Sacrificial dilemmas are popular among philosophers. Should you divert a train from five people strapped to the tracks to a side-track with only one person strapped to it? What if that one person were a renowned cancer researcher? What if there were only a 70% chance the five people would die? These questions sound like …
Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I set aside my academic work as a fellow in public philosophy to report on civilian life in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities and to examine the state of higher education in Ukraine. Public philosophy, in dialogue with other forms of scholarship, journalism and thinking, translates esoteric ideas into accessible writing …
Why a new centre for civic engagement in Ukraine could help counter Russia’s invasion Read More »
Warning: the following article contains spoilers for Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. Having enlisted an old friend to babysit our little girls, my husband and I hopped on the bus to see Everything, Everywhere, All at Once as our almost once-in-a-year date film. In the cinema, I started to wonder: why on earth I am …
Oscars 2023: The philosophy of Everything Everywhere All at Once explained Read More »
Baseball moves very fast. That’s how it seems to me, anyway. Just try coaching a Little League game; decisions pile up like branches on a tree, as tactical and strategic considerations multiply. And as a player, when it’s time to act, you need to do so before you even get to the “t” in “think,” …
In 2021, Kohei Saito’s Capital in the Anthropocene became a publishing sensation in Japan, eventually selling more than half a million copies. That astonishing achievement becomes even more extraordinary when one considers that Saito, an academic at the University of Tokyo, has for some years been rearticulating materialist philosophy based on a close reading of Karl Marx’s …
The story of German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and his posthumous reception almost reads like the plot of an airport spy thriller. Heidegger rose to global fame with Being and Time (1927). This work, which shaped philosophical existentialism, claimed Western culture had lost touch with what he portentously called the “meaning of Being”. We have become too preoccupied …
As utopian oases dry up, a desert of banality, and bewilderment spreads … – Jürgen Habermas (1986) The last few years have been truly catastrophic. One might easily argue that, during “The COVID Years”, we have witnessed more dramatic social and political change than at any time since 1939-1945. In terms of its scale and …
One of the ways tech billionaire Elon Musk attracts supporters is the vision he seems to have for the future: people driving fully autonomous electric vehicles, colonizing other planets and even merging their brains with artificial intelligence. Part of such notions’ appeal may be the argument that they’re not just exciting, or profitable, but would benefit humanity as …
Recent debates around transgender people and sexual diversity have been marked by essentialism, a profoundly conservative mindset with deep links to religious and metaphysical dogmatism. It is a stance through which conservative thinkers seek certainty in a world of change and fluidity. Essentialism comprises three key ideas. First, there is the idea that nature is …
While we may enjoy the company of companion animals or a fleeting encounter with wildlife, many people believe humans have a superior consciousness of the world we live in. Every now and then, though, new study findings about the surprising intelligence of other animals reignite this debate. Recently, two German philosophers, Professor Leonard Dung and …
Animal consciousness: why it’s time to rethink our human-centred approach Read More »