Anja Steinbauer introduces the life and ideas of Immanuel Kant, the merry sage of Königsberg, who died 200 years ago. “Have the courage to use your own reason!”, (in Latin sapere aude!) is the battle ...

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 ...

In his Introduction to Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (1837), Hegel argues that there are three ways of doing history. The first of these is original history. Original history refers to ...

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 ...

Tim Madigan on scientific versus religious explanations of ethical behaviour. “A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with ...

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 ...

Jeff Mason on Kierkegaard’s three forms of life: the ethical, the aesthetic and the religious. Why get up in the morning? Should we get up for ourselves, for others, or for the Christian God? If we ...

“…my first observation… will be found very nearly true; that the sublime is an idea belonging to selfpreservation. That it is therefore one of the most ...

Ralph Blumenau on why things may not be what they seem to be. Before Kant, philosophers had divided propositions into two kinds, under the technical names of ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’. Propositions ...

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; ...

Ian James Kidd takes a look at humanity through dark glasses. The condemnation of humankind is very topical these days. Given the global environmental crisis, the rise of far-right ideologies, ...