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"Towards an Art of Punishment” By Benjamin George Coles (Keywords: Education; Justice; Rehabilitation; Suffering)
Benjamin George Coles argues that artistic means should often be incorporated into punishments – and indeed that we would benefit generally from thinking of punishment in more aesthetic terms. He first identifies the various objectives that we standardly have with punishment and argues for the primacy of an educational one. He then describes a series of real-life educational punishments and closes with a discussion of why the notion of punishment art is such a strange one.
Benjamin George Coles
20 min read


“The Pandemic Was A Portal”: By Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan (Keywords: Covid; Letters; Possible Futures; Collectivity; Inequalities)
Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan reminisces about the radical possibilities that the Covid pandemic presented us with. It was an opening, a portal through which we could have, collectively, walked into another world, a better world. But this was not to last. Slowly, but steadily, the radical potential of the pandemic was eroded and we returned to the 'normal'. But does this the mean portal is closed once and for all? What do we need to remember—to make that impossible world possibl
Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan
12 min read


"Primal Fear: The Weaponisation of Nothingness" By Brad Evans (Keywords: Violence; Bodies; Disappearance; State Power; Sovereignty)
In this opening essay of our recent issue on Violence, Brad Evans argues that "violence of disappearance" is the most extreme and visible form state sovereignty and power takes in contemporary times. This kind of violence often translates into the literal removal and destruction of actual human bodies, irrespective of age and gender, but always only those belonging to particular races, ethnicities or ideologies, by means of genocide, abductions, forced migrations and (un)civi
Brad Evans
7 min read


"Trans-Inclusive Philosophies" by Sophie Grace Chappell (Keywords: Embodiment; Gender; Truth; Reason; Theory; Lived Experience; Analytic Philosophy)
"Philosophical theorizing is made for human beings, and it should fit human beings, and not the other way around."
Sophie Grace Chappell
14 min read


“Sashka and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis”: An Essay by Elvira Basevich (Keywords: Family; Housing Crisis; Poverty; The American Dream; Refugees; Mortality; Memoir)
"My brother, Sashka, ran away from home when he was fifteen. It is not quite right to say he ran away from home; our home deserted us."
Elvira Basevich
18 min read


"The Publisher and the Public": An Essay by Alexandra Grant (Keywords: Art; Authorship; Freedom of Speech; Public Sphere)
"Publishing is a nearly limitless act that has the potential to build communities, expand minds, and offer new perspectives."
Alexandra Grant
8 min read


"Learning We": An Essay by Brooke A. Holmes (Keywords: Classical Education; Pedagogy; Crisis; National Identity; Humanism; Race; 1619 Project; Fanon)
"What defines the human on which the “we” of this nation was (truly) founded?"
Brooke A. Holmes
17 min read


"Animals, Property, and Personhood": An Essay by Gary L. Francione (Keywords: Ethics; Animal Rights; Law; Veganism; Suffering; Anthropocentrism)
We may think of animals as having moral value. But, because they are property, they don’t have moral value. They are just thing."
Gary L. Francione
21 min read


"Five Ways to Read Byung-Chul Han": An Essay by Robert Wyllie and Steven Knepper (Keywords: Hyperculture; Burnout; Zen Buddhism; Social Critique; Beauty; Continental Philosophy)
"Han implies that philosophy is not for professional philosophers but for everyone, so that we can better understand our exhausting times."
Robert Wyllie and Steven Knepper
19 min read


“On Cancelling and Repair”: An essay by Mary Peterson (Keywords: Sexual Harassment; Restorative Justice; Carceral Feminism; himpathy; Trauma; Universities)
"For restorative justice to work, the perpetrators’ delusions, entitlement, rationalizations, and smearing of victims must stop."
Mary Peterson
10 min read


"Metaphorizing Animals": An Essay by Heather King (Keywords: Animals; Art; Literature; Selfhood)
"What sort of selves do literary works create? More broadly still, what kinds of selves does any manner of artwork create?"
Heather King
7 min read


"Spinoza after Politics": Dan Taylor, Gil Morejon, Marie Wuth, and Jack Stetter (Keywords: Human Nature; Affects; Anarchism; State; Law; Imagination; War)
"The more we affect and are affected by others, the more we can perceive and understand the plurality of other human lives and experiences."


"On Violent Laughter (and Other Comedic First Principles)": An Essay by Will Franken (Keywords: Humour; Satire; Happiness; Subversion; Identity; Plato; Aristotle)
"Comedic happiness, initiated through surprise and propelled by laughter, must constitute an act of subversion."
Will Franken
17 min read


"The Problem of Philosophical Deflection": An Essay by Kate Warlow-Corcoran (Keywords: Embodiment; Grief; Metaphilosophy; Iris Murdoch; Cora Diamond; J.M. Coetzee)
"Our habitual ways of speaking and thinking can seem inadequate to the task of expressing the reality of being human."
Kate Warlow-Corcoran
15 min read


"Living a Wisecracking Life": David Shoemaker in conversation with Will Franken (Keywords: Humour; Morality; Absurdism; Deception; Stereotyping; Shame)
"Absurdity, most generally, consists in a disparity between our expectations or pretentions and reality."
David Shoemaker
19 min read


"Trust and the Plea for Recognition": An Essay by Johnny Brennan (Keywords: Trustworthiness; Character; Personhood; Security; Human Nature)
"Trust has value in itself because it is an expression of our agency, even of what we might call our personhood."
Johnny Brennan
16 min read


"Happy Caregiver Exploitation Day": An Essay by Elvira Basevich (Keywords: Motherhood; Upward Mobility; Reproductive Rights; Injustice; Identity; Rousseau)
"I want to be able to condemn the structural conditions of my exploitation without condemning the person I ended up becoming as a result."
Elvira Basevich
10 min read


"Transcendental Pessimism": An Essay by Ignacio L. Moya (Keywords: Metaphysics; Anti-natalism; Psychology; Schopenhauer; German Philosophy; History of Philosophy)
"if philosophical pessimism is to be seen as something more than a 'mere' temperament or attitude, what might this be?"
Ignacio L. Moya
12 min read


"Questioning our Need for Punishment": Henrique Carvalho and Anastasia Chamberlen (Keywords: Justice; Hostile Solidarity; Public Philosophy; Sociology; Durkheim)
"We can perhaps summarise the philosophical problem of contemporary punishment outlined above as: it doesn’t work, and yet we need it."
Henrique Carvalho and Anastasia Chamberlen
13 min read


"Released from Prison?": Contributions from the Reimagining Re-entry Public Philosophy Group (Keywords: Punishment; Phenomenology; Home; Institutionalization; Education; Power)
"Home is our anchor point within reality which gives us orientation and allows us to set out in new directions."
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