Gerald Jones discusses how we judge the past, how we will one day be judged, and what we can do about it. We do not know how the future will judge us – but judge us it will. Just as we look back at the past and find it wanting, so our descendants will find …
Tim Madigan considers the core philosophical themes of the long-lived novel. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has remained in print ever since it was published two hundred years ago this year, and has been the basis for innumerable adaptations. While most novels from so long ago have been forgotten, Shelley’s lives on. Why has it remained so …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Greg Artus contemplates (dis)embodiment, Zoom life and social media, through the ‘Looks’ of Sartre, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. In this past year of severe restrictions on physical social interaction, everyone seems to have been made starkly aware of the importance of what some existentialists would call Being-with-Others. A social life conducted through screens has shown people …
Gary Cox considers the problematic side of freedom, from the edge of a cliff. Many of the central themes and concepts of existentialism – freedom, choice, responsibility, bad faith, anxiety, despair, and absurdity – originated in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), in such ground-breaking works as Either-Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), The Concept …
Sam Morris on the existential choice we all face. The 4th January 1960 was an overcast and drizzly day in northern central France. Albert Camus was returning to Paris with his publisher Michel Gallimard and Gallimard’s wife and daughter in a powerful four-door sports car, a Facel Vega. The Vega was infamous for its rear …