r/philosophy

About r/philosophy

In its own words:

/r/philosophy: the portal for public philosophy

The community was created on Jan 25, 2008, which makes it 18 years old. Since Oct 19, 2026, it has gained 2,640 subscribers (+0.01%). It sits just behind r/blog (#46) and ahead of r/wholesomememes (#48) in our ranking.

What sets r/philosophy apart

Relative to its huge audience, posting is calm — around 0.4 new posts a day per million members, which puts it in the quietest fifth of the Top 100. A good post has less competition here.

Subscriber growth

Between Sep 19, 2026 and Oct 29, 2026, r/philosophy climbed from 18,574,411 to 18,584,720 subscribers (+10.3K, +0.06%). That is about 258 new members per day. The chart uses our weekly snapshots (8 so far), so it gets longer every week.

Top posts on r/philosophy this week

What the community upvoted most over the last seven days, as ranked by Reddit (collected Oct 29, 2026).

1. Philosophy’s Most Useful Role Is Making Ourselves Harder to Foolu/contractualist · Oct 27 · link
2. Of Paradigms and Pretence: Kuhn and Hayek as responses to Popper and Friedmanu/back_to_the_priors · Oct 23 · link
3. /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | October 26, 2026u/BernardJOrtcutt · Oct 26 · text post
4. On the Greatness of Marxu/di745 · Oct 24 · link
5. Excesses of Georges Bataille: Deep Time and the Privileged Instant with Stuart Kendallu/DeleuzoHegelian · Oct 24 · video
6. Saubhi (@saubhi)u/Saubhi01 · Oct 29 · link
7. Free Will Is Real. The Free will wager not only maximizes utility, but also leads to finding the truth.u/RandomThinker217 · Oct 24 · link

All-time top posts

The highest-ranked posts in the history of r/philosophy, from 2016 to 2022, ranked by Reddit.

1. TIL about the concept of "amathia", a Greek term that roughly means "intelligent stupidity." This concept is used to explain why otherwise intelligent people believe and do stupid or evil things. "It…u/gotfelids · Aug 15, 2017 · 39,701 points · 1,709 comments · link
2. Game theory and the Golden Ruleu/heWhoMostlyOnlyLurks · Jul 28, 2017 · 37,578 points · 1,798 comments · link
3. We need an educational revolution. We need more CRITICAL THINKERS. #FeelTheLearnu/wiphiadmin · Jan 29, 2017 · 32,341 points · 1,754 comments · link
4. Socrates is a character in the latest Assassin's Creed game. He annoys players by dismantling their beliefs and values with forensic questions.u/byrd_nick · Jun 13, 2018 · 31,823 points · 1,030 comments · link
5. On this day (February 15) 2416 years ago, Socrates was sentenced to death by people of Athens.u/The_Potato_God99 · Feb 15, 2017 · 29,402 points · 1,195 comments · link
6. People are dying because we misunderstand how those with addiction think | a philosopher explains why addiction isn’t a moral failureu/ADefiniteDescription · Mar 16, 2018 · 28,180 points · 2,251 comments · link
7. Researcher teaches philosophy to inmates at prison. Inmates described the dialogue as a ‘break from the drudgery’ or as a form of ‘freedom’ not found elsewhere in the prison.u/byrd_nick · Mar 9, 2018 · 27,699 points · 790 comments · link
8. If one person is depressed, it may be an 'individual' problem - but when masses are depressed it is society that needs changing. The problem of mental health is in the relation between people and the…u/The_Pamphlet · Jun 7, 2022 · 25,549 points · 766 comments · link
9. "The Highest Form of Disagreement. The best way to argue is to take on your opponents’ strongest arguments, not their weakest ones." A refreshing reminder of the value of the philosophical virtues in…u/byrd_nick · Jun 29, 2017 · 23,481 points · 910 comments · link
10. Why you should hate your job | “We are being sold a myth. Internalising the work ethic is not the gateway to a better life; it is a trap.”u/IAI_Admin · Dec 28, 2020 · link

What r/philosophy talks about

Across 43 recent posts (Oct 21–Oct 27), the words that come up most are “problem”, “thought”, “life”, “free” and “descartes”. Other frequent themes are cognition, university, open, religion, idea and different. Recurring phrases include “philosophia box”. By format, 77% are links, 21% are videos and 2% are text posts.

• problem 4
• thought 3
• life 3
• free 3
• descartes 2
• cognition 2
• university 2
• open 2
• religion 2
• idea 2
• different 2
• mind 2
• practical 2
• philosophia 2
• box 2
• intellectual 2
• meaning 2

Popular post flairs: Blog (6), Open Thread (1), Video (1).

Activity and best time to post

r/philosophy gets about 7.0 new posts a day. The public archive holds 267,401 posts and 2,663,020 comments in total, about 10.0 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Thursday (9 posts) and the quietest was Wednesday (3). Posting peaks around 16:00 UTC and is lowest around 06:00 UTC.

Rules of r/philosophy

The moderators of r/philosophy list 13 rules. In short:

1. PR1: All posts must be about philosophy.
2. PR2: All posts must develop and defend a substantive philosophical thesis.
3. PR3: Questions belong in /r/askphilosophy.
4. PR4: Post titles cannot be questions/must describe the philosophical content of the posted material.
5. PR5: Audio/video links require abstracts.
6. PR6: All posts must be in English.
7. PR7: Links behind paywalls or registration walls are not allowed.
8. PR8: Meta-posts, products, services, surveys, cross-posts and AMAs require moderator pre-approval.
9. PR9: Users may submit only one post per day.
10. PR10: Discussion of suicide is only allowed in the abstract.

How to join

Open reddit.com/r/philosophy and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.

Frequently asked questions

Stats from public data (data updated Oct 29, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Oct 29, 2026; top posts from Reddit’s public feeds). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/philosophy.