Essays

Dan Taylor, Gil Morejon, Marie Wuth, and Jack Stetter

30 min

"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."

Will Franken

17 min

Essays

"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."

Kate Warlow-Corcoran

15 min

Essays

"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."

David Shoemaker

19 min

Essays

"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."

Johnny Brennan

16 min

Essays

"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."

Elvira Basevich

10 min

Essays

"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."

Ignacio L. Moya

12 min

Essays

"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?"

Henrique Carvalho and Anastasia Chamberlen

13 min

Essays

"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."

The Reimagining Re-entry Public Philosophy Group

30 min

Essays

"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."

Hossein Dabbagh

8 min

Essays

"The Value of Philosophy in a Market-Driven World": An Essay by Hossein Dabbagh (Keywords: Education; Humanities; Neoliberalism; Ethics; Critical Thinking; Social Justice)

"The emphasis on immediate economic returns overlooks the long-term societal benefits of a populace well-versed in philosophical reasoning"

Aaron James Wendland

8 min

Essays

"Circling Back to the University: Public Philosophy and Pedagogy in the 21st Century": An Essay by Aaron James Wendland (Keywords: Academia; Ethics; Ukraine War; Emmanuel Levinas)

"The dialectical link between our scholarly and civic activities implies that the future of public philosophy lies in the universities."

Jeff Love

14 min

Essays

"Alexandre Kojève and Universal Emancipation": An Essay by Jeff Love (Keywords: Hegel; Master-Slave; Freedom; Servitude; Biography)

"Do we accept our servitude, recognizing that all attempts to overcome it end in futility, or seek to abolish it in an act of self-erasure?"

Ellie Robson

11 min

Essays

"Mary Midgley on Water and Thought: Is Public Philosophy Like Plumbing?": An Essay by Ellie Robson (Keywords: Public Philosophy; Metaphilosophy; A.J. Ayer; Descartes; Philosophical Lives; Solitude)

"What makes someone especially good at philosophy, argues Midgley, is a kind of perceptiveness, a power to distinguish what really matters."

"Life as a 'Non-standard' Narrative" By Hannah Kim (Keywords: Selfhood; Identity; Literature; East-Asian Fiction; Collectivity)

Hannah H. Kim

11 min

Essays

"Life as a 'Non-standard' Narrative" By Hannah Kim (Keywords: Selfhood; Identity; Literature; East-Asian Fiction; Collectivity)

"By questioning the default story form, we question the default views on what kinds of lives we’ve been trained to find satisfying."

Helen De Cruz

14 min

Essays

"Sprezzatura and Wuwei: A Daoist Approach to European Courtly Grace": An Essay by Helen De Cruz (Keywords: Aesthetics; Skill; Beauty; Wonder; Flow; Music; Confucianism; Daoism; Self-Cultivation)

"The admiration that effortlessness invokes comes from a skill that lies beyond skill, which is achieved through mental emptiness."

Jonathon Hawkins and Peter West

15 min

Essays

"A Democratic Approach to Public Philosophy" by Jonathon Hawkins and Peter West

"If academics want to increase uptake and funding, it seems plausible to suggest they must do something that is publicly interesting."

Stephen Darwall

18 min

Essays

"Reparations for American Chattel Slavery" by Stephen Darwall (Keywords: Justice; Hierarchy; Law)

"Arguably, the function of the modern concept of race was to rationalize forms of oppression and subjugation like chattel slavery."

Gwilym David Blunt

13 min

Essays

"Effective Altruism, Longtermism, and the Problem of Arbitrary Power" by Gwilym David Blunt

"The ethos of Silicon Valley is often described as ‘libertarian’, but it isn’t. It is deeply authoritarian."

Jana Bacevic

12 min

Essays

"What Does It Mean to Think Together?" by Jana Bacevic (Keywords: Arendt; Debate; Political Life)

"What does it mean to think with others even if, or particularly when, our living conditions may not be conducive to thought?"

Yarran Hominh

11 min

Essays

"The Hope of Public Philosophy" by Yarran Hominh (Keywords: Knowledge; Action; Depression; Praxis)

"To live in hopeless times is not only subjectively to feel hopeless. It is for that feeling in a real way to reflect the way things are."

THE PHILOSOPHER

Published since 1923

THE PHILOSOPHER

Published since 1923

Official journal of the Philosophical Society of England (PSE), a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO). Registered UK Charity No. 1205921.

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