Eva Cybulska peers into Friedrich Nietzsche’s stormy psyche. Where one can no longer love, one should – pass by!Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), ‘Of Passing By’ Whatever I create and how much I love it – soon I have to oppose itThus Spoke Zarathustra, ‘Of Self-Overcoming’ Few would associate Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) with love. And yet […]
Nietzsche: Love, Guilt & Redemption Read More »
Stuart Greenstreet finds that free will and determinism really do go together. Samuel Johnson got to the core of philosophy’s hardest problem in one line: “All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.” Theory denies the will is free because science doesn’t exempt human beings from the causal laws which
Kant versus Hume on the Necessary Connection Read More »
Joshua Mozersky argues that reality itself might be accessible to us. Immanuel Kant is the grandfather of social constructivism – the theory that people construct reality out of a shared human experience. According to Kant, the world we experience of space, time, matter, and causation, is structured by the human mind. His point is not
Matt McManus explains why people have absolute worth. “What is related to general human inclinations and needs has a market price ; that which, even without presupposing such a need, conforms with a certain taste has a fancy price ; but that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in
Kant’s Theory of Human Dignity Read More »
Matt Qvortrup explains how the Enlightenment’s leading philosopher went looking for a bit of peace. The newspaper Gothaische gelehrte Zeitungen was slightly sarcastic when it wrote about Immanuel Kant in 1784, “It is a favourite idea of Herr Professor Kant that the ultimate goal of the human race is the establishment of a perfect constitution.”
Kant’s Political Philosophy Read More »
Peter Rickman on the unsettling similarities between jokes and philosophy. Tell the average person – perhaps the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus – that according to Plato, that bus is not real, is merely an appearance or an imitation or an intangible reality, the form or idea of a bus, the bus which “God
The Philosopher as Joker Read More »
How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?It depends on how you define ‘change’. How many existentialists does it take to change a light bulb?Two – one to bemoan the darkness until the other redefines something else as light. How many analytic philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?None –
The Inevitable Philosophy Lightbulb Jokes Read More »
Sponsor(s): Organisers: Marija Selak University of Zagreb Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode Warsaw University Ralph Stefan Weir University of Lincoln Topic areas The Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford, and the Faculty of Philosophy, Universities of Warsaw, in collaboration the Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb University invite applications for the New Generation Scholars Exchange programme. The Exchange programme
New Generation Research Exchange 2022 Read More »
Jorge J.E. Gracia on the Significance of the Insignificant. One of the most paradoxical features of the Seinfeld phenomenon is the extraordinary popularity of the TV series, particularly with younger Americans, in the face of the insignificance of the topics around which the show revolves. How can a show that deals with what appear to
The Secret of Seinfeld’s Humor Read More »
Isadora Mosch considers why we laugh at things that aren’t funny. “Why can’t Helen Keller drive?Because she’s a woman.” I admit that laughing out loud when I heard this joke about the famous blind and deaf writer was not my finest moment – as a woman or as a decent human being. As soon as
The Philosophy of a Controversial Joke Read More »