Ray Boisvert describes the disdain which many philosophers down the ages have had for food, and the dire consequences this has had for their philosophy. Richard Watson was a trailblazer of sorts. In 1985, the Washington University professor published a book which combined dieting tips with ruminations on the big questions of life. The combination …
Lisa Heldke sticks up for the pastry chefs against Plato and the physicians. In Plato’s dialogues, food and food-related references spring up with a frequency that becomes rather impressive when one begins paying attention to them. They are nearly always found intertwined with discussions of bodily health, virtue, and knowledge. In the Republic, for example, …
Some feminists say women should forget old-fashioned ethical rules and focus on developing positive aspects of their characters. Not so, says Sarah Conly. Feminism is naturally ethical and political in nature, in that feminists want change, want improvement, and want, specifically, the liberation of the individual from ways of thinking which confine and pervert human …
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Feminist theory has recently faced accusations of trendiness, but Marianne Janack and Michelle LaRocque leap to its defence. As with any political movement, feminism has had a fraught relationship with theory. On the one hand, feminists have recognized the value of a sound theoretical basis for the effectiveness of political action; on the other, they …
Therese Dykeman on a case for a Sherlock Holmes and Dorothy Sayers. American women philosophers supposedly did not exist until the mid twentieth century. Of course, that wasn’t true, for it is no more possible for a mind conducive to philosophic thought to cease being so, than for a season to arrive out of order. …
Jezebel was a much-maligned woman, but Dane Gordon wonders if she really deserved such a bad name. Jezebel is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary. It is not a complimentary definition: “Name of the infamous wife of Ahab, King of Israel, hence, a wicked abandoned woman, or a woman who paints her face.” Webster’s Dictionary …
Cameron Hendy thinks it’s about time we all stopped. Do you recall the first time that you stumbled across Peter Zapffe (1899-1990) – assuming that you ever have done? I do. His antinatalism – the idea that the human race should stop reproducing – was new to me at the time; simultaneously exhilarating yet terrifying. …
Akif Rashid asks Albert Camus why so many people around him are unhappy and confused, and what to do about it. I tend not to live by very many adages, but I am inclined to a witticism once in a while. One of the lines close to my heart is by Henry James: “I’ve always …
Roger Karny takes another look at liberty and alienation. The New York Times called the 1953 novel The Outsider by African-American author Richard Wright (1908-1963) “prophetic… a book people should ponder”. The Outsider’s protagonist, Cross Damon, is an African-American intellectual who majored in philosophy at the University of Chicago. Victimized by white oppression, he is …
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Annabel Abbs follows Simone de Beauvoir’s thoughts over the horizon. A few years ago I bought the book A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros (2014). This entertaining volume featured a parade of thinkers for whom walking was profoundly important: Thoreau, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Kant; even Gandhi, Kerouac and Rimbaud made appearances. Walking, Gros suggested, was …