Sam Dresser
Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche
Sam has been with Aeon since its launch in 2012. He’s most interested in how to do philosophy and in the continental/analytic divide. History and politics are also amusing to him. He considers Evelyn Waugh to be a very funny writer and enjoys pubs more than he should.
Written by Sam Dresser
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Thinkers and theories
Peak ellipsis
Does philosophy reside in the unsayable or should it care only for precision? Carnap, Heidegger and the great divergence
Sam Dresser
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Anthropology
The meaning of Margaret Mead
Mead argued that non-Western cultures offered alternative (often better) ways to be human. Why was she so vilified for it?
Sam Dresser
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Thinkers and theories
Freud versus Jung: a bitter feud over the meaning of sex
Sam Dresser
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History of ideas
How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free
Sam Dresser
Edited by Sam Dresser
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Philosophy of science
Why philosophy of physics?
Some physicists reject philosophy as a distraction from ‘real’ science but it is in fact both useful and beautiful
James Read
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Comparative 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
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Human rights and justice
Levelling the world
Gerrard Winstanley led a small band of radicals whose vision of justice encompassed the globe and continues to inspire
Rowan Wilson
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Neuroscience
The entangled brain
The brain is much less like a machine than it is like the murmurations of a flock of starlings or an orchestral symphony
Luiz Pessoa
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Cities
Cars beneath the ground
The explosion of automobiles shaped cities and lives. But an enduring problem remains: where to put them when they’re parked
Alfie Robinson
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Human rights and justice
Struggling to wake
After a murderous kidnapping in Nigeria, I launched a campaign to put a stop to the abductions. Why did no one listen?
Ayisha Osori
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Death
The last letter
Condemned to death by firing squad, French resistance fighters put pen to paper. Their dying words can teach us how to live
Daniel R Brunstetter
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Philosophy of mind
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
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Dance and theatre
What actors know
Acting is an ancient and intrinsically human way to establish vibrant connections with one another. And it’s available to us all
John Britton
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History of ideas
Ghosts among the philosophers
Cambridge, home of analytic philosophy, was also a hotbed of psychical research. How did this spooky subject take root?
Matyáš Moravec
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy
The art in the analyst’s room
The consulting office reflects the personality of the therapist, while also subtly shaping the experience of their patients
Anna Parker
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Mathematics
Beyond causality
In order to bridge the yawning gulf between the humanities and the sciences we must turn to an unexpected field: mathematics
Gordon Gillespie