Existential Comics

20 July 2026 19:30

To be clear I'm not making fun of vegans, I'm making fun of people who stay out of politics while a power mad politician normalizes cruelty in society.

Existential Comics

20 July 2026 18:30

To be clear I'm not making fun of vegans, I'm making fun of people who stay out of politics while a power mad politician normalizes viscous cruelty in society.

Existential Comics

13 July 2026 18:30

A lot of people say virtue is "worth" more than money and land etc, but rarely do people put their money where their mouth is and do a straight up trade.

Existential Comics

06 July 2026 18:30

Sports under anarchism actually would be much better. Coaches would be elected by the population, instead of appointed by the rich guys who own the teams, etc. Imagine how much more entertaining that would be? Like if this guy sucks and the crowd hates him, they could fire him. When appointing the new coach they would run like politicians, promising how much more they will press for goals, instead of playing defensively or whatever.
Rules would also be written by the population at large. Right now a lot of people are mad at the computer overturning goals because someone is a millimeter offsides or whatever, and seem to be unironically arguing that the rule should be that you can be "a bit" offsides. I would love to see the mob right the rules, especially when they are emotional after a loss. Change it halfway through the tournament! Anarchism! Power to the people!
And don't forget this classic comic: World Cup Philosophy.

Existential Comics

06 July 2026 18:30

Referee Philosophy - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

29 June 2026 19:30

To be fair, structural critiques of power mechanisms in society are pretty French and Gay, which you think about it.

Existential Comics

22 June 2026 18:30

The title is based on Sarah Bakewell's excellent book "At the Existentialist Café".

Existential Comics

22 June 2026 18:30

At the Existentialist Cafe - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

15 June 2026 18:30

Plato's Iliad - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

08 June 2026 19:30

Batman's Dilemma - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

02 June 2026 15:30

Despair Factory - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

25 May 2026 18:30

Schopenhauer: Supervillain or Totally Right About Everything? - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

18 May 2026 18:30

Surely a society of all narcissistic tech bros whose only talent is talking people into giving them money would be ideal, right guys? Right?

Existential Comics

11 May 2026 19:30

Look, if you give people the freedom to pick their own "meaning of life", a lot of people are going to pick that, okay? We just gotta have to deal with that.

Existential Comics

07 May 2026 22:01

Criticisms of utilitarianism often end up in a couple of camps, the first being extremely far fetched thought experiments, like the Utility Monster (which by the way, can be reversed on Nozick as a "property monster", which I came up with in this comic about: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/259). These push utilitarianism to its end, showing that it actually causes us harm. Kind of a poor criticism, since the whole point is to make us happy, the fact that it doesn't make us happy doesn't really work. Of course we all agree with the utility monster anyway, which is why we don't value the happiness of ants as equal to ourselves, we are the utility monsters. If some greater being came along, they would probably just laser us all to use earth as a beach house anyway, so we wouldn't have to worry too much about the failure of our philosophies to account for them.

More to the point though, people like Nozick, who spend their career arguing why it's great and fine for the rich to exploit the poor, obviously don't have humanity's best interest in mind. Most utilitarians spend their time on earth trying to make life better for everyone, like arguing for women's rights, animal rights, and alleviating poverty. So yeah, take your pick I guess.

Existential Comics

20 July 2026 18:30

Quintus Sextius was a quasi Stoic Roman philosopher, who apparently came from a wealthy, powerful family, and turned down a Senate role from Julius Caesar. He had an interesting argument for Veganism, which is based more around the Greek and Roman ethics of the time. Instead of talking about suffering, it talked about the virtue in the individual. Eating things which have their origin in cruelty causes the person to become accustomed to cruelty. In a way it erodes your virtue and soul.
Of course, if there was anything in Roman society that got you accustomed to cruelty, it was probably politics. The incredibly brutal acts of Caesar were celebrated and praised officially, so it seems like maybe he could have gone into politics to try to temper the cruelty of the State. I mean, they would have just ignored him probably, but most people probably ignored his vegan argument too, so maybe poor Sextius was doomed either way.

Existential Comics

20 July 2026 18:30

Quintus Sextius Chooses Philosophy - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

13 July 2026 18:30

Marcus Aurelius: Philosopher King - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

06 July 2026 18:30

I'm actually in favor of Bakunin here, where soccer rules, and even the immediate enforcement of the rules, are governed by some kind of direct democracy. So if the crowd boos the red card, they just take it away.

Existential Comics

29 June 2026 19:30

When Foucault was young his father sent him to a famous psychoanalysis named Jean Delay, due to self harm, and suicide attempts. Apparently this experience, where he was more or less diagnosed as his homosexuality being the source of all his problems, may have caused many of his anti-psychiatry ideas that he later wrote about.
Michael Sugrue had a great lecture on this.

Existential Comics

29 June 2026 19:30

Foucault Psychoanalyzed - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

22 June 2026 18:30

de Beauvior, offscreen: "In order to leave the waiter a tip, you must authentically endorse the practice of tipping. Which I don't, if that wasn't clear."

Existential Comics

15 June 2026 18:30

God damn poets, writing interesting things that people like!

Existential Comics

08 June 2026 19:30

Seriously though why is Batman doing all this? Pretty weird thing to do bro. Maybe introspect a little, use your money to help the poor instead of building Bat Rocket Launchers or whatever. Be normal.

Existential Comics

02 June 2026 15:30

If you are paid to do philosophy, then any thinking at all off the clock is essentially unpaid overtime, when you think about it (although for the love of god, don't think about it off the clock)

Existential Comics

25 May 2026 18:30

Try to improve society so people enjoy their lives? I think you'll find that's actually impossible, on account of structure of existence itself. Also I don't care for women.

Existential Comics

20 May 2026 05:30

Surely a society of all narcissistic tech bros whose only talent is talking people into giving them money would be ideal, right guys? Right?
Explain: One of the funniest stories in history that I heard was Dostoevsky recounting some utopian thinkers among the Russian Aristocracy that wanted to make everything rational, and someone objected saying the peasants would never go for it, so they replied "then we'll just eliminate the peasants". As though a society of all rich people would somehow work, even though the peasants did all the work, which is sort of the one thing you actually need for society to operate. The rich people would literally just starve in like two seconds.
People sort of still have the same idea today though, like if we can just eliminate the poor somehow, everyone will be rich and live off the interest from their stocks or whatever, not realizing that stocks only go up because somewhere, someone is actually doing work. Oh right, and uh, the robots will do all human labor in like the next 5 years, I forgot about that. Good luck with that one bros.

Existential Comics

18 May 2026 18:30

Tech Bros Utopia - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

11 May 2026 19:30

The Asteroid and the Meaning of Life - Existential Comics

Existential Comics

04 May 2026 18:30

Nietzsche said all great philosophies are a confession of their originator, and unfortunately for many critics of utilitarianism this confession is "I actually don't care about the happiness of poor people in particular".