Felicity Joseph finds that sometimes it’s hard to become a woman. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”Simone de Beauvoir Generally for existentialists, one is not born anything: everything we are is the result of our choices, as we build ourselves out of our own resources and those which society gives us. We …
Becoming A Woman: Simone de Beauvoir on Female Embodiment Read More »
Benedict O’Connell argues we must recognise our limitations about knowing God. As philosophers, we often like to think about what can be known. It is also important, however, to consider the reverse: what cannot be known – whether there may be certain truths that are simply beyond our understanding as human beings. I’m talking about …
Peter Mullen explores the argument that by definition, God exists. In one form the Ontological Argument for God is basically the argument: 1) God is by definition the perfect being; 2) It is more perfect for a perfect thing to exist than not exist; 3) Therefore God exists. This argument for the existence of God …
What does make a musical performance authentic? What do we mean by authenticity anyway? Michael Graubart looks for some answers. Bach fugues on the clavichord or the piano? Handel arias with added ornaments or plain? Mozart concertos on a fortepiano, gut-strung violins and valveless horns or on a Steinway grand piano and modern orchestral instruments? …
Musical Hermeneutics: The ‘Authentic’ Performance of Early Music Read More »
Nobody ever put food on the table by worrying about the notion of authenticity… or did they? Gordon Giles on authentic culinary performance. Here we have a recipe for Spaghetti alla Carbonara – a Roman dish, whose flavour is owed mainly to the ingredient known both to us and Italians as pancetta. Camisa explains: “Pancetta …
Bharatwaj Iyer examines substance with the help of Hume & Vedantic philosophy. In his 1738 classic A Treatise of Human Nature, the Scottish philosopher David Hume criticised a conception of substance held by many philosophers throughout the long history of Western thought. He rhetorically asks these philosophers how they know of the existence and nature …
Karen Parham asks how close Western philosophy gets to Buddhism. Why did René Descartes (1596-1650) name his famous treatise Meditations on First Philosophy? Broadly speaking, ‘to meditate’ means ‘to think deeply about something’ (OED). Although Descartes probably meant the word in this general sense, I would like to look at whether his method, and Western …
Matei Tanasă asks if we should love the unlovable. Do all people deserve to be loved? To be able to answer such a question, we must first understand its meaning. So first, what is love? The common view regarding love meets Plato’s view on it quite nicely. His view as elaborated in his dialogues Phaedo …
Peter Keeble says philosophy, like love, is a many-splendoured thing. Philosophy is normally not shy in dealing with highly emotive issues: Philosophers often tell us what we should not do and that certain cherished beliefs are nonsense. However, not many modern philosophers have written about individual emotions, such as the feeling of romantic love. Yet …
Van Harvey reflects on Huxley’s and Clifford’s reasons for not believing. In the struggle against obscurantism and the appeal to blind faith that was rampant in Victorian culture, it would be difficult to find two greater champions of restraint on unfounded opinions and beliefs than W.K. Clifford (1845-1879) and T.H. Huxley (1825-1895). Moreover, both of …