The Enlightenment genius showed how admirable scepticism in the world of ideas can translate into a miserable reactionary stance in the world of practical affairs.

When you’re bored—really bored—it feels like forever. A lived eternity. And so for some people, boredom turns into negative revelation: of the meaninglessness of it all, the senselessness of life itself. But this nihilistic dynamic should not be taken at face value; rather, it requires an investigation of how we got to this feeling.

The long read: A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right?

Teaching children philosophy can help improve academic results. But the main reason it should be used in schools is it allows children a space to make sense of the world, and meaning in their lives.

Long interview, but somewhat interesting.

What is the source of morality? There are many proposed sources of morality. Here are eight, with links to peer-reviewed resources where you can find out more about each proposed source of morality.

"Thinking hurts" — this is how the German philosopher Georg Simmel is said to have consoled his students. The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965) would give this ironic remark of his teacher an ethical twist by noting that "thinking" can also hurt others.

4 Spiritual Exercises in Gratitude and Indulgence

Prenatal testing is changing who gets born and who doesn’t. This is just the beginning. Every few weeks or so, Grete Fält-Hansen gets a call from a stranger asking a question for the first time: What is it like to raise a child with Down syndrome?

Buddhism offers a toolbox of practices for living well. You have probably heard about breath meditation (ānāpānasmṛti), for example. But have you heard of “changing the peg?” While breath meditation is focused on uniting your conscious mind with an awareness of your own body, changing the peg is focused on altering the process of your thoughts themselves.

In a world increasingly divided by the natural and the unnatural, rediscovering our connection to our environment is vital, writes Peter Kahn.

A child’s sense of curiosity is a wonderful thing – but not one that is always encouraged. It’s time to harness children’s fascination with the big questions of life, through structured teaching of philosophy from a young age.

Hannah Arendt enjoyed her solitude, but she believed that loneliness could make people susceptible to totalitarianism. What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience...

Is everything predetermined, or is it all random? Or is there something in between that we call free will that defies our attempts to explain it?

There’s nothing like a worldwide pandemic and its incessant media coverage to get you ruminating on the fragility of life. And those thoughts of death triggered by the coronavirus amplify the best and worst in people.

Religion does not help us to explain nature. It did what it could in pre-scientific times, but that job was properly unseated by science. Most religious laypeople and even clergy agree: Pope John Paul II declared in 1996 that evolution is a fact and Catholics should get over it. No doubt some extreme anti-scientific thinking lives on in such places as Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in Kentucky, but it has become a fringe position. Most mainstream religious people accept a version of Galileo’s division of labour: ‘The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.’

Philosophy can help us live more meaningful lives and build better societies. We just need a framework of philosophy that fits our modern-day problems.

Michael Sandel was 18 years old when he received his first significant lesson in the art of politics. The future philosopher was president of the student body at Palisades high school, California, at a time when Ronald Reagan, then governor of the state, lived in the same town. Never short of confidence, in 1971 Sandel challenged him to a debate in front of 2,400 left-leaning teenagers.

While filming herself getting ready for work recently, TikTok user @gracie.ham reached deep into the ancient foundations of mathematics and found an absolute gem of a question: "How could someone come up with a concept like algebra?"

In the past few years, when far-right nationalists are banned from social media, violent extremists face boycotts, or institutions refuse to give a platform to racists, a faux-outraged moan has gone up: “So much for the tolerant left!” “So much for liberal tolerance!” The complaint became so hackneyed it turned into an already-hackneyed meme.