In a recent TED talk titled No Philosophy, No Humanity, author Roger Sutcliffe asked the audience whether a flagpole was a place. Around half the audience said yes, the other said no. He went on to describe the response a nine-year-old gave him to that question: to me a flagpole is not a place, but to …
Today is UNESCO World Philosophy Day, a day aimed to “underline the enduring value of philosophy for the development of human thought, for each culture and for each individual”. However, it was not so long ago that philosophy was the target of university funding cutbacks. Philosophy is commonly painted as a discipline defined by ivory tower musing …
Love, wisdom and wonder: three reasons to celebrate philosophy Read More »
Callicles, Ray Hadley and Daniel Dennett? “A great deal of philosophy doesn’t really deserve much of a place in the world,” leading philosopher Daniel Dennett has recently suggested in an interview at his year’s Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness conference in Buenos Aires. “Philosophy in some quarters has become self-indulgent, clever play in a vacuum …
Devotees of the popular series “Game of Thrones” may recall Jaime Lannister’s fatal, but memorable, quip: “The things we do for love”. He said this just before hurling a ten-year-old boy down a high castle wall. The boy’s “crime”? He’d caught Lannister in an incestuous embrace with his sister, Cersei. One can only truly fathom …
African philosophy needs to blossom. Being exclusionary won’t help Read More »
World Philosophy Day has been set aside to highlight the importance of philosophy in different regional contexts. It defines philosophy as “the study of the nature of reality and existence, of what is possible to know, and of right and wrong behaviour”. Wale Fatade asked Tony Okeregbe to explain why philosophy remains relevant today. Why study …
We need philosophers in countries like Nigeria in the 21st Century Read More »
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 …