Values and beliefs

essayIllness and disease
I made it fun
Warren met his cancer diagnosis with tenacious optimism. But can positive thinking really affect the course of the disease?
Kirtan D Nautiyal

essayPhilosophy of religion
Revolutionary tolerance
In an age of ferocious religious bloodletting, Sebastian Castellio argued that everyone seems like a heretic to someone else
Michael W Bruening

essayEconomics
Divine dividends
In China, companies that are closer to temples are more generous to shareholders: religion subtly shapes economic behaviour
Zhangxin (Frank) Liu

essayMetaphysics
Essence is fluttering
As Zhuangzi saw, there is no immutably true self. Instead our identity is as dynamic and alive as a butterfly in flight
Alexander Douglas

essayAnthropology
Spider divination
Life is complicated. In Cameroon, initiated diviners read the messages of spiders to untangle possible futures
David Zeitlyn

essayVirtues and vices
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

essayHistory of science
Incredible testimonies
In the 1980s, thousands of Americans began to suspect they may have been abducted by aliens. What happened?
Greg Eghigian

essayComparative philosophy
A cure for individualism
It runs deeply through the Western outlook, hailed and condemned in equal measures. For a corrective, look to Confucius
Tim Connolly

essayIllness and disease
Permission to be ill
It took months for my functional neurological disorder to finally be diagnosed. It’s a condition that must be recognised
Kevin Aho

essayStories and literature
Our narrative prison
The three-act ‘hero’s journey’ has long been the most prominent kind of story. What other tales are there to tell?
Eliane Glaser

essayReligion
Demonology
By turns benign and malign, powerful and vulnerable, earthbound and aerial, daimons across the world resemble one another
David Gordon White

videoValues and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes

videoMeaning and the good life
Leading 1950s thinkers on the search for happiness in trying times
29 minutes

essayMetaphysics
Many worlds, many selves
If it’s true that we live in a vast multiverse, then our understanding of identity, morality and even God must be reexamined
Emily Qureshi-Hurst

essayValues and beliefs
My leap across the chasm
After years of debate and contemplation, I’ve come to think a heretical form of Christianity might be true. Here’s why
Philip Goff

videoBioethics
Is it ethical to have a second child so that your first might live?
10 minutes

essayHistory 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

essayMeaning 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

essayNations and empires
Chastising little brother
Why did Japanese Confucians enthusiastically support Imperial Japan’s murderous conquest of China, the homeland of Confucius?
Shaun O’Dwyer

essayStories and literature
Do liberal arts liberate?
In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life
Nick Romeo

videoRituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
3 minutes

essayStories 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

essayThinkers 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

essayPolitical philosophy
The battles over beginnings
Niccolò Machiavelli’s profound insights about the violent origins of political societies help us understand the world today
David Polansky