Michael Gracey looks at how philosophers have pursued happiness. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), whose theology was Unitarian, edited an abridged version of the New Testament that stripped the gospels ...

Eric Comerford overhears Bilbo and Gandalf discussing happiness. After all their adventures, having now sailed to the Undying Lands, Gandalf and Bilbo sit on Bilbo’s front porch after dinner, ...

Peter Saltzstein finds that Chaos Theory yields unexpected philosophical results. The future is not what it used to be. I mean, an intriguing implication of the branch of mathematics called chaos ...

Laura Weed takes us on a tour of the mind/brain controversy. In the twentieth century philosophy of mind became one of the central areas of philosophy in the English-speaking world, and so it remains.

Mark Conard reveals the metaphysical truths lurking under the rug in Tarantino’s cult classic. Nihilism is a term which describes the loss of value and meaning in people’s lives. When Nietzsche ...

Will Bouwman on how Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Parmenides & Zeno established empiricism, maths & logic as dominant features of Western thinking. According to Aristotle, the first Greek ...

Alan Brody reviews The Metaphysics of Mind by Anthony Kenny. The most famous theory in the philosophy of mind is René Descartes’ view that each human being consists of a mind (which is a non-physical, ...

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 ...

Noson Yanofsky tells us how to deal with contradictions and the limitations of reason that arise from them. We all have conflicting desires. We want to get promoted, but don’t want to work too hard.

Philippa Foot has for decades been one of Oxford’s best-known and most original ethicists. Her groundbreaking papers won her worldwide recognition but at the dawn of the new century she has finally ...

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 ...

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 ...