Roger Caldwell considers whether it’s possible to consider Derrida. In all commentaries on Derrida sooner or later you will find the assurance that his argumentation is rigorous. This is surprising, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Anja Steinbauer explains why Plato had problems with democracy. A lovely boat lazily bobbing up and down on the water, going here and there and nowhere: A nice way of spending a summer Sunday ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Arnold Zuboff keeps asking a dangerous question – whether anyone has any real reason to act morally. He thinks it has led him to a new basis for ethics. Let’s inquire into the nature of morality – and ...

Alan Haworth on Karl Popper, his vision of a pragmatic, liberal society, and his assessment of its philosophical enemies. It is now one hundred years since the birth of Karl Popper, and almost sixty ...

Barbara Hands considers whether it is ever right for the law to limit your freedom of choice and action, for your own good. Fred and Bob are a gay couple who have been together for 15 years. Fred is ...

Susan Lucas on how words gain meaning from their context. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is perhaps one of the most startlingly original pieces of philosophy ever written. It has been ...