essay
History of ideas
All that we are
The philosophy of personalism inspired Martin Luther King’s dream of a better world. We still need its hopeful ideas today
Bennett Gilbert
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy
Decolonising psychology
At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory thought
Rami Gabriel
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Meaning and the good life
Beyond authenticity
In her final unfinished work, Hannah Arendt mounted an incisive critique of the idea that we are in search of our true selves
Samantha Rose Hill
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History of ideas
Baffled by human diversity
Confused 17th-century Europeans argued that human groups were separately created, a precursor to racist thought today
Jacob Zellmer
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Meaning and the good life
Philosophy was once alive
I was searching for meaning and purpose so I became an academic philosopher. Reader, you might guess what happened next
Pranay Sanklecha
essay
Thinkers and theories
Paper trails
Husserl’s well-tended archive has given him a rich afterlife, while Nietzsche’s was distorted by his axe-grinding sister
Peter Salmon
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Philosophy of mind
The problem of erring animals
Three medieval thinkers struggled to explain how animals could make mistakes – and uncovered the nature of nonhuman minds
Sam Alma
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History of ideas
Chaos and cause
Can a butterfly’s wings trigger a distant hurricane? The answer depends on the perspective you take: physics or human agency
Erik Van Aken
essay
Stories and literature
On Jewish revenge
What might a people, subjected to unspeakable historical suffering, think about the ethics of vengeance once in power?
Shachar Pinsker
video
Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
5 minutes
essay
History of ideas
Reimagining balance
In the Middle Ages, a new sense of balance fundamentally altered our understanding of nature and society
Joel Kaye
essay
History
What would Thucydides say?
In constantly reaching for past parallels to explain our peculiar times we miss the real lessons of the master historian
Mark Fisher
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Knowledge
What is ‘lived experience’?
The term is ubiquitous and double-edged. It is both a key source of authentic knowledge and a danger to true solidarity
Patrick J Casey
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Thinkers and theories
Philosophy is an art
For Margaret Macdonald, philosophical theories are akin to stories, meant to enlarge certain aspects of human life
Peter West
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Biology
The cell is not a factory
Scientific narratives project social hierarchies onto nature. That’s why we need better metaphors to describe cellular life
Charudatta Navare
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Social psychology
The magic of the mundane
Pioneering sociologist Erving Goffman realised that every action is deeply revealing of the social norms by which we live
Lucy McDonald
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Language and linguistics
Cathedrals of convention
Humans have a strong impulse to see things that are arbitrary or conventional as natural and essential – especially language
Reuben Cohn-Gordon
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Comparative philosophy
Folklore is philosophy
Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world
Abigail Tulenko
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Information and communication
How to hate
The manifesto was always a hotheaded call to arms. Then it got a slick, digital makeover in the cause of coldblooded hate
Tyler Thier
essay
Thinkers and theories
Dancing and time
For Rachel Bespaloff, philosophy was a sensual activity shaped by the rhythm of history, embodied in an instant of freedom
Isabel Jacobs
video
Thinkers and theories
Henri Bergson on why the existence of things precedes their possibility
3 minutes
essay
Logic and probability
The patterns of reality
Some have thought that logic will one day be completed and all its problems solved. Now we know it is an endless task
Timothy Williamson
essay
History of ideas
Whither philosophy?
The discipline today finds itself precariously balanced between incomprehensible specialisation and cheap self-help
Siobhan Lyons
essay
Ethics
Wrestling with relativism
Bernard Williams argued that one’s ethics is shaped by culture and history. But that doesn’t mean that everyone is right
Daniel Callcut