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+14 +4
Arabic translators did far more than just preserve Greek philosophy
“What drove the political class of Abbasid society to support this enormous and difficult undertaking? Part of the explanation is no doubt the sheer utility of the scientific corpus: key texts in disciplines such as engineering and medicine had obvious practical application. But this doesn’t tell us why translators were paid handsomely…” Peter Adamson.
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+44 +8
There is no such thing as western civilisation
Like many Englishmen who suffered from tuberculosis in the 19th century, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor went abroad on medical advice, seeking the drier air of warmer regions. Tylor came from a prosperous Quaker business family, so he had the resources for a long trip. In 1855, in his early 20s, he left for the New World, and, after befriending a Quaker archeologist he met on his travels, he ended up riding on horseback through the Mexican countryside, visiting Aztec ruins and dusty pueblos.
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+20 +2
How chance and probability affect the path of Big History
Does history unfold randomly and by chance, or are there underlying patterns and deep connections between its parts? By Walter Alvarez.
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+8 +3
Martin Aurelio reviews The Nine Laws by Ivan Throne
What if Julius Evola had written a samurai treatise? What if Lao Tzu had written a long, systematic book of philosophy instead of the short, poetic chapters of the Tao Te Ching? What if the famed, long-lost book On Nature by Heraclitus – he who was called “The Dark” – were to be found and published?
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+14 +1
Meeting One’s Madness
Our newest correspondent is Megan Mayhew Bergman, who will be writing about naturalism. For her first piece she considers the writer Alan Watts and the “age of environmental anxiety.”
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+21 +3
Indifference is a power
As legions of warriors and prisoners can attest, Stoicism is not grim resolve but a way to wrest happiness from adversity. By Lary Wallace.
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+5 +1
Teach philosophy to heal our ‘post-truth’ society, says President Higgins
Teaching philosophy in schools, and promoting it in society, is urgently needed to enable citizens “to discriminate between truthful language and illusory rhetoric”, President Michael D. Higgins has said. Speaking at a function at Áras an Uachtaráin to mark World Philosophy Day, which fell this week, the President expressed concern about an “an anti-intellectualism that has fed a populism among the insecure and the excluded”.
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+17 +3
On Bullshit and the Oath of Office
The “LOL Nothing Matters” Presidency. By Quinta Jurecic.
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+21 +6
Why Socrates Hated Democracy
We’re used to thinking hugely well of democracy. But interestingly, one of the wisest people who ever lived, Socrates, had deep suspicions of it.
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+14 +4
A New Politics of Time
There’s a widespread belief that actually existing democracies are in the grip of a fast-paced world dominated by breaking news and all things instant. The following contribution sets out to question this…
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+12 +5
Moral character is the foundation of a sense of personal identity
We tend to think that our memories determine our identity, but it’s moral character that really makes us who we are. By Nina Strohminger.
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+29 +14
What Is a ‘Self’?
Here Are All the Possibilities. By Robert Lawrence Kuhn.
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+17 +3
One of the biggest VC's in Silicon Valley explains how basic income could fail in America
Y Combinator President Sam Altman says Americans' love affair with work could get in the way of basic income making people any happier.
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+30 +4
I’m a Scientist, and I Don’t Believe in Facts
The benefits of a post-truth society. By Julia Shaw.
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+53 +8
Octopuses Are ‘the Closest We Will Come to Meeting an Intelligent Alien’
You don’t want to be speciesist about consciousness, do you? By Drake Baer.
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+14 +5
Bruce Lee on the Power of Repose and the Strength of Yielding
“One should be in harmony with, and not rebellion against, the strength of the opponent.”
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+17 +5
The whole philosophy community is mourning Derek Parfit. Here’s why he mattered
Parfit isn’t a household name, but his ideas were profound. By Dylan Matthews.
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+26 +3
Isaac Asimov: How to Never Run Out of Ideas Again
If there’s one word to describe Isaac Asimov, it’s “prolific.”
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+32 +7
The rise and fall and rise of logic
Is logical thinking a way to discover or to debate? The answers from philosophy and mathematics define human knowledge. By Catarina Dutilh Novaes.
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+4 +2
Why I’m leaving the Democratic Party
OPINION | These new crusaders for the church of the far left must be called out.
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