Alcibades being taught by Socrates, by François-André Vincent, 1776 / Musée Fabre, Wikimedia Commons Socrates’ most famous students before Plato – or rather his most infamous students – were likely those with unpopular, even criminal, political careers, namely, Critias and Alcibiades. By Dr. Gregory A. McBrayer / 12.31.2017 Assistant Professor of Political Science Ashland University Introduction Socrates’ most famous[…]
In the middle of the Great Basaar in Istanbul / Photo via pxhere, Public Domain Mental representations have two features that make them very interesting objects of study. By Dr. Armin Schulz / 07.20.2018 Associate Professor of Philosophy Kansas University Let’s say you are offered a new job in a different city, and you need to[…]
Image by Michelle Gia, Flickr, Creative Commons The active properties of sharing – what it means to be bound to others through the common experience of a textual/dramatic artifact. By Dr. Holly Crocker Professor of English University of South Carolina Until very recently, I have avoided writing about Hamlet. With the occasional exception, I have also avoided[…]
Pitti Immagine Filati Thing theory does its best work by acknowledging the incapacity to attribute meaning to the object world where it has also attributed mystery. By Dr. John Plotz Professor of English Brandeis University So, funny story about the paper you are about to read: funny from an audience perspective, anyway. It began by asking[…]
Don DeLillo, New York City, 1990s How do the literary, visual, and plastic arts fashion questions about the object world and our relation to it? By Dr. Bill Brown / 01.01.2016 Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture University of Chicago n the opening pages of Falling Man, an unidentified consciousness struggles to apprehend the[…]
In Ancient Greece, was considered as a normal state and peace was seen only as an exception or a temporary truce during a long lasting conflict. By Joan-Antoine Mallet / 01.2017 Philosophy Pre-Doctoral Associate L’université Paul-Valéry-Montpellier Abstract In Ancient Greece, the relation between war and peace used to have an ambiguous meaning. War was considered as[…]
M0004635 Fragment of bas-relief in the from of a temple / Wellcome Library Ancient Greek philosophy and medical writing were extremely influential on later thought, both in the West and in the East. Aileen Das traces some of the strands of this remarkable journey, from Greek to Syriac, Arabic, and Latin. By Dr. Aileen Das[…]
By Tristan D. Vick / 10.11.2017 A Short Recap of the Ignostic Position Ignosticism is the philosophical position that most descriptions and definitions of God are incoherent, incomplete, discrepant, or contradictory (if not all of the above) and so cannot be discussed meaningfully. What this means is that asking questions about God, or ruminating on[…]
Standing up for what’s right can come with a cost to the individual – but also a benefit. Michael Fleshman, CC BY-NC It helps society function when people punish selfish acts, even at a personal cost. A new theory suggests third-party punishment also confers some benefits on the punisher. By Jillian Jordan / 02.24.2016 PhD Candidate in Psychology Yale University What makes[…]
Not faking it. From the Apollo 15 mission. / NASA By Dr. Gloria Origgi / 03.14.2018 Philosopher, Tenured Senior Researcher CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) There is an underappreciated paradox of knowledge that plays a pivotal role in our advanced hyper-connected liberal democracies: the greater the amount of information that circulates, the more we[…]
Plato surrounded by students in his Academy in Athens. Mosaic (detail) from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus, Pompeii, 1st century B.C. Roman National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Inv. No. 124545. Source: Wikimedia Commons An archaeologist-classicist introduces Plato’s ideas and shows how contemporary artists are exploring them today. By Shelby Brown / 07.02.2018 Classical archaeologist and classicist Education Specialist[…]
Did the Roman arenas of political conflict support the common good? Trey Ratcliff/flickr, Creative Commons History offers countless examples of social change that is now consolidated and popularly supported, but which was only achieved through protests that were judged at the time to be extreme. By Dr. Sandra Leonie Field / 11.19.2015 Assistant Professor of Humanities (Philosophy) Yale-NUS College[…]
Creative Commons Between monism, pluralism and particularism – then pluralism is much the most plausible of the three. By Dr. P.J. McGrath Professor of Philosophy, Deceased University College, Cork, Ireland I must first explain what precisely I mean by ‘ethical pluralism’ . Moral theories may be divided into three categories in accordance with the different accounts[…]
Don’t aim for completion / Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Kieran Setiya / 01.26.2018 Professor of Philosophy Massachusetts Institute of Technology Despite reflecting on the good life for more than 2,500 years, philosophers have not had much to say about middle age. For me, approaching 40 was a time of stereotypical crisis. Having jumped the hurdles[…]
Photo by Don Tormey/LA Times/Getty The problem is that people are taking her seriously. In some cases, very seriously. By Dr. Skye C. Cleary / 06.22.2018 Associate Director and Lecturer in Philosophy, Columbia University, City of New York Lecturer in Philosophy, Barnard College Philosophers love to hate Ayn Rand. It’s trendy to scoff at any[…]
Portrait of Swedenborg painted in 1817, after Swedenborg’s death, by Carl Frederik von Breda – Wikimedia Commons During the time of his ‘spiritual awakening’ in 1744 the scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg kept a dream diary. Richard Lines looks at how, among the heavenly visions, there were also erotic dreams, the significance of which has been[…]
A timeline of Shakespeare’s plays / Creative Commons Defining national culture and identity. By Dr. Eugene O’Brien Senior Lecturer in English Mary Immaculate College There is hardly a more quoted line from Shakespeare in the overall context of Irish Studies than the above question from Henry V. Given the agonies of identity that have plagued Irish[…]
Aristotle s definition of rhetoric in one founding text in the rhetorical tradition. The role of rhetoric was pedagogical, or rather persuasive: to teach, but also always to move—and if need be, to please or delight. By Dr. Matthew Sharpe / 03.05.2016 Associate Professor of Philosophy Deakin University A little case of 1616 repeatin’ Shakespeare’s gravestone and[…]
Keep calm and get your stoic on: more people today are heeding the advice than perhaps ever before. Stoicism has recently been described as one of the best “mind hacks” ever invented. Amazingly, it is back, more popular today than ever, in a series of fast-growing internet communities. By Dr. Matthew Sharpe / 07.12.2017 Associate Professor of Philosophy Deakin University From Cynicism[…]
The tragedies of ancient Greece underpin Nietzsche’s understanding of what it means to be an artist. Hans Runge/Flickr Love or loathe him, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) offered a unique way of considering creativity. By Dr. Laura D’Olimpio / 02.04.2015 Senior Lecturer in Philosophy University of Notre Dame Australia Love or loathe him, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) offered a unique way of[…]
Opening from Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura at the Cambridge University Library, manuscript dated to 1563. / Wikimedia Commons The modern idea that nature is discrete originated in Ancient Greek atomism. By Dr. Thomas Nail / 05.18.2018 Associate Professor of Philosophy University of Denver The modern idea that nature is discrete originated in Ancient Greek atomism.[…]
Wellcome Library ‘Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind!’ By Dr. Helena de Bres / 05.21.2018 Associate Professor of Philosophy Wellesley College Last semester, halfway through a meeting of my ‘Meaning of Life’ seminar, I found myself lying on a window seat along the eastern wall of the classroom. I[…]
Wikimedia Commons By Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi / 05.02.2018 PhD Candidate in Psychology University of Reading Think of the most happy and well-adjusted person you know – what can you say about their thinking style? Are they dogmatic, with an all-or-nothing outlook on the world? Do they place totally rigid demands on themselves and those around them?[…]
Hartmann Schedel (German, Nuremberg 1440–1514 Nuremberg) Registrum huius Operis libri cronicarum cum figuris et ymagibus ab inicio mundi, July 12, 1493 German / Metropolitan Museum of Art By Dr. Costica Bradatan Professor of Humanities Texas Tech University Introduction The paradoxical (and also ambitious) aim of this paper consists in attempting to point out the vigorous presence[…]
Detail from Portrait of Dr Gachet (1890), by Vincent van Gogh. Private collection. / Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Kieran Setiya / 04.27.2018 Professor of Philosophy Massachusetts Institute of Technology Philosophers ponder the meaning of life. At least, that is the stereotype. When I risk admitting to a stranger that I teach philosophy for a living and face[…]
Busts of Sokrates, Antisthenes, Chrysippos, Epikouros / Photo by Matt Neale, Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Peter O’Hara / 05.29.1997 Psychiatrist Introduction Philosophy has two main meanings, of an attitude to life, and of a type of knowledge. This lecture is concerned largely with the second meaning, that is, a type of knowledge. However the attitude or[…]
By Dr. Michael Fowler / 07.23.2015 Maxine S. and Jesse W. Beams Professor of Physics , Physics Education,Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics University of Virginia Beginnings of Science and Philosophy in Athens Let us first recap briefly the emergence of philosophy and science in Athens after around 450 B.C. It all began with Socrates, who was born in 470[…]
Tricky. South Vietnam’s President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu meeting President Richard Nixon on 2 April 1973. Flickr/AP By Dr. Maria Kasmirli / 04.20.2018 Philosopher and Teacher Imagine you have been asked to review the reference letters provided by the candidates for a lectureship in philosophy. One reads: ‘My former student, Dr Jack Smith, is polite, punctual and[…]
Adolf Eichmann at his 1961 trial. / Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Thomas White / 04.23.2018 Visiting Professor in Philosophy and Economics Mount Holyoke College Can one do evil without being evil? This was the puzzling question that the philosopher Hannah Arendt grappled with when she reported for The New Yorker in 1961 on the war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, the[…]
By Dr. N.P. Swartz Director: Unit for Legal Historical Research University of the Free State ABSTRACT Thomas Aquinas’s notion on law, tyranny and resistance served as a limitation on governmental powers. When those who bear the law command things which exceed the competence of such authority, the subject is free to obey or disobey. The[…]