philosopher

Even more worrying is what history shows us: that all too often, such crises become semi-permanent — “not the exception but the rule,” as the anti-Nazi philosopher Walter Benjamin once observed.

Throughout, the characters routinely name-drop philosophers and authors they've obviously never read while indulging bizarre fantasies of living forever and ruling the universe as benevolent dictators.

This concept is not new: The Greek philosopher Socrates was afraid that the invention of writing would make humans dumber because we wouldn’t exercise our memory as much.

Randall name-checks philosophers — Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche, Plato, Marcus Aurelius — he misunderstands to his advantage and drops references to the Catiline Conspiracy and the Battle of Actium to make base actions sound important and dignified.

Whether we have a “self,” has been debated between philosophers for centuries.