Generally for existentialists, one is not born anything: everything we are is the result of our choices, as we build ourselves out of our own resources and those which society gives us. We don ’t only ...

Richard Floyd explains a notorious example of Wittgenstein’s public thought. Wittgenstein is certainly a special case. He is perhaps the only philosopher who could have produced an argument for which ...

The following responses to this basic ethical question each win a random book. To understand how acquire have moral knowledge, we first need to understand what sort of thing we are talking about when ...

The Buddha’s law of impermanence is ubiquitous, governing all scales of existence: the molecular, the geological, and even the cosmological. In time, powerful oceans pulverize adamantine rocks into ...

Mordecai Roshwald imagines what the Athenian gadfly might have said. (In this dialogue the writer has taken the philosophical licence of dispensing with the dimension of time, which otherwise led to ...

Anita Silvers describes a booming area of philosophical enquiry and explains how considering the perspectives of the disabled can help philosophy in general. Philosophers analyze and assess those ...

Jim Moran explains why saving the planet will be an uphill struggle. The recent development of the branch of philosophy called ‘environmental philosophy’, or as it is sometimes referred to, ...

Imadaldin Al-Jubouri on the medieval Islamic philosopher who pioneered the scientific understanding of history. Some consider the Italian philosopher Vico (1668-1744) to have been the founder of ...

Paul Cliteur asks: if an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God, which God don’t they believe in? What is atheism? Although much used in contemporary language, not many people specify what they ...

Mike Alder asks what is wrong with being charmingly illogical. Aseries of science/fantasy novels by Fletcher Pratt and L Sprague deCamp started in the nineteen forties, and were collected later in The ...

Peter Benson explains why Hegel was obsessed with the number three. One of the best known popularizers of philosophy in Britain is Bryan Magee. Many people will fondly recall his illuminating series ...

Peter Caws considers how much is lost in translation. There’s a story about an American evangelist who was challenged about something in his preaching that didn’t agree with the Greek of the New ...