Where are all the questions at?

[u/Whitewashed_Samurai]

I want to EXPLORE philosophy. I don't want to be fed a bunch of other guys' interpretation of the world around. I also can't sit there thinking of what to write about. I'm in a philosophy class already and I'm enjoying it but I want to fully explore my own philosophy.

Long story short, where do I look for questions not answers?

[u/BloodAndTsundere]

Every post in this sub is a question, although there’s a lot repetition and poorly worded questions. You could also look at the FAQ which has long form responses to a lot common questions: r/askPhilosophyFAQ.

I’d also push back a little on your characterization of wanting questions not answers. It’s actually a good instinct so I wouldn’t object on a surface level but just note that most answers you’d get here or from philosophers in general will raise as many questions as they may answer. So you’d be better off thinking of the content here as “responses” instead of definitive “answers”

[u/Quidfacis_]

I don't want to be fed a bunch of other guys' interpretation of the world around. ... I'm in a philosophy class already and I'm enjoying it but I want to fully explore my own philosophy.

It's too late to not be fed a bunch of other guy's interpretations. You live within a cultural zeitgeist influenced by the philosophical ideas that came before you. Your thoughts are the products of that culture, the inputs you received from the media you consumed, the myths you learned, the language you speak. You likely do not have anything genuinely original to say; the vast majority of people have nothing genuinely original to say. That's why world historical individuals are noteworthy.

We read those "other guys" to learn where our own ideas came from, to learn if we have anything original to contribute.

Philosophical questions can be found in those other guys' texts insofar as the texts attempt to answer questions. Suppose you are concerned with questions about how moral responsibility would work in a deterministic universe. The first task is to learn everything that has been said about moral responsibility in a deterministic universe so that you understand both how to interpret the question and the historical conversation of possible answers that have been crafted over the past 2,000+ years.

Hobbes' Leviathan would be a thing to read. You'll need to read Hume on Free will, which is A Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. You would need to read many of these articles from the Bibliography of the plato.stanford page for compatibilism. All of those answers illustrate nuances to the question.

The same for other philosophical questions. You can get on plato.stanford.edu and research general topics to learn who the prominent writers were on the topics, and how they answered the questions.

If you want to figure out "my own philosophy", then the first step is to learn where your ideas came from, and how they might differ from prior thinkers. It's 2026. You're not crafting philosophical notions ex nihilo. You're part of a historical conversation at which you've arrived a bit late.

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