Imadaldin Al-Jubouri considers how some Muslim fundamentalists justify their aggressiveness – by misreading the Qur’an, among other things. Since September 11 2001, the West has faced a series of attacks, from New York and Washington to Madrid and London. Why did this confrontation reach the big cities of the West? Who authorised al-Qaeda to act …
Grant Bartley lays down the law in favour of the ‘right’ sort of heresy. “Religions are kept alive by heresies, which are really sudden explosions of faith. Dead religions do not produce them.” Gerald Brenan Thoughts in a Dry Season. “A heretic is a person who offers too good a criticism of the authorities,” Brant …
Matei Tanasă imagines the sort of conversation about change, motion, appearance and reality that philosophers were having in ancient Athens. (Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, and Pyrrhon are sitting at a table in Athens. A worried looking Athenian approaches.) Athenian: Oh, you who are the wisest of men, I long for freedom from illusion, the hardest of …
Neel Burton asks why the master reasoner turned to launching legends. Perhaps the most famous allegory in philosophy is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato, via Socrates, compares people who lack philosophical training to prisoners who have spent their entire lives in an underground cave and don’t realise that there is a vast …
Tim Madigan on the curmudgeon who preached compassion. “Poor Schopenhauer had this secret guilt, too, in his heart, the guilt of cherishing his philosophy more than his fellow men.” So wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in his incisive essay from Thoughts Out Of Season, ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ (1874). Nietzsche goes on to say: “He often chose falsely …
Could advances in technology soon give us perfect knowledge of other minds? Bora Dogan investigates. I may not know what you’re thinking, but I know a machine that can – several, in fact. With names like Cerebus and BrainGate, these machines wouldn’t sound out of place in a sci-fi movie, but they’re real and they’re …
Kevin S. Decker on John Dewey’s unique political contribution. John Dewey (1859-1952) was hailed in his lifetime as “America’s philosopher of democracy”. His work on educational theory and social psychology at the Universities of Michigan – Ann Arbor and Chicago was one of the foundations of early 20th century progressive social work. He worked alongside …
David Boersema describes how two very different thinkers were on the trail of similar ideas about the nature of consciousness. Charles Peirce (1839-1914) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) were two towering figures in philosophy who wrestled with issues of consciousness and the ego, or self. These are matters that have long concerned philosophers and cross the …
Michael Allen Fox argues that old approaches to the problem don’t work. Who am I? That’s a difficult question to tackle, and each of us must do so for him- or herself, if it is to be tackled at all. But importantly related to this question is another: Am I the same person now as …
Brian Breeze takes time to think. Everyone knows what time is: don’t they? But perhaps, when we look more closely, we will find that our initial confidence is not entirely justified. St. Augustine wrote around 397 AD: “What… is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I …