How do we live good, fulfilling lives? Aristotle first took on this question in his Nicomachean Ethics – arguably the first time anyone in Western intellectual history had focused on the subject as a standalone question. He formulated a teleological response to the question of how we ought to live. Aristotle proposed, in other words, an answer …
The Coalition – among others – have been recently taking aim at the worth of certain Australian Research Council (ARC)-funded projects. Verbal jousting around the value of philosophy as a humanities discipline has followed. Battlelines on these issues have formed, but as usual the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I suggest that the debate needs to mature a little. Coalition …
A farewell to arts: on philosophy, ARC funding and ‘waste’ Read More »
One of the interesting questions we face as philosophers who are attempting to make philosophical ideas accessible for a general audience, is whether or not everyone can or should ‘do philosophy’. Some philosophers wish to leave philosophy in the academy or university setting. Whereas others claim the downfall of modern philosophy came in the late 19th century when the …
Bertrand Russell and the case for ‘Philosophy for Everyone’ Read More »
Philosophy has been a favorite whipping boy in the culture wars since 399 B.C., when an Athenian jury sentenced Socrates to death. Nowadays, philosophers are no longer accused of “corrupting the youth.” Instead, a surprisingly wide range of pundits, from celebrity scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson to former GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio, assert that philosophy is pointless or …
Chinese philosophy is missing from U.S. philosophy departments. Should we care? Read More »
Helen McCabe introduces John Stuart Mill on his own free will. John Stuart Mill himself believed On Liberty would be one of the works for which he was best remembered. It has certainly proved the most influential. Published in 1859, it caused an outcry, and interest in it has not died. From the rise of totalitarianism in the …
Timothy J. Madigan explains the crucial distinction between compassion and pity. “You want if possible – and there is no madder ‘if possible’ – to abolish suffering; and we? – it really does seem that we would rather increase it and make it worse than it has ever been!”Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche …
Stefan Sorgner on Nietzsche’s still-controversial influence in the land of his birth. The first major philosopher influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche was also one of the founding fathers of sociology, Georg Simmel (1858-1918). His views on Nietzsche are contained in a series of lectures which he published in 1907 with the title ‘Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’. There, …
Yonathan Listik puts in a linguistic performance to communicate Derrida’s linguistic performance. The title of this article contains an ambiguity, and not by chance. ‘Derrida’ isn’t ambiguous; it refers, as you would expect, to the famous post-structuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). But ‘Derrida’s Performance’ could refer to the theatricality of his writing, or it could …
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 …
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, …