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 ...

Generally for existentialists, one is not born anything: everything we are is the result of our choices, as we build ourselves out of our own resources and those which society gives us. We don ’t only ...

Sally Scholz traces the major currents of Simone de Beauvoir’s main work. Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was one of the twentieth century’s leading intellectuals, and certainly its most famous ...

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 ...

Jesse Prinz argues that the source of our moral inclinations is merely cultural. Suppose you have a moral disagreement with someone, for example, a disagreement about whether it is okay to live in a ...

Tim Wilkinson on the physics & philosophy of parallel universes. In his 1895 essay Is Life Worth Living? the American philosopher William James wrote, “Truly, all we know of good and duty proceeds ...

Ramsey McNabb introduces moral particularism. Usually, when someone is called a ‘person of principle’ it is meant as a compliment. For the most part, we take that phrase as applying to the ethical ...

Richard Floyd explains a notorious example of Wittgenstein’s public thought. Wittgenstein is certainly a special case. He is perhaps the only philosopher who could have produced an argument for which ...

Mahmoud Khatami asks, can machines make good moral decisions? Imagine a self-driving car speeding down a narrow road when suddenly a child runs into its path. The car must decide: swerve and risk the ...

Peter Flegel highlights possible connections between early Greek philosophy and the ideas of the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. Just over a year ago an eager team of archaeologists scoured through the ...

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein links Stoicism and Hip Hop. In principle, to be cool means to remain calm even under stress. But this doesn’t explain why there is now a global culture of cool. What is cool, ...

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 ...