Tim Delaney foresees five threats to sustaining global civilization. For centuries, social thinkers have pondered whether the Earth’s carrying capacity is being compromised by human overpopulation. For example, in his An Essay on the Principles of Population (1798), Thomas Malthus claimed that the world’s population was growing too quickly in proportion to the growth in […]
The Five Horrorists Read More »
José Zalabardo investigates which problem Wittgenstein is trying to solve. For many contemporary interpreters of the Tractatus, its ultimate goal is not to answer philosophical questions or solve philosophical problems. Rather, Wittgenstein’s aim is therapeutic – to make his readers see that philosophy is not a legitimate pursuit: the problems are fictitious, the questions are
“The world is all that is the case” Read More »
Stuart Greenstreet explains how analytical philosophy got into a mess. This year’s centenary of the First World War coincides with Ludwig Wittgenstein beginning writing his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Latin for ‘Logical-Philosophical Treatise’), the only book the Austrian philosopher published in his lifetime. Not the least astonishing fact about it is that, as we shall see, most
Wittgenstein,Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism Read More »
Matt Qvortrup argues that Marx still inspires those longing for a better world. In the beginning was the word, and Marx had a way with them like no other. Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) was a supreme stylist with a turn of phrase that few could match. Whatever one thinks of the political ideologies associated with
Karl Marx: Man & Mind Read More »
Noson Yanofsky tells us how to deal with contradictions and the limitations of reason that arise from them. We all have conflicting desires. We want to get promoted, but don’t want to work too hard. We would like to date both Betty and Veronica (or both Bob and Vernon). We desire to stay thin, but also
Resolving Paradoxes Read More »
Hugh Hunter unpacks the sources of Berkeley’s idealism. You will be familiar, in these days of inelegant travel, with the exercise of trying to fit everything you might plausibly need into a very small suitcase. It sometimes happens that there is one thing which frustrates the process, an object with awkward contours that ensure it
Berkeley’s Suitcase Read More »
Pleasure for the People! Katherine Power considers whether there should be more opiates for the masses (including opium?), but settles for nuts and seeds. Before anaesthesia, surgery used to be agony. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could have been anything but pleased when painless surgery was introduced in the mid-19th century. And yet, although
The End of Suffering Read More »
Rebecca Glass on the importance of fables of ‘the really real world’. John Dewey criticizes our desire for the transcendental and supernatural as inimical to growth and education. Yearning for an otherworldly reality is “vicious in the separation of desire and thought,” an “asylum from effort,” and thus also from development (Human Nature and Conduct).
Climbing the Real Mountain Read More »
Imadaldin Al-Jubouri considers how some Muslim fundamentalists justify their aggressiveness – by misreading the Qur’an, among other things. Since September 11 2001, the West has faced a series of attacks, from New York and Washington to Madrid and London. Why did this confrontation reach the big cities of the West? Who authorised al-Qaeda to act
Fundamentals, Islamists and the West Read More »
Matei Tanasă imagines the sort of conversation about change, motion, appearance and reality that philosophers were having in ancient Athens. (Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, and Pyrrhon are sitting at a table in Athens. A worried looking Athenian approaches.) Athenian: Oh, you who are the wisest of men, I long for freedom from illusion, the hardest of
An Ancient Conversation About Motion Read More »