From The Philosopher, vol. 112, no. 1 ("Punishment"). If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation. We are unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated. Pessimism is a concept that is used in conflicting ways. As there is no clear definition of pessimism that philosophers can agree upon, more often than not it is up to each one to use the term as they see fit and apply it to a wide range of concerns that may have little in common. Faced with this, there are two main options. One is simply to accept that pessimism is a multifaceted co ..read more

From The Philosopher, vol. 110, no. 4 ("The New Basics: Philosophy"). If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation. We are unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated. Possibility is a strange object for philosophical reflection given that it is not really an object at all. We never “see” possibility as such, we only see thwarted possibilities: paths not taken, words left unsaid. In our everyday experience, possibility usually appears to us as absence, regret, even bitterness in the face of the irreversibility of time. The seemingly ineradica ..read more

From The Philosopher, vol. 112, no. 1 ("Punishment"). If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation. We are unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated. I am a philosopher who studies work. But these days, it is not an easy topic to spend your time thinking about. Everywhere I look, works seems unequivocally bad. I see friends and family who are miserable in, consumed by, or entirely checked out of their jobs. I see students who are deeply sceptical of an economic system which demands so much and offers so little. And I see colleagues who ..read more

From The Philosopher, vol. 112, no. 1 ("Punishment"). If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation. We are unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated. Group members are: Zakaria Amara, Randall Bagley. Jr., Simone Weil Davis, Tiina Aila Eldridge, Rachel Fayter, Amanda Hill, Drew Leder, Kym Maclaren, Lorraine Pinnock, James Ruston, Keven Simmonds, Natasha Warren, John H. C. Woodland, Jr., Earl Young, Colie, Matthew, Nathan, Tyrone. These writings are interspersed with photographs by Sara Bennett, a former public defender who now photogra ..read more

From The Philosopher, vol. 110, no. 4 ("The New Basics: Philosophy"). If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation. We are unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated. The term “global” refers to several ideas in philosophy. Methodologically, it commonly means “including non-Western philosophies”; in addition to Asian philosophies (which have already been established to some degree as examples of “non-Western philosophies” for years), “global philosophy” often includes African, Latin-American, Arabic, and various traditions of Indigenous phil ..read more

This conversation originally appeared in What Matters Most: Conversations on the Art of Living by Anthony Morgan (ed.) (Agenda Publishing, 2023) This conversation with Elizabeth Anderson asks what it means to be a democratic citizen in a time when we find ourselves divided not only over values, but over facts. As lies, propaganda and fake news have hijacked political discourse on polarizing issues and distracted the electorate from constructive engagement of the problems we face, Anderson looks to thinkers like John Dewey and Susan Neiman in order to reframe democracy as a kind of cul ..read more

From The Philosopher, vol. 111, no. 1 ("Where is Philosophy Going?"). If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation. We are unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated. This wide-ranging conversation between Andrew Bowie and Andrés Saenz de Sicilia took place shortly after the publication of Andrew’s book, Aesthetic Dimensions of Modern Philosophy (OUP, 2022). It focuses primarily on the intersection of philosophy and art, highlighting areas where the abstractions of analytic philosophy can distort many of the phenomena it tries to ..read more

From The Philosopher, vol. 111, no. 2 ("Where is Public Philosophy Going?"). If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation. We are unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated. Public philosophy runs along a spectrum from the popularisation of academic ideas, through the application of those ideas to current affairs, to an active participation in social and political movements. This suggests that public philosophy presupposes the esoteric work done by professional philosophers in universities. But philosophical engagement with current events often ..read more

From The Philosopher, vol. 110, no. 4 ("The New Basics: Philosophy"). If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation. We are unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated. Defining “ideology” is easy so long as one does not think about it very hard. After all, everyone knows what the word “ideology” means. It is a slander. It is what happens on cable television or inside anonymous Internet chat rooms. Ideology afflicts the crazy family member who finds the slightest pretext to launch into diatribes at holiday dinners – or the acquaintance who compul ..read more

This conversation originally appeared in What Matters Most: Conversations on the Art of Living by Anthony Morgan (ed.) (Agenda Publishing, 2023) There are few movements more firmly associated with civil disobedience than the civil rights movement. In the mainstream imagination, civil rights activists eschewed coercion, appealed to the majority’s principles, and submitted willingly to legal punishment in order to demand necessary legislative reforms and facilitate the realization of core constitutional and democratic principles. However, as political theorist Erin R. Pineda argues below ..read more