Massimo Pigliucci organizes his library. Have you ever read modern technical books in philosophy? If so, you might have noticed that, broadly speaking, they fall into two categories: treatises on a ...

Shakespeare never met Wittgenstein, Russell, or Ryle, and one wonders what a conversation between them would have been like. “What’s in a name, you ask?” Wittgenstein might answer “A riddle of symbols ...

The following answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book. Sorry if your answer doesn’t appear: we received enough to fill twelve pages… Why are we here? Do we serve a ...

Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death. Daoism (or Taoism) is both a religion and a philosophy. The religion mixed magic, ...

Scott Remer thinks we arendt happy without a community and considers the complete reconstruction of the modern world to be well worth weil. In her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah ...

The following answers to this question each win a signed copy of How To Be An Agnostic by Mark Vernon. Sorry if you’re not here; there were lots of entries. True beliefs portray the world as it is; ...

Brian King wonders what there is about human minds that’s unique to us. There is a cliché, derived from Aristotle, that ‘man is the rational animal’. While all animals have sensations, appetites and ...

Hegel’s philosophy of history is most lucidly set out in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, given at the University of Berlin in 1822, 1828 and 1830. In his introduction to those ...

The first English version of a classic essay by Peter Wessel Zapffe, originally published in Janus #9, 1933. Translated from the Norwegian by Gisle R. Tangenes. One night in long bygone times, man ...

Alan Kirby says postmodernism is dead and buried. In its place comes a new paradigm of authority and knowledge formed under the pressure of new technologies and contemporary social forces. I have in ...

David Glass and Mark McCartney say Ockham’s razor doesn’t cut it with God. The idea that science has explained God away is very popular. The suggestion is that as science explains more and more about ...

Robin Small will have a Martini – stirred, not shaken. Several books on wine and philosophy have appeared in recent years. Amongst these, Roger Scruton’s I Drink Therefore I Am (2011) stands out to me ...