Amee LaTour argues we should sometimes welcome being run aground by life. What do you want out of life? Happiness? Comfort? Security? Like many philosophers associated with existentialism, Martin Heidegger emphasizes the potential fruitfulness of varieties of experience quite contrary to these states, such as the discomfort and insecurity of becoming stranded. When we’re stranded, …
Slavoj Žižek says Hegel doesn’t need to be a prophet to point us to a better tomorrow. The claim I want to defend is that Hegel is the philosopher most open to the future precisely because he explicitly prohibits any project of how our future should look. As he says towards the end of the …
Colin Wilson explores the more provocative side of existentialism. In the following essay I propose to argue that Husserl’s phenomenology has been radically misunderstood by the majority of those who consider themselves his followers, particularly Sartre, and that the problem lies in their failure to grasp what Husserl meant by ‘intentionality’. Intentionality should not be …
Matthew Barnard comprehends and condemns celeb culture in Heideggerian terms. I am about to argue something that ought to make your head turn: celebrity culture is philosophy. The often bemoaned idolisation of celebrities; the prevalence of talent shows such as X Factor; the popularity of reality TV shows; the phenomenon of ‘being famous for being …
The Birth of Celebrity Culture out of the Spirit of Philosophy Read More »
Dale DeBakcsy recalls his personal journey from Positivist to Pragmatist and back again. “Aristotle was a learned, encyclopedic, first-rate nerd. With no imagination.” It was September of 1998, and I was a dewy-eyed sophomore who had bluffed his way into Richard Rorty’s seminar on William James and Friedrich Nietzsche. I had taken philosophy courses before, …
Daniel Hill argues that without God, life would be meaningless. What is the meaning of ‘the meaning of life’? In analytic philosophy the bearers of meaning have usually been considered to be words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. Hence life itself is not usually considered to be a bearer of meaning, but the word ‘life’ is. …
Martin Buber was a prominent twentieth century philosopher, religious thinker, political activist and educator. Born in Austria, he spent most of his life in Germany and Israel, writing in German and Hebrew. He is best known for his 1923 book, Ich und Du (I and Thou), which distinguishes between “I-Thou” and “I-It” modes of existence. Often characterized …
Paulo Freire was one of the most influential philosophers of education of the twentieth century. He worked wholeheartedly to help people both through his philosophy and his practice of critical pedagogy. A native of Brazil, Freire’s goal was to eradicate illiteracy among people from previously colonized countries and continents. His insights were rooted in the …
Harold Henry Joachim (1868-1938) was a minor idealist philosopher working in the neo-Hegelian tradition that dominated British philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century. At the time, this tradition was divided into two main camps: personal idealism and absolute idealism. Joachim was affiliated with the latter camp, whose most prominent representative was F. H. …
William James is considered by many to be the most insightful and stimulating of American philosophers, as well as the second of the three great pragmatists (the middle link between Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey). As a professor of psychology and of philosophy at Harvard University, he became the most famous living American psychologist and later the …