Thomas Morrison asks just what Kant learned from his Critique of Pure Reason. Can we know how things really are regardless of how they appear to us? Throughout history, many philosophers – known as skeptics – have argued that we can not. Part of what Immanuel Kant is attempting in his Critique of Pure Reason …
Matt McManus explains why people have absolute worth. “What is related to general human inclinations and needs has a market price ; that which, even without presupposing such a need, conforms with a certain taste has a fancy price ; but that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in …
Samantha Neave explores how to be a good person, with the help of Immanuel Kant and the Tooth Fairy. Last night I dreamt I promised my niece a ride on a skipping giraffe. Sadly, when it came to the crunch, my car broke down half way round the safari due to some gorillas landing on …
Matt Qvortrup explains how the Enlightenment’s leading philosopher went looking for a bit of peace. The newspaper Gothaische gelehrte Zeitungen was slightly sarcastic when it wrote about Immanuel Kant in 1784, “It is a favourite idea of Herr Professor Kant that the ultimate goal of the human race is the establishment of a perfect constitution.” …
Randall Curren finds that talking about humor is no laughing matter. Especially on national television. When our president asked me some weeks ago if I would be willing to prepare a philosophy commencement address on the subject of humor for national broadcast I was puzzled. I sized this up as, at best, a clumsy attempt …
Peter Rickman on the unsettling similarities between jokes and philosophy. Tell the average person – perhaps the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus – that according to Plato, that bus is not real, is merely an appearance or an imitation or an intangible reality, the form or idea of a bus, the bus which “God …
An introduction by Tim Madigan. “It is worth noting that Wittgenstein once said that a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without being facetious).”Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir The above passage is rather ambiguous – does it mean that Wittgenstein said such a thing in a …
How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?It depends on how you define ‘change’. How many existentialists does it take to change a light bulb?Two – one to bemoan the darkness until the other redefines something else as light. How many analytic philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?None – …
Jorge J.E. Gracia on the Significance of the Insignificant. One of the most paradoxical features of the Seinfeld phenomenon is the extraordinary popularity of the TV series, particularly with younger Americans, in the face of the insignificance of the topics around which the show revolves. How can a show that deals with what appear to …
John Marmysz looks on the funny side of absolute nothingness. God is dead. Nothing matters. All is meaningless. Nothing is true. These are the sorts of laments often associated with nihilism, a philosophical perspective premised on the belief that the world is incurably imperfect, flawed, defective. According to the nihilist, the way that the world …