Just before the first COVID-19 lockdown started in Melbourne, I ran out and bought an Xbox – “for the kids,” you understand. I’d never had a games console, and I am certainly not the target demographic for Rockstar Games’ work: massive open-world behemoths like the infamous Grand Theft Auto series and 2010’s Red Dead Redemption. So while I knew of the hype around the prequel Red Dead Redemption 2, I was utterly unprepared for the emotional impact it would have on me – and what curious solace I’d find in its evocation of time and loss.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was one of the most prominent Russian novelists of all time. His novels are often surrounded by a gloomy, violent aura and deep, complex characters. Dostoevsky never fails to make the reader ponder and introduce philosophical themes in a subtle, but convincing way. His novel “Notes from the underground” is one of the most distinguished existential fictions in the world.

Biotech and nanotech have a great potential for disruption to every human-made system we have today, including death. Below is a toy example of how immortality would completely change the structure of society, an example so simple it may seem silly, but which illuminates the principles clearly.

Where does evil come from? Are evil acts always committed by evil people? Whose responsibility is it to identify and stamp out evil? These questions concerned 20th-century German philosopher Hannah Arendt throughout her life and work, and in her final (and unfinished) 1977 book The Life of the Mind, she seems to offer a conclusion, writing...

Educated people who live in rich countries are far less likely to say belief in God is necessary for good morals, according to a massive new survey of 38,000 people in 34 countries. The survey, released Monday by the Pew Research Center, revealed a gaping "God gap" between relatively rich and poor countries.

Our fascination with disaster narratives springs from our desire to see moral conundrums played out, writes Stephen De Wijze. Living through an actual disaster, like the Covid-19 pandemic, is not nearly as exciting.

Virtual reality tore me out of my filter bubble. I met people I probably would never have met in material reality. I felt close to people, I hung out with them in a social VR room for weeks — and only on my long journey to Kuwait, Israel, and the US, where I finally visited them in their material lives, did I realize how far away these people are “in reality.” But this distance did not hinder us from having real relationships.

A new study provides evidence that women’s reliance on intuition and “gut” feelings helps to explain why they tend to report more magical beliefs than men do. The research has been published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

The people of Germany, with their reputation for having an industrial-strength work ethic, may not spring to mind as the happiest or healthiest people around. Yes, Germans are better known for their beer and brats than their wellness rituals. But at the same time, with their unique ways to relax, unplug, enjoy nature, and tap into the wisdom of their rich traditions, Germans have lot to teach the rest of the world about living the good life.

In January of this year, the White House responded to a not-entirely-serious petition to build a Death Star, a huge moon-sized battle station armed with planet-destroying laser cannons depicted in the original Star Wars trilogy.

Friday night on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” host Bill Maher asked when Christians in this country swapped Christ’s message of love and tolerance for a philosophy of “F*ck off and die” toward people who aren’t like them. Showing an image of Congressional Republicans captioned “Cheap of faith,” Maher said, “New rule: It’s okay if you don’t want to feed the hungry or heal the sick or house the homeless. Just don’t say you’re doing it for their own good.”

Everything was going great until you showed up. You see me across the crowded room, make your way over, and start talking at me. And you don’t stop...

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” If William Faulkner was writing that line today, he might add, “And it’s taking up far too much of your life.” We’re living in the most technologically advanced moment in history, but for those of us in our 30s, we’re spending more and more of our time looking back, not forward. And the entertainment industry is cashing in, happily catering to our love of stuff that was important to us when we were younger.

THE recent announcement by a team of astronomers that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable planets in our galaxy has further fueled the speculation, popular even among many distinguished scientists, that the universe is teeming with life.

I had an epiphany that has forced me to rethink why I love living things so much and reexamine what life is, really. For as long as people have studied life they have struggled to define it. Even today, scientists have no satisfactory or universally accepted definition of life.

How the Revolution, and two thinkers, bequeathed us ‘right’ and ‘left.’

“There was a time when Rebecca, our eldest, was desperate to have a pet,” David Clough told me, when we met at the American Academy of Religion conference, held in Baltimore before Thanksgiving. “And she was in the unhappy position of having a father who had reflected ethically on the question at some length” — a father with misgivings about the human use of animals, even for companionship.

Patricia Churchland, a neurophilosopher at the University of California at San Diego, says our hopes, loves and very existence are just elaborate functions of a complicated mass of grey tissue. Accepting that can be hard, but what we know should inspire us, not scare us. Her most recent book is Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain.

Our morality may be a product of natural selection, but that doesn’t mean it's set in stone

One of the distinctive features of French intellectual life in the post-war period has been the influence of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Heidegger’s standing among French philosophers, especially those working in the phenomenological tradition, contrasts dramatically with his reputation in the country of his birth, where his legacy is tainted irredeemably by his political compromises with National Socialism in the 1930s.