Arts & Letters Daily search results for “philosophy” (205)
2017-11-02 | Kant thought entire civilizations incapable of philosophy. Derrida said China had no philosophy, only thought. Why did Western philosophy turn its back on the world? more »
2011-01-01 | Philosophy is dead, succeeded by science, says Stephen Hawking. But theoretical physics has abandoned empiricism and entered the realm of, well, philosophy more »
2018-08-22 | Diversity of thought is the lifeblood of philosophy. Nothing is more exciting than a fresh idea. Yet academic philosophy in America shuns diversity more »
2013-01-28 | Coffee, wine, God, philosophy, and the audacity of the pope. An unearthed conversation with Christopher Hitchens more »
2021-07-21 | "Bad philosophy — like bad sex — can be formulaic and uninspired." That hasn't stopped Amia Srinivasan from developing a philosophy of porn more »
2022-04-25 | The Aristotle, the René Decartes, the full Foucault: A philosophy of facial hair more »
2012-08-17 | Don't think, look! For Wittgenstein, the maxim was fundamental to his philosophy. Seeing connections precedes understanding more »
2011-01-01 | 'At the border between knowledge and belief, where science flirts with philosophy, you''ll find experimental physicist Rolf-Dieter Heuer ' more »
2015-10-19 | Philosophy and poetry. Inspired by Santayana and Spinoza, Wallace Stevens addressed poetically the search for truth more »
2018-06-21 | Philosophy is dead. Excitement, creativity, and inventiveness have been replaced by dutiful recitations and historical re-enactments more »
2019-05-20 | How Islam shaped Western thought. The relationship led to a flowering of political philosophy, thought experiment, and polemic more »
2017-04-21 | Long skeptical of the value of philosophy, Silicon Valley may be coming around. “When bullshit can no longer be tolerated,” they turn to a sort-of Chief Philosophy Officer more »
2017-12-19 | Philosophy now comes to us in one form: the peer-reviewed article, published (preferably in English) in an academic journal. No wonder philosophy has become so irrelevant more »
2014-06-10 | In praise of bean counters. Accounting once occupied the attention of thinkers in religion, art, and philosophy. Yes, accounting more »
2014-07-17 | Has science forsaken philosophy? Moving beyond data and certainty, ancient scientists like Anaximander built a vision of the world more »
2013-05-29 | As physics spins out into ever-more abstract realms, the field drifts toward incoherence. Raymond Tallis's cure? More philosophy more »
2019-05-25 | Step aside, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Mill. Meet the oddballs, underdogs, and outcasts of British philosophy more »
2022-05-19 | Internet-bashing is having a moment, at least among philosophy-minded leftists. But what does resistance entail? more »
2021-12-31 | Among 19th-century American farmers distrustful of banks and England, a financial philosophy flourished: the coin-standard more »
2021-11-24 | Stoic philosophy is awash in ancient self-help: imagine the unimaginable, rehearse undergoing future evils, anticipate suffering more »
2014-07-10 | Is contemporary philosophy too dry and technical for your taste? The ancient Greeks felt the same way. Anthony Gottlieb explains more »
2013-04-20 | Marx's philosophy, like his life, was disjointed. For long stretches, practical concerns - meeting deadlines, evading creditors - trumped theory more »
2013-09-12 | Leon Wieseltier, guard dog of the humanities, accuses scientists of overrunning philosophy. He is right to worry, says Daniel Dennett more »
2014-09-30 | Histories of philosophy are difficult to write. Bertrand Russell excelled. Then there's Peter Adamson's new, pun-laden work more »
2022-07-14 | Is monogamy morally wrong? A nascent school of philosophy makes the case for alternative arrangements more »
2023-03-29 | At 55, Clancy Martin, a prolific essayist and professor of philosophy, has had more lives than a cat more »
2021-08-17 | Does philosophy make progress? The contributions of women to questions of knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, suggest that it does more »
2012-08-16 | Philosophy, long specialized and introverted, is again becoming a communal exercise. So much for the lonely thinker in a garret more »
2013-12-02 | The great debate. Philosophy can move history, as it did when Burke and Paine squared off over the French Revolution more »
2019-04-16 | Philosophy demands refutation and disputation, not kindness and empathy. Fighting, done right, is a form of inquiry more »
2019-01-30 | A mathematician tasked with translating Wittgenstein, Frank Ramsey was a crucial link between pragmatism and analytic philosophy more »
2014-07-01 | Ethical creed, political philosophy, capitalist rationale, passing historical phase, timeless body of universal ideals: What is liberalism? more »
2014-07-18 | Derek Parfit is committed to philosophy, white shirts, yogurt, and Janet Radcliffe-Richards. This is the world's most cerebral romance more »
2014-03-12 | Bernard Williams was an extraordinarily successful philosopher. But he hardly thought well of academic philosophy: ?unhelpful, boring, sterile? more »
2012-08-17 | Alvin Plantinga's philosophy is subtle and scientifically informed. His theism is comprehensive, even ingenious, but ultimately hard to agree with more »
2014-12-09 | For 35 years, Denis Dutton edited Philosophy and Literature. His commitment was to language that is simple, clear, and elegant more »
2010-01-01 | Heidegger was undoubtedly a genius. You can tell he was a genius because his philosophy is so hard to grasp more »
2022-02-28 | Philosophy advances by “intuition pumps” — thought experiments that suggest an appealing but unwarranted conclusion more »
2021-10-04 | Spinoza's philosophy is not antithetical to religion. He was determined to reform religion, not eliminate it more »
2021-11-09 | Do you blame Plato for philosophy’s obsession with metaphysical abstraction? Not so fast more »
2012-08-17 | John Templeton had an interest in mysticism and science - and an eye for investing. His foundation is pouring money into philosophy. To what end? more »
2013-05-10 | Anarchism, once the philosophy of terrorists and assassins, has mellowed. It's now the creed of professors eager to see the state disappear - just not yet more »
2013-05-13 | Alain de Botton, purveyor of philosophy-flecked self-help, is much derided. But give him this: He has written the least sexy book about sex ever published more »
2013-05-28 | Modern misinterpretation has garbled the obscene but unpornographic thoughts of the Marquis de Sade. Still, echoes of his boudoir philosophy abound more »
2013-07-02 | William Lane Craig ? evangelical Christian, philosopher of religion ? made his name debating atheists. He's good, but is his a valid philosophy? more »
2013-02-13 | Stanley Cavell dropped out of Juilliard and joined a philosophy department, but its language was too abstract. He was determined to reclaim fleshy, everyday words more »
2014-10-22 | It's been said ? Alfred North Whitehead said it ? that the history of philosophy is a 'series of footnotes to Plato.' Funny. And completely wrong more »
2010-01-01 | No self-respecting professor of philosophy wants to discuss the soul in class. It reeks of old-time theology, or worse, New Age quantum treacle more »
2016-06-29 | A humanistic discipline should range across all of human experience. So why is philosophy so homogeneous, provincial, and white more »
2016-08-16 | Female thinkers have rarely been cinematic subjects. But recent films about Hannah Arendt have raised the question: How should a woman in philosophy be portrayed? more »
2015-04-17 | Studying with Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty in the 80s, Crispin Sartwell couldn't help detecting a sense of finality. It was an end for philosophy more »
2016-01-01 | Swearing is like songwriting — it structures the world around us. Mark Edmundson explores the philosophy of his favorite profanity: “shit” more »
2016-04-22 | Philosophy has been overrun by Kant and by moralistic rules. We need a version that appeals to people — we need a return to Hume more »
2019-08-30 | Peanuts, the philosophy: Life is hard. People are difficult. Happiness can and probably will vaporize. The best response: Laugh and keep moving more »
2019-09-18 | After Rawls. He is the central figure in political philosophy, despite a sea change in our political reality. It’s time for something new more »
2018-09-08 | How far can common sense go toward answering philosophy’s most difficult questions? For J.L. Austin, the answer was quite far indeed more »
2019-05-16 | Make philosophy great again. The field has been reduced to bland Continental and analytic variants — a trend that must be reversed more »
2019-08-16 | “Natural and unconstrained.” Nudism in America was shaped by Whitman, Thoreau, German philosophy, and the American Sunbathing Association more »
2017-07-28 | Richard Rorty thought of himself as an American philosopher. American philosophers saw him as a European intellectual, and his philosophy as a betrayal. It wasn't more »
2020-05-29 | "The trolley-problem problem." Thought experiments are as old as philosophy itself, but are they a useful way to reason about ethics? more »
2023-03-13 | Hegel compared women to plants; Nietzsche said they “delayed human development.” How to explain philosophy’s dogged exclusion of women? more »
2020-11-25 | The question of how to live has long flummoxed great minds. But not cats: They have nothing to learn from philosophy more »
2013-11-20 | The FBI's philosophy files. Ever suspicious, J. Edgar Hoover was especially suspicious of French existentialists. He kept his eye on Sartre and Camus more »
2012-08-17 | Three Hasidic Jews and a philosophy professor walk into a bar. On tap, the big questions: God, reason, doubt, the meaning of life more »
2010-01-01 | Journalism and philosophy: how is it that the two humanistic intellectual activities that most boldly proclaim devotion to truth are barely on speaking terms? more »
2017-02-08 | The Searle-Derrida dispute. How a narrow question about language led to accusations of ignorance and the split between analytic and continental philosophy more »
2015-10-21 | How a question about butter and refrigerators might free philosophy from its dead end and restore some common sense more »
2016-01-16 | Musicians need philosophy. Indeed, it is the absence of philosophical reflection that has produced so many half-baked ideas in music more »
2015-06-06 | For Michael Oakeshott, philosophy is a conversation, not an argument; a disposition, not a doctrine. He had no interest in changing the world more »
2011-01-01 | The Trolley problem. How to make an issue in moral philosophy come alive, while the thinker is still allowed to enjoy the comforts of the armchair more »
2018-07-26 | Diogenes Laertius may have been a flaming mediocrity, but he deserves our admiration: He's our best source on ancient philosophy more »
2017-09-23 | Why is Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of analytic philosophy, largely unknown today? For starters, little was recorded of his personality -- except his virulent racism more »
2017-10-18 | A philosophy of being at home. Consider your domestic surroundings along with Gaston Bachelard, and you will have “unlocked a door to daydreaming” more »
2018-02-17 | The comprehensive John Stuart Mill. He was out to combine Bentham with poetry, the Enlightenment with Romanticism, and to span the entire philosophy of his time more »
2020-01-16 | For a time, doing philosophy meant grappling with the thought of Avicenna. Among his notable contributions: proving the existence of God more »
2020-06-24 | Was the chilly stroll by Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger in Davos in 1929 the moment that analytic and Continental philosophy truly split? more »
2017-05-30 | When sports meets philosophy. Want to test ideas about mutualism and self-interest? Try succeeding inside a cycling peloton more »
2017-06-01 | Schools of thought in philosophy and cultural theory are transient. They coalesce, evolve, break apart. So how has the Frankfurt School endured for three generations? more »
2017-07-08 | The history of the closet. It made itself useful in 15th-century Italy, where studioli housed secret poems and experimental philosophy more »
2017-08-10 | The conventional story of philosophy treats Indian, Buddhist, Chinese, and Islamic thought as isolated from the Western tradition. Time for an integrated approach more »
2019-02-28 | Philosophers tend to speak to one another. But so-called public philosophy aspires to liberate the field from the academy. Is that a good thing? more »
2019-05-07 | Bergsonmania. Henri Bergson’s lectures on philosophy led to mobbed venues and the first-ever traffic jam on Broadway. Why was he so popular? more »
2023-02-10 | Thomas Nagel compels us to confront the possibility that the most fundamental problems of philosophy are insoluble — but no less important for that more »
2023-03-10 | Philosophers don't philosophize; they “do philosophy.” But Justin E.H. Smith isn't like other philosophers. Especially when he's stoned more »
2022-06-03 | Despite his plain-language philosophy approach, Stanley Cavell’s syntax obfuscates, warning readers: “Paraphrase me if you dare” more »
2022-12-03 | After years of study in archives of pornography, Kathleen Lubey has emerged with a philosophy of smut and its contradictions more »
2021-12-24 | Wittgenstein, who regarded philosophy as a “kind of magic,” noted more than a few parallels linking conjurers and philosophers more »
2021-11-08 | Wittgenstein wrote like a "poet trapped inside a philosopher.” Philosophy can describe the world, but only fiction can create it more »
2020-10-13 | Amid the volatile political scene of 1920s Austria, a group of thinkers — the Vienna Circle — set the agenda for postwar philosophy more »
2014-04-19 | Michael Oakeshott, author of dense, intricate works of philosophy: not a guy you?d expect to write pungent aphorisms. And yet more »
2014-03-01 | Throughout the 1930s and early 40s, Martin Heidegger kept a diary in which anti-Semitism seems tied to his philosophy. What, you?re surprised? more »
2010-01-01 | For Philo of Alexandria, heaven was an eternal philosophy seminar. For medieval rabbis it was a vast library where books jumped into your hands more »
2017-02-01 | Herbert Hoover and his wife translated a 16th-century text on the “nature of subterranean things.” Inside a strange saga of politics and philosophy more »
2017-03-24 | Struggling with scholasticism and overloaded with internal issues, philosophy has turned away from the real world. To rediscover its relevance, it needs to be rebooted more »
2016-08-10 | Self-improvement through shocks. Electricity is central to our understanding of religion, philosophy, and love. Ever since the Victorians, we've made ourselves electrical more »
2015-11-05 | Elizabeth Gilbert is out to sink the myth of the tortured artist. She has her own philosophy of creativity: "the Song of the Disciplined Half-Ass" more »
2011-01-01 | Is philosophy of science an obsolete pseudo-discipline? Stephen Hawking thinks so. But his work relies on the very sort of speculations that philosophers invented more »
2011-01-01 | We are in the middle of a revolution in consciousness, writes David Brooks. Like theology and philosophy, brain science will change how we view ourselves and the world more »
2015-05-15 | Looking back at his philosophy dissertation 46 years later, T.S. Eliot was flummoxed. “I do not pretend to understand it” more »
2015-07-18 | The unbearable maleness of the philosophy department. Blame the gladiatorial element, the misguided definition of “brilliance,” the curriculum more »
2016-02-26 | While in the Austrian army, Wittgenstein wrote a book of philosophy. Then he quit the subject — he’d solved all its problems more »
2019-06-05 | How best to tell the story of philosophy? Instead of moving from one peak to another, wander the fertile valleys in between more »
2019-07-17 | Iris Murdoch has fallen out of fashion, but her work is worth retrieving as a moral philosophy with a steely-eyed suspicion of intellectual confidence more »
2019-08-06 | Wittgenstein said you could write a whole philosophy of the human condition using only jokes. So what can we learn from the jokes told under Stalin? more »
2017-10-25 | John Rawls called it "the best of all games"; Mark Kingwell calls it "the most philosophical of games." What is it about baseball and philosophy? more »
2018-05-19 | The Enlightenment started with philosophical insights spread by a new technology. We face a dominant technology — artificial intelligence — in search of a philosophy more »
2018-06-01 | Aristotle’s ethics of virtue offers a flexible philosophy for the 21st century. Yet few people read him today. The problem: his academese more »
2022-02-04 | Oxford moral philosophy: Does it “corrupt the youth”? Elizabeth Anscombe pulled no punches in her attack on the positivist consensus more »
2023-05-16 | The American idea of continental philosophers as speculative, irrational mystics dates to the 1953 International Congress of Philosophy, in Brussels more »
2020-11-17 | Even when the history of philosophy doesn't make sense philosophically, it does makes sense as a story more »
2020-12-14 | Why were doctors and nurses uniquely attracted to Nazi philosophy, enlisting in much higher proportions than any other profession? more »
2021-08-04 | Analytic philosophy is "degenerating"; particle physics is "irrelevant"; math may die "within a generation." Why are so many disciplines hitting dead ends? more »
2021-08-19 | Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is known as a great work of philosophy. Is it also an immaculate volume of modernist poetry? more »
2021-06-14 | Philosophy barely progresses, but what impedes it? Perhaps the solutions to the problems it takes on generate their own problems more »
2014-04-23 | An ascendant view holds that while philosophy may pose important questions, progress isn't possible until science provides answers. That view is wrong more »
2013-09-24 | In the 1960s, Chinese philosophy in America was largely the work of one man, Chung-ying Cheng. Now it's everywhere. But does it carry weight? more »
2013-10-08 | 'I depart from the orders of others.' With that, Machiavelli reconceived both politics and philosophy. He was not a product of his time, but the father of ours more »
2012-08-16 | In America, "isolationism" is an epithet, a philosophy for xenophobes and fools. Though its future is dubious, its history is rich more »
2012-08-19 | Crises force us back to first principles. This is a moment for political philosophy, a moment for one of its most intelligent practitioners, Alan Ryan more »
2012-08-16 | For lonely people in a lonely age. Psychoanalysts were once imbued with intellectual authority, dabbling in religion and philosophy. Now therapists are more like artificial friends more »
2012-08-16 | What is the nature of knowledge? Can a theory be valid if it cannot be proved? Where does knowledge end and philosophy or religion begin? more »
2013-05-24 | Thomas Nagel's critique of evolution isn't shocking. What is shocking? That the ensuing debate about the philosophy of science has ignored the science more »
2015-04-22 | We know about his science, his politics, his philosophy - what else is there to know about Albert Einstein? Not least: his sense of humor more »
2015-09-28 | Hume’s philosophy was long overlooked. He was instead known for his lightly researched historical works and a talent for wrongheadedness more »
2016-08-02 | A philosophy of education. Influenced by Hegel and Darwin, John Dewey launched a revolution that overthrew the methods of the day. Hannah Arendt was not pleased more »
2010-01-01 | 'Should Martin Heidegger''s books be pulled from library philosophy shelves and placed in history of Nazism? For Emmanuel Faye, it''s a good idea' more »
2018-01-20 | Is the U.S. president’s spontaneous philosophy in line with key features of conservatism, or peripheral to them? more »
2020-01-18 | The philosophy of small talk. Behind our pleasantries lies an existential query: Just who do you think you are? more »
2020-01-23 | Allan Bloom argued that a generation out of touch with great music, literature, and philosophy is a diminished generation. What's gleaned from reading him today? more »
2020-02-29 | In 2004, Richard Rorty went to Tehran. Thousands came to hear how philosophy could build democracy. They got something different more »
2018-07-26 | Judith Shklar was a pessimist in an era of triumphalism. At odds with the political philosophy of her own time, her ideas are finally resonating more »
2017-07-21 | The Cold War lasted until 1991, but Cold War philosophy is still with us. Consider the strange and enduring career of rational choice theory more »
2023-05-03 | Sally Haslanger, Amia Srinivasan, and Anthony Appiah have resigned from the masthead of The Journal of Political Philosophy. What happened? more »
2022-05-28 | Joseph Raz, who placed moral reasoning at the heart of legal philosophy, died this month. He was 83 more »
2021-08-28 | If America is in the grip of an epistemological crisis, is there any evidence that philosophy can help? No more »
2021-12-03 | William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale might have failed as a philosophy of education, but it succeeded as a genre more »
2021-12-07 | Is it possible to survey the state of philosophy? Despite a recent attempt, the field doesn’t neatly conform to a multiple-choice quiz more »
2021-12-20 | Suicide has long been a concern of theology, philosophy, and, more recently, medicine. But what of the things no medicine can cure? more »
2021-03-05 | Originalism’s original sin. The judicial philosophy is best understood not in a legal context, but as an extension of biblical literalism more »
2020-10-10 | The Consolation of Philosophy, a best seller for centuries, has fallen out of favor. Uet we sorely need its lessons in epistemic humility more »
2020-11-23 | Freud’s philosophy of grief. How the loss of a daughter shaped a father’s understanding of death more »
2020-12-19 | The best of 20th-century philosophy urges us to be fearless, critical, and creative, and to avoid orthodoxies, ideologies, and obscurantist nonsense more »
2021-06-08 | If theology, science, and philosophy once shaped souls, a new power has superseded them: HR, the central organizing power of society more »
2012-08-19 | Isaiah Berlin was charming, affable, erudite. But was his primary contribution to the art of conversation or to the field of political philosophy? more »
2012-12-01 | Philosophy used to be spiritual exercise. Now it's just a job. What happened to the idea that a philosopher's life should be led philosophically? more »
2014-08-08 | The cult of happiness - the very idea that happiness is actually attainable - has more and more of us depressed. What we need is a decent philosophy of failure more »
2013-12-13 | Away with abstraction! Philosophers are physical beings, insisted Miguel de Unamuno. It is man, not ideas, that is the subject of all philosophy more »
2014-01-04 | We are born social, wired to be tribal, prone to conflict with those who hold different values. Is a universal moral philosophy possible? more »
2012-08-18 | Leviathan was always an enemy-maker for Hobbes, for a time the most loathed thinker in Britain. But his heresies helped generate British philosophy more »
2013-04-10 | For 14 years, Alan Smith taught philosophy to prisoners. But no more. 'If I never meet another psychopath again, it'll be far too soon? more »
2014-09-16 | A philosophy of body art. A tattoo can be many things ? testimonial, adornment, poignant reminder ? but they all share a subtext: 'Look at me? more »
2014-11-14 | At Kyoto Imperial University in the 1940s, the search for a philosophy of absolute nothingness pointed in one direction: kamikaze pilots more »
2016-10-17 | Philosophy, which, according to Aristotle, begins in wonder, has embraced pedantry and protocols and office charts. Can it be saved from itself? more »
2017-01-07 | Success in parenthood is uncertain, and apparent only after a lifetime of battle and worry. Is this why so many fathers of philosophy remained childless? more »
2017-03-28 | “The boy socialist of Oakland.” At 20, Jack London spent his time on soapboxes condemning capitalism. How did his political philosophy shape his fiction? more »
2011-01-01 | In the market for a new philosophy? Rebecca Goldstein has a tip: Postmodernists are out; rationalists are in; short-sell Heidegger because the smart money is on Spinoza more »
2016-05-18 | Wittgenstein’s charisma. He lived philosophy as a personal struggle. That made him severe, ruthless, censorious, and depressed. And bewitching more »
2011-01-01 | Philosophy is not an attempt to secure new knowledge about the mind or beauty or right conduct, says Peter Hacker. It is not even a cognitive discipline more »
2018-10-31 | The appeal of Stoic philosophy to both ancient Romans and today’s therapy-chasing Americans is unsurprising. But darkness is at the heart of Stoicism more »
2018-12-08 | Writing weakens the intellect, or so claimed Socrates. Despite this, two new books set out to rehabilitate classical philosophy more »
2019-02-06 | Stoicism teaches us how to face adversity with equanimity. As a philosophy, it's appealing. But not for our age more »
2018-07-05 | The good life, according to Aztec philosophy: The goal was not the pursuit of perfection but rather rootedness, moderation, prudence, and courage more »
2018-04-11 | While science advances, philosophy stays the same, asking the Big Questions again and again. The field is still immature more »
2019-03-07 | Richard Rorty took a therapeutic approach to philosophy. Indeed, he wanted to transform it into therapy. We're still dealing with the political implications more »
2017-07-26 | The tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Habermas has given way to slick performers. Is German philosophy exchanging profundity for popularity? more »
2023-04-26 | Tyler Cowen: "Longtermism is a radical and oft-neglected philosophy, and few people are interested in living by its implications" more »
2021-11-04 | Ethical statements have no objective truth and are thus subjective. So went the prevailing Oxford moral philosophy of the 1930s and '40s more »
2021-11-25 | Philosophy cannot anchor politics. So held Richard Rorty, dashing the hopes of a long line of political philosophers more »
2020-11-30 | Montaigne studied classical philosophy but claimed to learn nothing from it — the only moral authority he recognized was his own more »
2016-01-26 | “Destroy this and all letters,” wrote Iris Murdoch, “and keep your mouth shut.” What didn't she want revealed? Her “adult philosophy” more »
2016-03-21 | Hilary Putnam, dead at 89, led a life of reason and argument. He was a thinker of breadth. “Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs in one” more »
2019-01-26 | The philosophy of Josiah Royce: When evaluating your life, don’t ask, “How happy am I?” Ask, “How loyal am I, and to what?” more »
2018-09-18 | Nietzsche aimed to terrify rather than instruct. If his philosophy can be used as therapy, it’s through the ability to deliver an electric jolt to our souls more »
2018-04-02 | Before modern philosophy, there were Erasmus and Luther. Their dispute stands as a lasting reminder that among the threats to human flourishing, misplaced certitude shouldn’t be underestimated more »
2017-09-13 | The Enlightenment emerged from a 150-year “staccato burst” of European philosophy. Why did these thinkers — Hobbes, Descarte, Voltaire, Rousseau — write as they did? more »
2012-08-16 | A philosophy of sleep might sound sleep-inducing. It isn't. After all, sleep is so strange. For around eight hours a day you lose control of your faculties and become delusional. What's that about? more »
2010-01-01 | 'Bioethics is such a hot field in medicine and philosophy that bioethicists are on call in hospitals the help decide vexed moral issues. Isn''t it all a little silly?' more »
2018-12-27 | For Wittgenstein, philosophy had no “problems,” only “puzzles.” This did not stop him from threatening Karl Popper with a fireplace poker over a philosophical difference more »
2020-01-02 | Existentialism in the ring. After Gordon Marino found no success as a boxer, Kierkegaard’s works led him back to philosophy — and saved his life more »
2020-06-23 | It was in the gym that Bruce Lee, a failing philosophy student, turned his musings into mantras: Using no way as way; having no limitation as limitation more »
2015-09-15 | Contemporary philosophy is laden with runaway “intellectualism” – everything is taken to be a product of thought. But some things just are more »
2015-07-29 | Wherever we find philosophy, we find a tension between the pursuit of truth and the promise of a better and more fulfilled life. Both paths will leave you dissatisfied more »
2018-01-02 | Foucault is best known as a philosopher of power. Yet he did not offer a philosophy of power, refusing to develop an overarching theory. How is this possible? more »
2017-09-18 | The International Congress on Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science doesn't sound romantic. But it's where Hilary Putnam met his future wife, Ruth Anna. Pragmatism would never be the same more »
2022-09-13 | “If philosophy does eventually generate good life advice, there’s no guarantee it’ll deliver comfort along with it. Truth can be a bitch” more »
2012-08-16 | Same as it ever was. Philosophy no longer speaks to the way we live. Or so its critics claim. But the discipline has always had its share of theoretical thickets. more »
2013-07-06 | Can grief at the death of a loved one be diminished by the way we think? Is there a philosophy that can prepare us for the death of others? more »
2017-04-07 | According to A.C. Grayling, philosophy made the transition from medieval to modern in the 17th century. But does assigning a historical period actually mean anything? more »
2017-05-02 | Robert Nozick was fed up with trying to win people over to his views. So he limited himself to explaining systems of thought, and forever altered analytic philosophy more »
2016-10-06 | Beyond self-evident. In a time of Lockean philosophy and trompe-l’oeil art, America’s founders embraced doubt and ambiguity. Was their stance a weakness? more »
2016-10-28 | Kierkegaard broke off his engagement claiming to be a young cad in need of a “lusty young girl.” But it was more than that. His entire philosophy can be found in that renunciation more »
2016-03-18 | This history of the 20th-century literary world is one of artistic insecurity. “What I suffer from,” said Alfred Kazin, is “the lack of a working philosophy” more »
2018-03-21 | "I am sick to death of hearing about Karl Marx. I am sick of his name, his -isms, his undoubted genius, and his 'philosophy.' Most of all, I am sick of his 'relevance'" more »
2017-12-02 | The speed of philosophy. Philippa Foot, a “dreadfully slow thinker,” wrote little. The challenge of the field, as she saw it, was to be slow enough more »
2020-02-05 | Bertrand Russell is often regarded as wanting to rid philosophy of ethics. But he had his own ethical theories. What he opposed was using ethics to prop up nationalism more »
2018-11-24 | "I have no better expression than the term 'religious' for this trust in the rational character of reality," said Einstein. But his was a god of philosophy, not religion more »
2010-01-01 | How did the study of literature as an art come to be replaced by the mix of bad philosophy and worse prose academics call Theory? Where is Borges when you need him? more »
2015-07-06 | Ornette Coleman was a freak – about his music, clothing, beard, philosophy. Yet his life was a conventional one, he insisted: “Born, work, sad and happy and etc.” more »
2019-10-09 | “Philosophy progresses, not by producing better theories, but by the elimination of confusion through the clarification of what, in some sense, we knew all along.” more »
2019-10-31 | By the end of his life, John Rawls had a stature so great that he shaped the very idea of what philosophy is. Has this become a problem? more »
2019-11-22 | What is real? How should one live? What government is best? Why do the good suffer and the evil prosper? Philosophy is ever-changing and never-ending more »
2017-07-06 | Thoreau’s philosophy was based on rivers as well as on Walden. What, then, to make of his siding with industrialists over local farmers when it came to water levels? more »
2020-05-15 | In 1979, Richard Rorty suggested that philosophy was over; graduate students might as well give up. One of his own, Robert Brandom, has now proven that thought absurd more »
2022-05-20 | By 1916, Wittgenstein had laid out his solution to philosophy’s quandaries. But then he was pushed beyond his “mathematical train of thought” more »
2019-02-28 | Why do we refer to “heads” of state and the long “arm” of the law? The “body politic” is deeply rooted in Western philosophy. And it may be a cure for what ails us more »