Structuralism arose on the continent, in particular in France, in the early 60s. The first ‘big name’ was Claude Lévi-Strauss, an anthropologist, who took on Jean-Paul Sartre, the leading French ...

Omid Panahi finds that finding a solution is not the problem. The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment first devised by the Oxford moral philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967. In her paper titled ‘The ...

Sam Woolfe says that we’re deluding our selves. In our day-to-day lives, it always appears that there is an I who is thinking, perceiving, and interacting with the world. Even the language we use ...

Chris Wright ponders Plato’s masterplan. One of the purposes of Plato’s Republic is to put forth a conception of the ‘just state’. Plato describes how such a state would be organized, who would govern ...

Michael Antony argues that the New Atheists miss the mark. “A wise man,” wrote Hume, “proportions his belief to the evidence.” This is a formulation of evidentialism – the view that a belief is ...

Hans Lenk relates to different types of responsibility. In his The Devil’s Dictionary (1911), the well-known satirical writer Ambrose Bierce defined responsibility as: “a detachable burden easily ...

Mary Daly is a world-renowned Radical Feminist philosopher, theologian and author. Professor Daly, what is Radical Feminism? Well, I actually define that in my Wickedary, which is a ‘dictionary for ...

Raymond Tallis on maths’ unreasonable effectiveness. The belief that mathematics is the surest path to the truth about the universe because the latter is at bottom mathematical has been very ...

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 ...

Have you ever wondered whether everyone talks about you behind your back? Whether they are all keeping something from you? John McGuire discusses the Cartesian nightmare that is The Truman Show. Every ...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has had a run-away success with The Black Swan, a book about surprise run-away successes. Constantine Sandis talks with him about knowledge and scepticism. As I find myself in ...

Steve Stewart-Williams on the implications of evolutionary theory for ethics. “Morality is a collective illusion of the genes. We need to believe in morality, and so, thanks to our biology, we do ...