It’s well known that Søren Kierkegaard was quite worried about the trends of the “present age.” He thought that individuals were losing themselves to abstractions, aestheticizing self-conceptions, and ambivalent comparisons with others. In Two Ages, he called his a “reflective” and “passionless” age. Kierkegaard intended his pseudonymous intellectual project—itself chock-full of abstraction, aesthetes, and ambivalences—to get ..read more

A conversation about dirt becomes a discussion of death, grief, and philosophy ..read more

For old age to be understood differently, our whole life needs rethinking. And so, too, the philosophy that is humanly satisfying ..read more

Under what conditions can your academic work be meaningful? De Beauvoir has an unsettling and extreme answer ..read more

Few comedies depict the banal, Kafkaesque day-to-day of working life as well as Mike Judge’s 1999 film Office Space. When teaching Marx on the concept of alienation, either in a political philosophy or ethics course, Office Space’s bureaucratic and dull depiction of advanced capitalist working life is an excellent compendium for classroom discussion. Having read ..read more

Misogynistic or traditionalist views of women lurk in the background of many a philosopher in the Western tradition. For Søren Kierkegaard, a blend of such views sits right at the heart of his philosophical project: how to become a self in the fullest sense. The centrality of an archaic and unjust view of women to ..read more

The central charter of this series is exploring the evolving relationship among science, philosophy, and faith, with a focus on the import of modern physics and technology. In an earlier post, Sean D. Kelly traced the genealogy of redemption in the Western tradition and, previewing his upcoming book, The Proper Dignity of Human Being, discussed ..read more

Professor Emerita Margaret A. (Peg) Simons of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville is the recipient of the 2021 Eastern Society for Women in Philosophy (ESWIP) Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award, which she received at the 2022 Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association. I was among those who wrote letters of support for the distinguished ..read more

This edition of Philosophy and the Mirror of Technology is the first installment of a two-part interview with Sean D. Kelly. The next installment will be published Tuesday, December 14. The central theme of this series is to explore the evolving relationship among science, philosophy, and faith, with a focus on the import of modern ..read more

Katherine speaks with radical educator Laura Nelson about the university, the idea of study, and building community at Harvard and beyond ..read more