So how do you apply philosophical principles to think about art? An example can be derived from an unlikely source. Reneh Karamians uses Heidegger’s philosophy as an illustration of how to understand aesthetic experience. Martin Heidegger gave philosophy a new description of humanity. No longer was mankind defined in terms of mind distinct from the …
Dustin Gray finds out that continuing to exist isn’t as simple as you might think. What does it mean for an object to persist through time? Consider the statement, ‘My car is filthy, I need to wash it.’ Consider the response, ‘How did it get that way?’ The answer is that dirt, dust and other …
Peter Caws considers how much is lost in translation. There’s a story about an American evangelist who was challenged about something in his preaching that didn’t agree with the Greek of the New Testament. He is supposed to have replied “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.” Very funny, …
Patrick Cox tells us why Zen has to use words to get beyond words. In Zen Buddhism, one often finds ‘explanation’ spoken about in a negative manner. But in writing on Zen, one necessarily explains; explaining something is often the only purpose of an article or book. Can Zen and explanation be reconciled? What about …
Would My Zen Master Fail Me For Writing This Article? Read More »
Ian James Kidd introduces an iconic iconoclast of the philosophy of science. Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was not a conventional philosopher – a fact he delighted in and took great care to maintain. He trained as an opera singer and a physicist, and only came to philosophy by accident, as he freely admitted. He disliked academia …
Harvard philosopher Tu Wei-ming is the most famous advocate of the Confucian tradition outside China. Anja Steinbauer talked to him in Boston. Professor Tu, could you give our readers an idea of where your philosophical interests lie? When I first came to the States to study philosophy in 1962, to my great surprise, at the …
For years debate has raged among African philosophers: does Africa have a distinct philosophical tradition, and if so, what is its nature? Rick Lewis asked Emmanuel Eze, who though based in the United States is a leading figure on the African philosophical scene. Are there philosophical traditions which are distinctively African? There certainly are distinctive …
Nick Bostrom tells us a philosophical parable about death. Once upon a time the world was tyrannized by a great dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish slime. …
Michael Hand considers the pros and cons of courting media attention. As a philosopher of education, I do philosophy with a view to changing educational policy and practice for the better. I ask questions about what and how children should be taught in schools. I do this partly because the questions are philosophically interesting, but …
Christine Daigle discusses some of the key concepts and ideas in Sartre’s most important philosophical book. June 1943, occupied France. A writer named Jean-Paul Sartre sees his latest philosophical manuscript, Being and Nothingness, a “phenomenological essay on ontology”, 722 pages of fine print (in the original French edition), published in the midst of World War …
Sartre’s Being Nothingness: The Bible of Existentialism? Read More »