Eva Cybulska dispells popular misconceptions about this controversial figure. “Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Übermensch – a rope over an abyss.” For Nietzsche, the idea of Übermensch was ...

While there remains no consensus on what dignity is, by far the most important and famous conception of it remains the classical liberal account developed by Immanuel Kant. The fame is well deserved, ...

Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia investigate where the idea of the meaning of life originated. What is the meaning of life? In the twentieth century most analytic philosophers either ignored the ...

Van Harvey reflects on Huxley’s and Clifford’s reasons for not believing. In the struggle against obscurantism and the appeal to blind faith that was rampant in Victorian culture, it would be ...

Chris Wright ponders Plato’s masterplan. One of the purposes of Plato’s Republic is to put forth a conception of the ‘just state’. Plato describes how such a state would be organized, who would govern ...

Duane Cady tells us why pacifism isn’t sitting back and letting the masters of war have their way. Pacifism rarely gets taken seriously due to a widespread cultural bias: ‘everybody knows’ that ...

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 ...

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 ...

Hegel’s philosophy of history is most lucidly set out in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, given at the University of Berlin in 1822, 1828 and 1830. In his introduction to those ...

Christopher Norris presents a case for the defence. Stephen Hawking recently fluttered the academic dovecotes by writing in his new book The Grand Design – and repeating to an eager company of ...

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 ...

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 ...