Philosophy

The French liar

René Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, was furiously condemned by his contemporaries. Why did they fear him?

Sandrine Parageau

From scattered traces

How the ideas circulating among one noblewoman’s coterie in 16th-century Dubrovnik anticipated modern feminist thought

Luka Boršić

Awkward silences

What is it about lulls in conversation that make them so very uncomfortable? It has to do with how we connect with each other

Rebecca Roache

What is Ethiopian philosophy?

Riven by two competing schools of thought, the future of philosophical enquiry in Ethiopia stands at a crossroads

Fasil Merawi

‘Am I not at least something?’ A surreal dive into Descartes’s Meditations

3 minutes

The truth about love

In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates shared a theory of love from the teachings of a ‘non-Athenian woman’. Who was she really?

Armand D’Angour

By the light of brahman

Ideas from classical Indian philosophy help illuminate the enigmas of selfhood, consciousness and the nature of reality

Anand Vaidya & Manjula Menon

The necessity of Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum’s philosophy is dynamic and challenging, but also elegant and lucidly written: she is the thinker of our time

Brandon Robshaw

The winter of civilisation

Byung-Chul Han’s relentless critiques of digital capitalism reveal how this suffocating system creates hollowed-out lives

Josh Cohen

So many unmarried men

For Mary Midgley, the Western philosophical tradition is shaped by the fact that its greatest practitioners were bachelors

Ellie Robson

Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?

5 minutes

Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity

5 minutes

The stories of Daniel Dennett

Often metaphorical and allusive, the philosopher’s work will long be remembered for how it grappled with everyday thought

Tim Bayne

Who can claim Aristotle?

The endless battle over his legacy testifies to his great authority – and the power of his thought to make the world better

Edith Hall

Settling accounts

Before he was famous, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was Louise Dupin’s scribe. It’s her ideas on inequality that fill his writings

Rebecca Wilkin

Against humility

Intellectual humility has recently been hailed as the key to thinking well. The story of Barbara McClintock proves otherwise

Rachel Fraser

The value of our values

When Nietzsche used the tools of philology to explore the nature of morality, he became a ‘philosopher of the future’

Alexander Prescott-Couch

C L R James and America

The brilliant Trinidadian thinker is remembered as an admirer of the US but he also warned of its dark political future

Harvey Neptune