Nicholas Rose
@nicholas-rose.bsky.social
Socratic philosopher practicing Existential Therapy - the “examined life”. Alongside those in pain and we think together about transition, loss, consequences, trauma, dilemmas, ethics, interpersonal conflicts - what it means to lead a good life.
I’d like to get beyond the question of whether we have free will. Not yet found a convincing argument either way, pointers please, anyone?
November 17, 2025 at 5:42 PM
I’d like to get beyond the question of whether we have free will. Not yet found a convincing argument either way, pointers please, anyone?
November 10, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Control freak? Freak sounds bad - no? If you think you are one then how does it feel when you think you do not have the right relationship with “control” - that actually you are out of control? Time for a rethink?..
October 21, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Control freak? Freak sounds bad - no? If you think you are one then how does it feel when you think you do not have the right relationship with “control” - that actually you are out of control? Time for a rethink?..
Is it irrational to be rational with someone who is being irrational?
October 14, 2025 at 8:38 AM
Is it irrational to be rational with someone who is being irrational?
If we know we know nothing then we are confronted with knowing something? So wisdom is not a characteristic that can be ascribed to a human? If we cannot be wise then how are we to respond?
Good morning, Bluesky friends. May your Thursday be filled with wisdom and clarity. 🌞🦉
🦉 True knowledge is not only in seeing the world as it is, but in understanding how it might become.
📜 “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
- Socrates
🦉 True knowledge is not only in seeing the world as it is, but in understanding how it might become.
📜 “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
- Socrates
October 6, 2025 at 11:45 AM
If we know we know nothing then we are confronted with knowing something? So wisdom is not a characteristic that can be ascribed to a human? If we cannot be wise then how are we to respond?
Well I met one person convinced that every opportunity should be welcomed and considered and another person who stated that looking after what you already have is where the energy is best spent. Those positions are right for them at that moment but must be held as provisional looking forwards?
Back online after 17th September. I'm going in search of an old fashioned agora experience so I can have conversations about how life should be lived. I will let you know of any new provisional knowings..... Stay safe and look after each other! #existential
September 19, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Well I met one person convinced that every opportunity should be welcomed and considered and another person who stated that looking after what you already have is where the energy is best spent. Those positions are right for them at that moment but must be held as provisional looking forwards?
Back online after 17th September. I'm going in search of an old fashioned agora experience so I can have conversations about how life should be lived. I will let you know of any new provisional knowings..... Stay safe and look after each other! #existential
August 22, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Back online after 17th September. I'm going in search of an old fashioned agora experience so I can have conversations about how life should be lived. I will let you know of any new provisional knowings..... Stay safe and look after each other! #existential
I’m not sure I can agree. I can say “what does not kill us, does not kill us”.
August 11, 2025 at 6:48 PM
I’m not sure I can agree. I can say “what does not kill us, does not kill us”.
“For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.”
-Plato
-Plato
August 6, 2025 at 9:22 AM
Loved this. An episode on Socrates please? @nataliehaynes.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics - Series 2 - Plato - BBC Sounds
Natalie Haynes stands up for one of the greatest all-time thinkers, Plato.
www.bbc.co.uk
August 5, 2025 at 7:40 AM
Loved this. An episode on Socrates please? @nataliehaynes.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
I wonder if he still thought this at the end of his life?
August 2, 2025 at 6:02 PM
I wonder if he still thought this at the end of his life?
Words so easily said and would probably be forgotten, if Socrates hadn’t lived and then died by them?
“You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.””
— Socrates, in Plato’s Apology
— Socrates, in Plato’s Apology
August 2, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Words so easily said and would probably be forgotten, if Socrates hadn’t lived and then died by them?
So what does it mean to live? #existential #therapy
July 29, 2025 at 11:21 AM
So what does it mean to live? #existential #therapy
I wondering whether "respectful" is something we can know about another or an experience we have in relation to another? #existential #therapy #adhd
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Handy new paper about the use of respectful language in ADHD research. Much needed, this discussion.
Handy new paper about the use of respectful language in ADHD research. Much needed, this discussion.
The power of words: respectful language in ADHD research
Language is powerful. It reflects and shapes our understanding of the difficulties
people face, the paradigms in which researchers and clinicians conduct research and
practice while also influencing p...
www.thelancet.com
July 28, 2025 at 11:16 AM
I wondering whether "respectful" is something we can know about another or an experience we have in relation to another? #existential #therapy #adhd
Stated with a conviction and certainty that I find unnerving - so maybe he’s onto something? #existential #socrates #therapy
July 24, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Stated with a conviction and certainty that I find unnerving - so maybe he’s onto something? #existential #socrates #therapy
Thank you @wiringthebrain.bsky.social. I think I understood that we can decide to do things differently but we cannot decide that it needs us to decide to do things differently?
Had an interesting chat with Alexander Bendiksen on free will, cognition, consciousness, agency... all that good stuff! 😊
open.spotify.com/episode/7e1G...
open.spotify.com/episode/7e1G...
#108 - Kevin J. Mitchell (Free will)
Bendiksen Airways - Your ticket to a world of ideas and conversations · Episode
open.spotify.com
July 22, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Thank you @wiringthebrain.bsky.social. I think I understood that we can decide to do things differently but we cannot decide that it needs us to decide to do things differently?
"No one ever does wrong willingly/knowingly" I wish Socrates was alive today - I'd really like to talk with him about this.... #socrates #existential #therapy
July 21, 2025 at 2:40 PM
"No one ever does wrong willingly/knowingly" I wish Socrates was alive today - I'd really like to talk with him about this.... #socrates #existential #therapy
And to constantly seek to refine and improve our questioning whilst never letting go of the search for the answer of the question - why question? #existential #therapy #socrates
"Questioning is the way of learning,"
Encourage your children to ask questions, not to accept existing answers.
Encourage your children to ask questions, not to accept existing answers.
July 13, 2025 at 2:55 PM
And to constantly seek to refine and improve our questioning whilst never letting go of the search for the answer of the question - why question? #existential #therapy #socrates
Great question, but framed rhetorically and I wonder what is meant by “easier”. I prefer what do I, you and we live for? #existential #therapy
What do we live for, if not to make things easier for ourselves and each other?
#existential
#existential
July 13, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Great question, but framed rhetorically and I wonder what is meant by “easier”. I prefer what do I, you and we live for? #existential #therapy
Sometimes a book comes along....... be ready to be open to be "refuted"
www.audible.co.uk/pd/I-May-Be-...
www.audible.co.uk/pd/I-May-Be-...
I May Be Wrong
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Bloomsbury presents I May Be Wrong by Björn Natthiko Lindeblad, read by Thom Petty. ‘This book really, really will stay with me forever. It’s not only lace...
www.audible.co.uk
July 13, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Sometimes a book comes along....... be ready to be open to be "refuted"
www.audible.co.uk/pd/I-May-Be-...
www.audible.co.uk/pd/I-May-Be-...
Who decides on what constitutes "important intellectual abilities and dispositions"? Is it possible that a predisposition to study philosophy is more important to cultivation than the study itself? Thank you @apa-journal.bsky.social for publishing.
A popular and very old argument for the value of philosophy claims that studying philosophy cultivates important intellectual abilities and dispositions. But empirical evidence for that claim has been hard to come by. Until now!
1/4
1/4
Studying Philosophy Does Make People Better Thinkers | Journal of the American Philosophical Association | Cambridge Core
Studying Philosophy Does Make People Better Thinkers
doi.org
July 13, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Who decides on what constitutes "important intellectual abilities and dispositions"? Is it possible that a predisposition to study philosophy is more important to cultivation than the study itself? Thank you @apa-journal.bsky.social for publishing.
How refreshingly Socratic to see the concept of "Free Will" being re-examined. Although the suggestion that we now have answers as to "why our biology determines our ideology" and an "explanation" merely takes us away again from being Socratic...... @leorzmigrod.bsky.social
Revealed: why political extremism is determined by your brain’s biology and DNA
Dr Leor Zmigrod is the toast of the scientific world for her pioneering work unravelling the neuroscience behind our political beliefs
I talk to her in @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2530960...
Dr Leor Zmigrod is the toast of the scientific world for her pioneering work unravelling the neuroscience behind our political beliefs
I talk to her in @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2530960...
Scientist has a truly mindblowing explanation for what causes fascism
“The tolerant brain is much better at recognising its own errors relative to the ideological brain,” says Zmigrod. “The ideological brain…
www.heraldscotland.com
July 13, 2025 at 9:55 AM
How refreshingly Socratic to see the concept of "Free Will" being re-examined. Although the suggestion that we now have answers as to "why our biology determines our ideology" and an "explanation" merely takes us away again from being Socratic...... @leorzmigrod.bsky.social
When I think of Socratic Philosophy I imagine this "principle" as a provisional knowing, one open for examination with a view to moving towards truth. The relevance today (as always) being that a "belief" that demands everyone to be a certain way is divisive?
'For the good does not come from without, Socrates shows; it cannot be taught, but is implied in the nature of mind. That is to say, man cannot passively receive anything that is given from without like the wax that is moulded to a form' (Hegel, Lectures in the Philosophy of History).
July 13, 2025 at 9:37 AM
When I think of Socratic Philosophy I imagine this "principle" as a provisional knowing, one open for examination with a view to moving towards truth. The relevance today (as always) being that a "belief" that demands everyone to be a certain way is divisive?
"the true Socratic is convinced of the ignorance not only of himself but of all mankind" discuss?
Currently listening to this, thank you @donjrobertson.bsky.social for the recommendation. amzn.eu/d/2pimDMg #existential #therapy #socrates
The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook (Audio Download): Ward Farnsworth, John Lescault, Blackstone Publishing: Amazon.co.uk: Audible Books & Originals
The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook (Audio Download): Ward Farnsworth, John Lescault, Blackstone Publishing: Amazon.co.uk: Audible Books & Originals
amzn.eu
July 8, 2025 at 6:47 PM
"the true Socratic is convinced of the ignorance not only of himself but of all mankind" discuss?
Looking forward to getting started on this! Thank you @neelburton.bsky.social amzn.eu/d/8PZpw3i #existential #therapy #socrates
The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: 2 (Ancient Wisdom) : Burton, Neel: Amazon.co.uk: Books
The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: 2 (Ancient Wisdom) : Burton, Neel: Amazon.co.uk: Books
amzn.eu
July 7, 2025 at 12:30 PM
Looking forward to getting started on this! Thank you @neelburton.bsky.social amzn.eu/d/8PZpw3i #existential #therapy #socrates