219 works selected for the 40 candidate questions. Selections approved by Ben Breen, 29 September 2026. Arguments are unverified. Quotations were chosen by machine and are unchecked.
27 of 219 works
1778GoetheGoethe,The Triumph of SensibilityGermanFictionFull text
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit
German · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
No. Satire in which Prince Oronaro prefers a doll stuffed with sentimental novels to the real queen; the play mocks a love that needs nothing back.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
1784KantKant,An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?GermanEssayFull text
Immanuel Kant
Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. Statutes and formulas, the mechanical instruments of reason, are the shackles of permanent immaturity; he criticizes 'do not argue, obey' while allowing obedience in office.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
Yes. In the 'private' use of reason within an office, an officer, tax official or clergyman must obey and not argue; he may criticize freely only as a scholar addressing the public.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1789BlumenbachBlumenbach,An Essay on GenerationGermanTreatiseFull text
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Über den Bildungstrieb
German · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Blumenbach denies pre-existing organized germs and defines formative nisus as a distinctive force of generation, growth, nutrition and reproduction.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
1790KantKant,Critique of JudgementGermanTreatiseFull text
Immanuel Kant
Kritik der Urteilskraft
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Holds that an organized being is not a mere machine, because a machine has only motive power while an organism has a formative power that it passes to matter and that reproduces and repairs its own parts.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
1795SchillerSchiller,On the Aesthetic Education of Man, in a Series of LettersGermanLetterFull text
Friedrich Schiller
Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen
German · Letter
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
Yes. The state may be rebuilt on reason, but unlike a clock it cannot be stopped for repair; the living clockwork of the state must be repaired while it runs.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
1795SchillerSchiller,On Simple and Sentimental PoetryGermanLetterFull text
Friedrich Schiller
Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung
German · Letter
Full text · No English translation
Open source →1798KantKant,Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of ViewGermanTreatiseFull text
Immanuel Kant
Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
No. Habit is a physical compulsion to go on as before; it takes the moral worth from good acts because it impairs freedom of mind, so as a rule all habit is objectionable.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1803KantKant,Kant on EducationGermanTreatiseFull text
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
No. Absolute obedience in childhood is necessary because it prepares the child to obey laws as a citizen; the youth later obeys rules of duty, which means obeying reason.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1809MüllerMüller,The Elements of StatecraftGermanTreatiseFull text
Adam Müller
Die Elemente der Staatskunst
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
No. The state is not a machine or a factory but an organic union of all physical and spiritual needs grown through history, so it cannot be redesigned by contract.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
1816HoffmannHoffmann,The SandmanGermanFictionFull text
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
No. Nathanael feels only Olimpia understands him though she answers only 'Ah, ah'; the story treats this companionship as delusion.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
1821HegelHegel,Elements of the Philosophy of RightGermanTreatiseNo text yet
G. W. F. Hegel
Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts
German · Treatise
No text yet · Period translation
Open source →- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
Yes. Civil servants are educated to a dispassionate, upright demeanor in which personal passions and ties give way to universal interests.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
1830HegelHegel,Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part III (Philosophy of Mind)GermanTreatiseFull text
G. W. F. Hegel
Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
Yes. Habit is unfree because it is natural, but free because the soul is no longer occupied by feelings it has made habitual and can attend to other things.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1842LotzeLotze,Leben. LebenskraftGermanEssayNo text yet
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
No. Rejects a special vital force; living phenomena arise from the same kinds of forces as inorganic nature, arranged in complex ways.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1855BüchnerBüchner,Force and MatterGermanTreatiseFull text
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Yes. There is no force without matter and no mind without brain; thought and will are functions of brain matter under natural law.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1867MarxMarx,Capital, Volume IGermanTreatiseFull text
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
No. Calls for a critical history of technology on the model of Darwin's history of natural organs, but says with Vico that human history differs from natural history because we made it.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
Under capitalism the capitalist takes it; this is the problem. Machinery is not meant to lighten toil; it cheapens goods so the worker's share of the day shrinks and the unpaid share taken by the capitalist grows.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
No. In handicraft the worker uses a tool; in the factory the machine uses the worker, who becomes its living appendage.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
1877KappKapp,Outlines of a Philosophy of TechnologyGermanTreatiseFull text
Ernst Kapp
Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
No. Argues that tools and machines are unconscious projections of human organs, so that technology develops as an outward copy of the human body.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
Yes. Tools and machines are unconscious projections of the body's organs, with the hand as the model for all tools, so technology is the body carried outward.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
1880Bois-ReymondBois-Reymond,The Seven World-RiddlesGermanEssayFull text
Emil du Bois-Reymond
Die sieben Welträthsel
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Unresolved. Under the mechanical view the brain's state at each moment is the necessary effect of the previous one, leaving no room for free will, yet the felt freedom of choice remains one of seven unsolved world-riddles.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1884JheringJhering,Jest and Earnest in JurisprudenceGermanEssayFull text
Rudolf von Jhering
Scherz und Ernst in der Jurisprudenz
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
No. In the satire, the heaven of theoretical concepts is separated from the practitioners’ afterlife: practitioners could neither breathe nor see in the theorists’ world. This excerpt does not give a particular unjust judicial decision.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1895RouxRoux,Collected Papers on the Developmental Mechanics of OrganismsGermanTreatiseFull text
Wilhelm Roux
Gesammelte Abhandlungen über Entwickelungsmechanik der Organismen
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
Yes. Proposes a developmental mechanics that studies the causes of embryonic form by experiment on eggs, treating development as the working-out of physical and chemical causes.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
1899HaeckelHaeckel,The Riddle of the UniverseGermanTreatiseFull text
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Yes. The struggle over free will has ended in favor of determinism; the human will is no freer than an animal's and differs only in degree.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1900HilbertHilbert,Mathematical ProblemsGermanEssayFull text
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
Yes. States the conviction that every definite mathematical problem can be settled, either by solution or proof of impossibility: 'in mathematics there is no ignorabimus'.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1906FlaviusFlavius,The Battle for Legal ScienceGermanEssayFull text
Gnaeus Flavius (Hermann Kantorowicz)
Der Kampf um die Rechtswissenschaft
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
No. Manifesto of the Free Law movement, arguing that judges already decide with more freedom than the statute allows and should do so openly.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1914RilkeRilke,Dolls: On the Wax Dolls of Lotte PritzelGermanEssayFull text
Rainer Maria Rilke
Puppen. Zu den Wachs-Puppen von Lotte Pritzel
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
No. The child's doll takes all the love given it and answers with silence, because it is made of stuff that cannot respond; Rilke treats this as the child's first experience of not being loved back.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
1919FreudFreud,The UncannyGermanPeriodicalFull text
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
1919WeberWeber,Politics as a VocationGermanEssayFull text
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
Yes. The honor of the civil servant is to carry out a superior's order conscientiously as if it were his own conviction, even when he thinks it wrong; personal responsibility belongs to the political leader.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
1930FreudFreud,Civilization and Its DiscontentsGermanTreatiseFull text
Sigmund Freud
Das Unbehagen in der Kultur
German · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
Yes. With his auxiliary organs man has become 'a kind of prosthetic God', but the organs have not grown onto him, give him trouble, and have not made him happy.
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
1931SpenglerSpengler,Man and TechnicsGermanTreatiseFull text
Oswald Spengler
Der Mensch und die Technik
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
No. Treats machine technology as the expression of Western man's will to power, a stage in a culture's life that ends in decline.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes. Western technics has become detachable from the Faustian culture that made it, so non-Western peoples can take it up and turn it against the West.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?