Author name: Editor

Wittgenstein,Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism

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Stuart Greenstreet explains how analytical philosophy got into a mess. This year’s centenary of the First World War coincides with Ludwig Wittgenstein beginning writing his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Latin for ‘Logical-Philosophical Treatise’), the only book the Austrian philosopher published in his lifetime. Not the least astonishing fact about it is that, as we shall see, most …

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A New Twist on Old Ideas

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Lucian Lupescu sees how far Kant’s and Marx’s ideals overlap. In 1784 Immanuel Kant described humanity as being in a state of immaturity, which to Kant is “the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another” (An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’, trans Mary C. Smith). The reasons for this …

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Karl Marx: Man & Mind

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Matt Qvortrup argues that Marx still inspires those longing for a better world. In the beginning was the word, and Marx had a way with them like no other. Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) was a supreme stylist with a turn of phrase that few could match. Whatever one thinks of the political ideologies associated with …

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Critical Reasoning

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Marianne Talbot tells us how to use the ultimate in transferrable skills. My mug is sitting to my right doing nothing. This is because it believes it is at the centre of the universe, and its desire to be at the centre of the universe is stronger than any of its other desires. I expect you’ll …

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Resolving Paradoxes

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Noson Yanofsky tells us how to deal with contradictions and the limitations of reason that arise from them. We all have conflicting desires. We want to get promoted, but don’t want to work too hard. We would like to date both Betty and Veronica (or both Bob and Vernon). We desire to stay thin, but also …

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Berkeley’s Suitcase

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Hugh Hunter unpacks the sources of Berkeley’s idealism. You will be familiar, in these days of inelegant travel, with the exercise of trying to fit everything you might plausibly need into a very small suitcase. It sometimes happens that there is one thing which frustrates the process, an object with awkward contours that ensure it …

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Nowhere Men

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Nick Inman wants to know where you’re at. Are you ready for the ultimate trick question? Here it is: Am I me, and are you? That is: do I and you exist? Only a yes/no answer is allowed. It wouldn’t be good philosophy to say that you ‘sort of’ exist, nor that you are a …

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The End of Suffering

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Pleasure for the People! Katherine Power considers whether there should be more opiates for the masses (including opium?), but settles for nuts and seeds. Before anaesthesia, surgery used to be agony. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could have been anything but pleased when painless surgery was introduced in the mid-19th century. And yet, although …

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Heavenly Eviction

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John Donnelly reminds us that people are only tenants in Heaven by the grace of God. The notion of heavenly eviction would seem strange, even heterodoxical, to Christians [and others] who believe in Heaven. Yet those same Christians would likely have no difficulty or hesitancy affirming the fall or expulsion from Heaven of Lucifer and …

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