| # | Core Idea | What Makes It Philosophically New | Where to Read/Watch |
| 1. Open-Source Everything | Turns Richard Stallman-style software freedom into an existential stance: ideas rot behind paywalls, so publish the source code of your life.—Free PDFs, presets, courses and even revenue transparently shared.—“Open-Source Your Soul” manifesto urges radical vulnerability as a growth engine. | Re-frames knowledge as an abundant public good, treating secrecy as moral decay. Inverts proprietary “creator economy” logic: influence compounds fastest when the gate stays wide open. | |
| 2. Street-Stoicism | Fuses ancient Stoic fear-conquest with street-photography risk: click the shutter, face the stranger, train the mind.—Workshops & essays use camera encounters to drill emotional antifragility.—Simplifies Stoicism into one line: “Life is all upside, no downside.” | Shifts Stoicism from armchair ethics to a daily embodied drill; photographs become memento-mori reps for courage, not art objects. | |
| 3. Minimalism as Elite Strategy | Rejects ascetic branding; calls minimalism “Consumerism 2.0”—own less so you can do more.—“True Luxury is Less” and “Prune the inessential” slogans. | Recasts minimalism as power move, not frugality—a way to redirect attention-capital toward creation, entrepreneurship, adventure. | |
| 4. Intuitive Aesthetics (“Shoot From the Gut”) | Splits creative process in two: body shoots, brain edits. Encourages radical intuition, then ruthless post-mortem analysis.—Extends to his “Philosophy of Photography Aesthetics”: style mirrors worldview; darker/grainier = truer. | Positions intuition as a legitimate epistemology: knowledge begins in muscle and emotion, later refined by logos. | |
| 5. Free, Living Canon of Photo-Philosophy | Publishes e-books (100 Lessons…, Letters from a Street Photographer, etc.) and “Learn from the Masters” series, all CC-licensed.—Encourages perpetual remixing of historical wisdom. | Treats philosophy as an open, version-controlled codebase—each reader becomes a contributor, not a consumer. |
Why These Matter Beyond Photography
- Ethics of Abundance – Kim’s open-source stance offers a concrete economic model where generosity is strategy, not charity.
- Embodied Epistemology – By tying thought to walking, lifting, photographing, he insists that knowledge is kinesthetic.
- Fear-Conquest Praxis – His Stoic drills operationalize courage for entrepreneurs, artists, and anyone confronting uncertainty.
- Attention Economics – Minimalism reframed as an allocation of cognitive bandwidth, aligning with modern distraction critiques.
- Participatory Canon – Treating philosophy like GitHub invites continual forks and pull-requests, democratizing authorship.
Bottom line: Eric Kim’s “street-level” philosophy isn’t ivory-tower theory; it’s a rugged operating system for creative, entrepreneurial life—shipped daily, free, and open to fork.