why am I ashamed of natural things?
Why do I respect powerful people?
Why do I confuse comfort with happiness?
Why do I obey customs I never examined?

His philosophy is basically a war against false needs.

In simple terms #

Diogenes’s philosophy says: you become free when you stop needing what society trained you to want.

Money, image, status, luxury, and approval are cages. The philosopher should break those cages by living simply, honestly, and shamelessly according to nature.

Heidegger

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Heidegger focuses on Being, mortality, authenticity, and the problem of living consciously instead of drifting through inherited routines.

Core idea #

Thinking about death is not meant to be morbid. It is meant to make life more serious. Mortality forces the question of whether a person is living from their own understanding, or merely copying what “one” does.

For Heidegger, authenticity begins when a person recognizes that their life is finite and cannot be lived by anyone else.

Why it matters #

The thought of death can clarify choices. If time is limited, then comfort, approval, and distraction cannot be the only standards for deciding how to live.

Questions #

Which choices become clearer when mortality is taken seriously?
Is authenticity possible without some distance from public opinion?

Kierkegaard

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Kierkegaard focuses on the individual, faith, anxiety, despair, responsibility, and the leap of faith.

His point is not manifestation or positive thinking. It is that a person must choose and commit under uncertainty. Faith is not certainty before action, but the decision to live seriously without having complete proof.

Who he was #

Søren Kierkegaard was a nineteenth-century Danish philosopher and Christian thinker. He is often called the father of existentialism because he focused on the individual person rather than abstract philosophical systems.

Why he matters #

Kierkegaard shifted philosophy away from questions like “How does the universe work?” toward questions like:

How should I live?
What does it mean to be myself?
How do I make difficult choices?
What is authentic faith?
How should I deal with anxiety and despair?

Many later philosophers, both religious and atheist, built on these questions.

Core idea #

Kierkegaard treats existence as something each person must take responsibility for directly. A person cannot outsource the most important choices to society, fashion, institutions, or abstract theory.

The leap of faith is not irrational confidence that everything will work out. It is commitment without the safety of final proof.

Becoming yourself #

Kierkegaard believed that the purpose of life is to become your true self. Many people simply follow society, tradition, comfort, or the crowd. For Kierkegaard, that is not authentic living.

Becoming yourself requires inward responsibility. A person has to face who they are, what they value, and what they are willing to commit to.

Choice #

For Kierkegaard, every important choice shapes who a person becomes. Choosing honesty over lying, commitment over endless possibility, or responsibility over comfort is not just behavior. It forms the self.

Not choosing is still a choice. Avoiding decisions can eventually lead to regret and despair.

Anxiety #

Kierkegaard saw anxiety as a normal part of freedom. If a person is truly free, they realize they could choose many different paths. That possibility naturally creates anxiety.

The goal is not to escape anxiety completely, but to understand it as part of being free.

Despair #

Despair is not only sadness. For Kierkegaard, despair is failing to become the person one is meant to become.

Someone can appear successful and still live in despair if they are not living authentically.

Three ways of living #

Kierkegaard described three broad stages or ways of living.

Aesthetic life #

The aesthetic life seeks pleasure, avoids commitment, and chases experiences. It wants possibility without responsibility.

Ethical life #

The ethical life accepts responsibility, develops character, keeps promises, and lives according to principles.

Religious life #

The religious life involves a personal relationship with God and faith beyond certainty.

These stages are not strict mechanical steps. They describe increasingly deeper ways of living.

Christianity #

Kierkegaard was a genuine Christian believer, but he strongly criticized the Danish state church. He believed many people were Christians only by culture.

Going to church does not necessarily make someone a Christian. Real Christianity requires personal commitment to God.

The leap of faith #

The leap of faith is Kierkegaard’s most famous idea. Reason cannot prove everything. Eventually, a person must choose whether to believe.

That choice is not made from complete certainty. It is made under uncertainty, where commitment becomes unavoidable.

The incarnation #

Kierkegaard accepted the Christian belief that Jesus is fully God and fully human, but he treated it as a paradox. He did not think reason could completely explain it.

Faith means accepting the paradox rather than solving it logically.

Jesus praying to God #

Jesus praying to God is another aspect of the incarnation. As a human, Jesus experienced suffering, prayed, and even cried on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

For Kierkegaard, this does not eliminate the paradox. It illustrates it.

Questions #

What does it mean to choose when certainty is unavailable?
Is faith a way of escaping uncertainty, or a way of accepting it?
Can a person be socially successful and still live in despair?
What makes Christianity personal rather than merely cultural?

Legacy of Kain: Raziel and Kain

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Legacy of Kain uses gothic fantasy to question truth, destiny, divinity, and whether a godlike authority should be trusted simply because it presents itself as holy.

Core idea #

The series is not only about vampires, souls, and revenge. It is also about the collapse of inherited certainty. Characters discover that what looked like cosmic order may be manipulation, and that the difference between good and evil is harder to read than the world first suggests.

Raziel’s story begins with being cast out. He is punished for evolving beyond Kain and thrown into the abyss. That fall turns him into a seeker of truth, but also into a weapon used by forces he does not fully understand.

Questioning God #

The Elder God appears as a divine voice, judge, and source of purpose. Raziel is told that his suffering has meaning because he has been chosen to restore balance.

But the deeper question is whether this “god” is actually good. The series turns religious obedience into a philosophical problem: if a being claims divine authority, how can Raziel know whether it is truth, justice, hunger, or manipulation?

Raziel #

Raziel is tragic because he wants truth, but each truth breaks the identity he had before.

As Kain’s lieutenant, he believes in hierarchy and power.
After being cast out, he becomes driven by revenge.
As Raziel learns more, revenge stops being enough: Kain is no longer just the enemy who betrayed him, but part of a larger web of prophecy, manipulation, and corrupted divine authority.
His real struggle becomes understanding who is using him and what freedom is still possible.

Raziel is a character of disillusionment. He is repeatedly remade by knowledge. Seeing truth does not make him peaceful; it destroys simpler versions of himself.

Kain #

Kain is not simply a villain. He is arrogant, violent, and manipulative, but he also sees farther than many characters around him.

His role is closer to the rebel tyrant: someone who refuses a destiny written by others, even if his rebellion causes suffering. Kain’s question is whether a corrupt world should be obeyed, restored, or broken open.

He understands that prophecy, morality, and divine command can be cages. That does not make him innocent, but it makes him more than evil.

Note for expansion #

The main philosophical tension is that Raziel seeks truth through obedience and then through rebellion, while Kain seeks freedom by defying the structure of the world itself.

Miyamoto Musashi

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Miyamoto Musashi was a Japanese swordsman, strategist, and writer, best known for The Book of Five Rings and for treating combat as a discipline of perception, timing, practice, and mental clarity.

Core idea #

Musashi’s philosophy is practical rather than abstract. The point is not to collect ideas, but to train perception until action becomes direct and appropriate to the situation.

Main themes #

Discipline #

Skill comes from repeated practice, not from theory alone. Musashi treats the way of strategy as something tested in action.

Timing #

Victory depends on reading rhythm: when to move, when to wait, when to pressure, and when an opponent has already lost balance.

Adaptability #

Musashi warns against becoming trapped by one weapon, one school, one style, or one fixed idea. A person should understand principles deeply enough to adapt when circumstances change.

Seeing clearly #

A central Musashi lesson is to see what is actually happening, not what fear, habit, ego, or tradition tells you is happening.

Note for expansion #

Musashi is useful as a note on mastery: learn the form, practice seriously, then move beyond attachment to any single form.

Modern Philosophy

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Modern philosophy often focuses on the human person, existence, mortality, identity, technology, society, and the loss of traditional certainty.

Core idea #

Twentieth and twenty-first century philosophy is shaped by modern crises: industrial war, secularization, Darwinism, political catastrophe, technology, and the weakening of inherited religious and metaphysical frameworks.

When old certainties become less stable, philosophy turns more urgently toward questions of how to live, who we are, what can be trusted, and what kind of society modern life is producing.

Why it matters #

Modern philosophy can feel less like a search for an eternal system and more like an attempt to understand fractured human life under modern conditions.

Questions #

Why does modern philosophy so often begin from crisis?
What replaces inherited certainty when religion, tradition, and authority no longer convince everyone?

Peter Singer

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Peter Singer is a utilitarian philosopher focused on reducing suffering and taking moral consequences seriously.

Core idea #

Singer argues that moral concern should not stop at personal preference, national borders, species membership, or social convenience. If suffering can be reduced, and the cost of helping is reasonable, then there is a strong moral reason to act.

This connects his work on animal ethics, poverty, charitable giving, and effective altruism.

Why it matters #

Singer’s philosophy is uncomfortable because it asks whether ordinary comfort depends on ignoring preventable suffering. It turns ethics from a question of being personally nice into a question of what actually reduces harm.

Questions #

How much sacrifice can morality reasonably demand?
Does distance reduce responsibility when suffering is preventable?

Wittgenstein

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Wittgenstein’s later philosophy argues that meaning comes from use, not from a fixed hidden essence behind words.

Core idea #

Words make sense inside language games: practical forms of life where people share habits, expectations, and social rules. A word does not carry one complete meaning everywhere. Its meaning depends on how it is used.

Croatian at home, English in Norway, and British English in London are not only different vocabularies. They are different social situations with different expectations about tone, politeness, directness, humor, and what counts as normal speech.

Why it matters #

Confusion often happens when people treat language as if every word had one clean definition outside context. Wittgenstein’s point is that understanding a word usually means understanding the practice it belongs to.

Questions #

Which words change meaning most when they move between cultures?
How much misunderstanding comes from using the right words in the wrong language game?

Nietzsche

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

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