philopapers

Thomas Morrison asks just what Kant learned from his Critique of Pure Reason. Can we know how things really are regardless of how they appear to us? Throughout history, many philosophers – known as skeptics – have argued that we can not. Part of what Immanuel Kant is attempting in his Critique of Pure Reason […]

Samantha Neave explores how to be a good person, with the help of Immanuel Kant and the Tooth Fairy. Last night I dreamt I promised my niece a ride on a skipping giraffe. Sadly, when it came to the crunch, my car broke down half way round the safari due to some gorillas landing on

Randall Curren finds that talking about humor is no laughing matter. Especially on national television. When our president asked me some weeks ago if I would be willing to prepare a philosophy commencement address on the subject of humor for national broadcast I was puzzled. I sized this up as, at best, a clumsy attempt

An introduction by Tim Madigan. “It is worth noting that Wittgenstein once said that a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without being facetious).”Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir The above passage is rather ambiguous – does it mean that Wittgenstein said such a thing in a

John Marmysz looks on the funny side of absolute nothingness. God is dead. Nothing matters. All is meaningless. Nothing is true. These are the sorts of laments often associated with nihilism, a philosophical perspective premised on the belief that the world is incurably imperfect, flawed, defective. According to the nihilist, the way that the world

Mordechai Gordon takes ideas about not taking ourselves too seriously seriously. To date, philosophers have concentrated much more on trying to account for what makes us laugh at others than on why we laugh at ourselves. Indeed, attempts to explain the phenomenon of laughing at others have been around for a long time, at least

Hamid Andishan tells us how Sartre, a philosopher of freedom, had problems with the politics of the land of liberté, and how this affected his view of human rights. Have you ever heard of someone loving and hating something at the same time? It can lead to madness, or at least, to profound anguish. The

Ian Fishback argues that torture should never be allowed in practice. At one time international recognition of a right against torture was considered one of the best, if not the singularly best, triumphs of the human rights regime. However, since the US implemented its enhanced interrogation program in the wake of the terrorist attacks of

Vittorio Bufacchi & Xiao Ouyang discuss some philosophical & linguistic difficulties. China has long been a soft target for Western human rights activists. Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, between 1966 and 1976, was attacked at the time and is still demonized today for the innumerable violations of fundamental human rights that then occurred. In 1989 the

Ray Tallis peers into the future, without fear. “Tereza is staring at herself in the mirror. She wonders what would happen if her nose were to grow a millimetre longer each day. How much time would it take for her face to become unrecognizable? And if her face no longer looked like Tereza, would Tereza