Dan Taylor shows that even great philosophers can have their hearts broken. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) isn’t often read for his counsel on love. We do not know the extent to which he knew love, and his words on physical love tend to be distrusting and unsentimental. In a passage on jealousy, he gives this example …
Peter Keeble says philosophy, like love, is a many-splendoured thing. Philosophy is normally not shy in dealing with highly emotive issues: Philosophers often tell us what we should not do and that certain cherished beliefs are nonsense. However, not many modern philosophers have written about individual emotions, such as the feeling of romantic love. Yet …
Stephen Leach looks with Murdoch at the three graces of love, art, and morality. The English philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) believed that although we may never fully know reality itself, love may help us glimpse something of it, since love alerts us to reality as it exists independently of our egos. How it …
A quick and friendly introduction to symbolic logic by Stephen Szanto. Most non-professional philosophers are deterred from attending lectures and reading books by academics who use symbolic logic. Some even claim it is an elitist attempt to make presentations deliberately inaccessible to the uninitiated. In any case, I believe it is worth studying and needn’t …
Julia Nefsky on the curiously strong connections between logic and humour. What would you say if I asked you to describe humour? What type of ‘thing’ is it? Perhaps you’d say that humour is a form of entertainment and creativity. Humour is colourful and free, unbounded by rules and norms. Humour is lively. It has …
Richard Oxenberg tells us why democracy needs philosopher-citizens. I would like to begin with a bit of a riddle: How do you turn a democracy into a tyranny? The answer, as those familiar with Plato’s Republic (380 BCE) will know, is: Do nothing. It will become a tyranny all by itself. Plato spends a good …
Ryan Andrews reminds us what free speech is for. Tom: (tuts over his newspaper) Of course, religious extremists and state censors are not the only enemies of free speech. There are also moral-majority conservatives, left-wing egalitarians, and many more overly-sensitive souls of every stripe. The variables are different, but they all follow the same formula: …
Francisco Mejia Uribe explains why the rise of fundamentalism poses a problem for liberals, and suggests what they can do about it. Fundamentalism is creating a paradoxical situation for us Westerners. Pluralism and moral autonomy, the very concepts that once helped us overcome the bitter fundamentalism of the wars of religion, now seem to prevent …
Seán Moran is watching the watchers. We are being watched. As we go about our daily business, closed-circuit televison cameras observe and record our every move. There are over six million CCTV cameras keeping an eye on the public in the UK alone, and public surveillance is at a similar level in all developed countries. …
Simon Clarke argues that deciding when to die is a matter of individuality. People in liberal democracies have various restrictions on their freedom – there are laws against defamation and breaking contracts, for example. But we also have a large degree of freedom compared with people in other societies. Some restrictions of freedom – such …