essay
Political philosophy
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
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Thinkers and theories
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
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Knowledge
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
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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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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
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
video
Political philosophy
Beyond the veil – what rules would govern John Rawls’s ‘realistic Utopia’?
6 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
5 minutes
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Metaphysics
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
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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
video
Metaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
4 minutes
essay
Thinkers and theories
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
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Stories and literature
Terrifying vistas of reality
H P Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity
Sam Woodward
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Thinkers and theories
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
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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
video
Ethics
For Iris Murdoch, selfishness is a fault that can be solved by reframing the world
6 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Against power
As a republican, Sophie de Grouchy argued that sympathy, not domination, must be the glue that holds society together
Sandrine Bergès & Eric Schliesser
video
Thinkers and theories
‘My art is oratory, Socrates.’ An ancient warning on the power and peril of rhetoric
4 minutes
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Metaphysics
What awaits us?
Humanity’s future remains as unthinkable as the still-uncolonised galaxy or the enduring mystery of our own births and deaths
Jennifer Banks
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Thinkers and theories
On knowing who he was
Alan Watts, for all his faults, was a wildly imaginative and provocative thinker who reimagined religion in a secular age
Christopher Harding
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Thinkers and theories
We’ll meet again
The intrepid logician Kurt Gödel believed in the afterlife. In four heartfelt letters to his mother he explained why
Alexander T Englert
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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
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War and peace
The two Chomskys
The US military’s greatest enemy worked in an institution saturated with military funding. How did it shape his thought?
Chris Knight
essay
Comparative philosophy
Forging philosophy
A 17th-century classic of Ethiopian philosophy might be a fake. Does it matter, or is that just how philosophy works?
Jonathan Egid