Who are we? Good question. But difficult to answer definitively. Still, it is a question that is philosophically fruitful to ask, because the flip side of the question (who aren’t we?) has several clear answers that narrow the search for an answer to the main question.

One example: It might be emotionally hard to accept, but it seems highly unlikely that we are the center of the universe, even though we all experience the totality of our lives through one perspective—our own—which has clearly made it very easy for almost all of us to fall for this illusion.

That is one reason Monday Night Philosophy returns to the Commonwealth Club (this time on a Tuesday) to re-ask these age-old questions, to analyze the most popular of their age-old answers, and to present the logic that points to a different answer to the ancient question: Who are we?

This rational perspective also makes it perfectly understandable why we experience the emotions we do, why we dream, why we’ve told ourselves these stories, how we try to egg ourselves on with them, why we have scared ourselves silly with them, and even how they explain away for us our otherwise embarrassing attraction to cruelty.

Speaker photo courtesy the speaker; Parthenon photo by Topshere Media/Unsplash.

March 5, 2024

👉Join our Email List! https://www.commonwealthclub.org/email

🎉 BECOME a MEMBER: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/memb...

The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum 📣, bringing together its 20,000 members for more than 500 annual events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy.

Founded in 1903 in San Francisco California 🌉, The Commonwealth Club has played host to a diverse and distinctive array of speakers, from Teddy Roosevelt in 1911 to Anthony Fauci in 2020.

In addition to the videos🎥 shared here, the Club reaches millions of listeners through its podcast🎙 and weekly national radio program📻.