Philosophy

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

Rawls the redeemer

For John Rawls, liberalism was more than a political project: it is the best way to fashion a life that is worthy of happiness

Alexandre Lefebvre

Frameworks

Knowledge is often a matter of discovery. But when the nature of an enquiry itself is at question, it is an act of creation

Céline Henne

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

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

Do plants have minds?

In the 1840s, the iconoclastic scientist Gustav Fechner made an inspired case for taking seriously the interior lives of plants

Rachael Petersen

Beyond the veil – what rules would govern John Rawls’s ‘realistic Utopia’?

6 minutes

A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice

5 minutes

The enchanted vision

Love is much more than a mere emotion or moral ideal. It imbues the world itself and we should learn to move with its power

Mark Vernon

Philosophy is an art

For Margaret Macdonald, philosophical theories are akin to stories, meant to enlarge certain aspects of human life

Peter West

Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality

4 minutes

Our tools shape our selves

For Bernard Stiegler, a visionary philosopher of our digital age, technics is the defining feature of human experience

Bryan Norton

A man beyond categories

Paul Tillich was a religious socialist and a profoundly subtle theologian who placed doubt at the centre of his thought

Ted Farris

For Iris Murdoch, selfishness is a fault that can be solved by reframing the world

6 minutes