Walter Ott doesn’t think so. Mrs White devoted much of her working life to her business, a small laundromat. Upon her death, her son Jimmy wonders what to do with it. Would he be harming Mrs White if he were to sell it? Does he have some kind of duty to keep it going, no …
Peter Cave discusses the idea that not existing has never hurt anyone. Permit me to introduce Mademoiselle Gazelle, a desirable and desired young woman, so named because of her gazellish sleek glidings through Soho’s streets – Mademoiselle Gazelle, with hair cascading, red lipstick a-glowing, radiating youth and beauty. An unlikely candidate for deathly discussions, she …
Paul Warwick considers Hume’s argument against testimony concerning miracles. I have a friend who was once deeply immersed in the occult. Now he’s a Pentecostal Christian who has renounced his former beliefs and broken with the practices of that way of life. Even so, I can’t help thinking that there is at least one common …
Marc Bobro scrutinizes how Hume thinks about thought. David Hume believed that the mind represents the world by having contents that resemble it, such as having images of it. This way of thinking about thinking has been called imagism. But, as Bertrand Russell and his friend Ludwig Wittgenstein noted much later, the same images can …
Howard Darmstadter looks at the life and legacy of the incendiary tercentenarian. In 1734, David Hume, a bookish 23-year-old Scotsman, abandoned conventional career options and went off to France to Think Things Over. Living frugally and devoting himself to study and writing, he returned after three years with a hefty manuscript under his arm. Published …
Grahame Lockey writes pithy observations to make you think about pithy observations to make you think. I once sat down to write a poem. Four words into it, I realised it was complete. It didn’t want a title, it wanted to be left alone: Absence begins at home. I didn’t know what it was that …
James Gallant, writer, reflects on the psychology of creativity. I have been writing fiction, prose-poetry, and essays for a long time now, whenever the business of staying alive has allowed. I have published quite a lot, including four books (well, three now, one having been delisted by its publisher for lack of sales). I do …
Michael Mocatta finds a practical aid for recovery from addiction in a philosophy of extreme experience. Georges Bataille (1897-1962) had a difficult childhood. In this article I will seek to explain this French philosopher’s thinking, and in particular his conception of extreme exterior experiences and sacred inner ones. We’ll see how Bataille writes of his …
Les Jones on allegories, specific domains and Wittgenstein’s social ideas. The word ‘creativity’ is derived from the Latin word creare; literally, ‘to cause, to create, to make’. But this definition itself suggests problems. Humans can certainly make things by putting other things together; but do we have the capacity to create something new, as it …
Kathleen O’Dwyer asks what Slavoj Žižek means by ‘love thy neighbour’. The postmodern psychoanalyst-philosopher Slavoj Žižek is noted for his flamboyant style, his embrace of contradiction, and his often controversial exposure of the dualities, deceptions and disavowals which characterize contemporary culture. Reflecting on these aspects of Žižek’s work, his biographer Tony Myers states that “Slavoj …