Andrew Hyams recognises what fuels protest movements. Throughout the last decade, social protest movements have filled our TV screens and newsfeeds. From Occupy and the Arab Spring, to the Yellow Vests, Extinction Rebellion, the Women’s Marches and Black Lives Matter, people power is as alive as ever. Sadly, it also remains as controversial as ever, …
Danelle Gallo compares the ecstacies of Georges Bataille and Yves Klein. French philosopher Georges Bataille (1897-1962) and French artist Yves Klein (1928-1962) were passionately fascinated with death, eroticism, the sacred, and sacrifice. Bataille, a fluent and often controversially graphic philosopher, related the erotic to the sacred through the imminence of death. Yves Klein, the so-called …
Ji Young Lee and Andrea Bidoli discuss how artificial womb technology will shape the abortion rights discussion. Abortion is the deliberate termination of a pregnancy. In current practice, this involves the death of the foetus. Consequently, the debate on whether those experiencing an unwanted pregnancy have the right to abortion is usually dichotomized as a …
Gerard Elfstrom asks what such creatures, if they exist, would be like and how much it matters morally. For much of Western history, we have been confident that human beings are persons but no other creatures have that status. These beliefs matter because personhood has often been deemed a necessary requirement for possessing moral value. …
Frank Thermitus says prepare for the worst to achieve the best. Rather than imagining an ideal world, Stoics try to manage their emotions in order to deal with the world as it is. With this in mind, Stoicism would suggest that people of color should begin each day by reminding themselves, “I will face racism, …
Fintan Neylan explains the realism Maurizio Ferraris introduces in his Introduction. At the opening of his 1907 lecture series ‘Pragmatism’, William James commented on the growing disparity between academic philosophy and a philosophy whose relevance ordinary people would feel in their lives. This latter philosophy would be one which truly mattered to us, James claimed, …
Bill Cooke on the humanist value of Nietzsche. The story of the long rehabilitation of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) after being unfairly implicated in the rise of Nazism is well known. But the time may be coming when another daring rescue operation will be called for. For several years now, Nietzsche has been hailed as one …
J. Harvey Lomax on the love of eternity. Dedicated to Professor Hans-Georg Gadamer on his 100th birthday. “Docemur disputare, non vivere.”(“We are taught how to discuss and debate, but not how to live.”)Seneca Epistulae morales 95, 13 In the twentieth century “the plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is of English origin, erupted once again …
H. James Birx looks at Darwin’s profound influence on Nietzsche’s dynamic philosophy. The scientist Charles Darwin had awakened the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche from his dogmatic slumber by the realization that, throughout organic history, no species is immutable (including our own). Pervasive change replaced eternal fixity. Going beyond Darwin, the German thinker offered an interpretation of …
Peter Benson tells us how critiques of both Marx and capitalist society have evolved in France, with special reference to Jean Baudrillard and Bernard Stiegler. In 1989, when the Soviet Union imploded and its satellite states chaotically collapsed, there were those in the West who declared that communism had been not only defeated but refuted. …