Robert Davies applies some critical thinking to an old debate. The aim of this article is twofold. One of its purposes is to try and give some reasons why the laws that prohibit the use of cannabis are unjustified. To achieve this I will examine two common arguments put forward to justify why cannabis is …
Analogies, Slippery Slopes & the Prohibition of Cannabis Read More »
Part I: Design for a Superbeing. By Mike Alder. Long, long ago, before Philosophy Now was even a gleam in its editor’s eye, there were bright and lively-minded people around, just like you. People who liked new ideas, liked a bit of intellectual stimulation, enjoyed debate and discussion, people who liked to use their brains. …
How To Be Much Cleverer Than All Your Friends (so they really hate you) Read More »
Stefán Snaevarr asks, are our identities created by narratives? Once upon a time a philosopher wrote an article called ‘Don Quixote and The Narrative Self’. He commenced by saying: In this essay, I will discuss the question of whether our selves are constituted by narratives, ie stories. Are we like Don Quixote, whose self was …
Nazenin Ruso explains where and why he agrees with Derrida’s approach to texts. Jacques Derrida was the best-known French philosopher of the 80s and 90s, yet many find it difficult to grasp his ideas. He asked complex philosophical questions about texts and textuality. He invented deconstructionism, which emphasizes the necessary incompleteness of texts. That is …
Review of Seb Franklin, The Digitally DisposedMarc Kohlbry As our tech overlords flee a blighted planet, a scholarly consensus is taking shape around the fallout of unchecked innovation and the subsequent need for ‘algorithmic justice’. This consensus is perhaps distilled by Shalini Kantayya’s award-winning 2020 documentary Coded Bias, which tells the story of Joy Buolamwini, …
Review of Enzo Traverso, Revolution: An Intellectual History Hannah Proctor The second volume of Peter Weiss’s epic historical novel The Aesthetics of Resistance opens in Paris in 1938. Recently defeated international brigade fighters in the Spanish Civil War, the unnamed narrator and his dejected comrades have taken up temporary residence in a grand building made available by its …
Review of Gilbert Simondon, Individuation in light of notions of form and individuation Gus Hewlett Simondon’s longest and most philosophically ambitious text has finally arrived in English, in a fine translation by Taylor Adkins. Individuation in light of notions of form and information was originally submitted in 1958 as Simondon’s thèse principale, alongside his thèse secondaire, On the mode of existence of …
Review of Martin Jay, Genesis and ValidityMimi Howard Can ideas transcend the context of their appearance? Can concepts depose the particularity of their origin to achieve validity? In the opening pages to a new collection of essays on the theory and practice of intellectual history, Martin Jay argues that such questions have been around ‘at …
Review of Sebastian Truskolaski, Adorno and the Ban on Images Hedy Cohen These notes are from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C Minor, written between 1804 and 1808. Even listeners who do not read music can easily recognise the melody. It is so easy to understand and memorable, that, as a joke, in a season 16 episode …
Review of Jack Z. Bratich, On Microfascism: Gender, War, and DeathTakin Raisifard Unacquainted readers may think that ‘microfascism’ is perhaps analogous to contemporary terms such as ‘microaggression’: the prefix ‘micro’ implying a simple reduction in scale and scope for actions representing larger systems. But microfascism is not just small fascism. If fascism is a certain arrangement …