Philosophical Concepts Mentioned in R.F. Kuang's Katabasis
List • 588 Words • Philosophy, Books, 2025 • 09/01/2025
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A list of philosophical concepts in R.F. Kuang's Katabasis, augmented by my recommended further readings.
There are 670 words in this article, and it will probably take you less than 4 minutes to read it.
This article was published 2025-09-01 00:00:00 -0400, which makes this post and me old when I published it.
I loved Kuang’s Katabasis because of how well-versed she is in philosophy. While she may not go into depth in any one particular concept, I think she does a great job at giving readers simple explanations that can plant the seed of curiosity for further exploration. With this list, I am trying to give people a good jumping off point to become interested in philosophical concepts/topics that interest them. I have tried to keep track of all the concepts that she mentions in the book (I certainly may have missed some), but I have also added related concepts that I think would also be of interest too. For topics that have not been mentioned in the book, I will put an asterisk (*) in front of the link.
I am mostly linking from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, but this can be quite in-depth for a introductory delve. I would also recommend the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Crash Course Philosophy. Honestly once you have the terminology down you are able to search on your own; be curious and question everything!
Topics Mentioned (in no particular order)
- Game Theory
- Pascal’s Wager: Is it always in your best interest to believe in God?
- The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Should you cooperate with or defect from your partner in crime?
- *Evolutionary Game Theory: Can evolution be understood through the ideas of game theory?
- Kant’s Moral Philosophy
- He is most known for the Categorical Imperative, which most famously states, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”.
- Aristotelian Logic
- Syllogisms: The foundational form of classical logic
- Law of Non-Contradiction: It cannot be that something is both true and not true at the same time.
- Law of Excluded Middle: Something must be either true or false.
- Dialtheism: Can something be truly true and false at the same time?
- Paradoxes
- Sorites Paradox: Imagine you have a heap of rice grains, as you keep taking them off one by one, at what point does it stop being a heap? What constitutes being a heap?
- *Ship of Theseus: If you slowly replace every single part of a boat, does it cease to be the same boat? If so, when did it stop being the same boat?
- *Holes: What is a hole?
- *Boundary/Surfaces: What is a boundary? A surface?
- Liar’s Paradox: This statement is false. Or is it?
- *Names/Reference of Language
- Zeno’s Paradoxes of Motion
- Russell’s Paradox
- *Set-theoretic definition of natural numbers
- *Barber Paradox: If there is a barber who only shaves people who do not shave themselves, does the barber shave himself?
- Curry’s Paradox
- Buridan’s Ass: If a donkey is equally hungry and thirsty and placed equally distant from food and water, what will it choose?
- Sorites Paradox: Imagine you have a heap of rice grains, as you keep taking them off one by one, at what point does it stop being a heap? What constitutes being a heap?
- Epistemic Paradoxes
- *Decision Theory
- Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems: A mathematical system can either be complete or consistent.
- *Personal Identity: What makes you you?
- Parfit’s Theory of Identity: Parfit believes that psychological continuity as personal identity (roughly).
- Wittgenstein: Wittgenstein famously asserted, among other things, that all problems of philosophy were simply problems of language.
- Moral Responsibility: If we do not have free will, are we responsible for our own actions? Can we be held liable for consequences of our actions?
- Doing versus allowing harm: Is there a difference between killing someone versus letting someone die?