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] city is a spatial figure of time in which present, past and future come together. It is, at times, a cause for astonishment and, at others, for remembrance or expectation […]. In this sense, the city is both an illusion and an allusion.” (Marc Augé, “Pour une anthropologie de la mobilité”). We head to …
The philosopher Marc Augé defined our cities. Now it’s in our hands to make them homey Read More »
In Moral Progress in Dark Times, German philosopher Markus Gabriel makes a case for a new enlightenment based on universal values, arguing that the democratic law-based state is a valuable vehicle for encouraging this “moral progress”. The aims of his book are admirable, but Gabriel is only partially successful in explaining what the new enlightenment might …
In recent years, political debate has degenerated into ever more aggressive partisan mudslinging and character assassination, with no room for a reasoned and non-rancorous discussion of competing alternatives in assessing the policy issues of the day. This trend is only likely to intensify as we enter a presidential election season in the United States in …
What would Aristotle think about the current state of politics? Read More »
Weil is one of the 20th century’s most remarkable and paradoxical figures. She was born in Paris in 1909 into relative affluence, but she came to identify intensely and actively, with the poor and vulnerable. (This led her to take leave from teaching, at one point, to labour within the harsh factories of Paris.) A …
Guide to the Classics: Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots Read More »
With the death of Jimmy Buffett, the feathers of his loyal network of fans – affectionately known as Parrot Heads – collectively drooped. Over the course of his career, Buffett earned their love by transforming himself into a kind of musical shaman who offered transport from the banalities of everyday life to the bounty of …
The beautiful pessimism at the heart of Jimmy Buffett’s music Read More »
In June 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made headlines by claiming the company’s LaMDA chatbot had achieved sentience. The software had the conversational ability of a precocious seven-year-old, Lemoine said, and we should assume it possessed a similar awareness of the world. LaMDA, later released to the public as Bard, is powered by a “large …
Why ChatGPT isn’t conscious – but future AI systems might be Read More »
“There is a word in Korean – inyeon. It means providence or fate. But it’s specifically about relationships between people.” So writer Nora Lee tells her American lover when they meet on an artists’ retreat in director Celine Song’s new film, Past Lives. The film tells the story of two lives unfolding in parallel, converging …
Past Lives: inyeon is a Korean philosophy of how relationships form over many lifetimes Read More »
The default psychological setting for human beings is an unavoidable self-centeredness. We each stand at the center of our own thoughts, feelings and needs, and thus experience them in a way that we cannot experience the thoughts, feelings and needs of others. As writer David Foster Wallace put it in a 2005 commencement address: “ …
How do you create a generation that can think its way out of problems and face the challenges of a rapidly changing world? The Davos meeting this year is all about how we can cope with the immense challenges posed by the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” – an era of rapid and complex technological change, …
What philosophy can tell Davos about educating for a better future Read More »