Yahia Lababidi meditates on the aesthetics and ethics of two great contrarians. The externals of their lives could not be more different. One was a celebrated wit and dramatist, the other a reclusive ...

Chris Wright ponders Plato’s masterplan. One of the purposes of Plato’s Republic is to put forth a conception of the ‘just state’. Plato describes how such a state would be organized, who would govern ...

Tim Wilkinson on the physics & philosophy of parallel universes. In his 1895 essay Is Life Worth Living? the American philosopher William James wrote, “Truly, all we know of good and duty proceeds ...

Mary Daly is a world-renowned Radical Feminist philosopher, theologian and author. Professor Daly, what is Radical Feminism? Well, I actually define that in my Wickedary, which is a ‘dictionary for ...

The story of Russell’s philosophical account of the evils of German politics starts with the chaotic jingoism of the First World War. Prior to 1914, German scholarship had been widely respected in ...

The first example Gettier comes up with has to do with Jones and Smith applying for a job. If Smith had strong evidence that Jones will get the job (for example if the boss said Jones will get the job ...

The first English version of a classic essay by Peter Wessel Zapffe, originally published in Janus #9, 1933. Translated from the Norwegian by Gisle R. Tangenes. One night in long bygone times, man ...

Marina Gerner on a thought experiment about consciousness. Imagine a girl called Mary. She is a brilliant neuroscientist and a world expert on colour vision. But because she grew up entirely in a ...

In his Introduction to Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (1837), Hegel argues that there are three ways of doing history. The first of these is original history. Original history refers to ...

The following answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book. Sorry if your answer doesn’t appear: we received enough to fill twelve pages… Why are we here? Do we serve a ...

Mark Conard reveals the metaphysical truths lurking under the rug in Tarantino’s cult classic. Nihilism is a term which describes the loss of value and meaning in people’s lives. When Nietzsche ...

Christopher Norris presents a case for the defence. Stephen Hawking recently fluttered the academic dovecotes by writing in his new book The Grand Design – and repeating to an eager company of ...