Having to face new, foreign, or simply different ways of thought is not an exclusively 20th Century experience: “You cannot put charcoal and ice in the same container,” once declared an 12th Century ...

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 ...

Christopher Macann explains the basis of his ‘genetic’ system of phenomenology. In Raphael’s painting The School of Athens, we see an elderly Plato pointing upward and a middle-aged Aristotle standing ...

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 ...

David Macintosh explains Plato’s Theory of Forms or Ideas. For the non-philosopher, Plato’s Theory of Forms can seem difficult to grasp. If we can place this theory into its historical and cultural ...

Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil. If Hollywood genre movies can be depended upon to deliver one thing, it is a good hero pitted against an evil foe. Simplistic though ...

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 ...

Daniel Kaufman sees philosophy ailing as a guide for Western culture, and considers how it might be revived. Among the humanities, philosophy is particularly dependent on its place in the Academy.

Sophia Gottfried meditates on the emptiness of non-existence. In philosophy there is a lot of emphasis on what exists. We call this ontology, which means, the study of being. What is less often ...

Sam Woolfe asks if pessimism is a proper response to life or a symptom of depression. If you have a pessimistic philosophical outlook on the world then it makes sense that you would also feel ...

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 ...