life
TagDesperate Honesty (guest post)
“I abandoned classics for philosophy in large part because that was where the refuters were. Now people can’t stop telling me I am wrong.”
Analytic Philosophy and the Big Questions of Life
At the start of each term, Helena de Bres (Wellesley) holds “get to know you” office hours with her students. “So what made you sign up for a philosophy class?” she asks. (more…)
“The Way Philosophy Is Personal”
Wittgenstein’s early private notebooks have just been published in English, translated by Marjorie Perloff (Stanford). Towards the end of an essay about them, Kieran Setiya (MIT) draws attention to “the way philosophy is personal.” (more…)
Children, Academia, and the Life of the Mind
“If children take time away from a habit of intellectual activity that is bad in itself, it’s hardly a real accusation against them.” (more…)
Independent Bookstores and Local Shops
Worried about your local independent bookstore surviving the shelter-in-place orders, curfews, and social distancing of the COVID-19 pandemic? (more…)
Remembrances of Parfit
Twenty videos of talks given at the June 3rd, 2017 celebration of the life of philosopher Derek Parfit (who died earlier that year), have been posted online. (more…)
The Examined Illness
Darrel Moellendorf, professor of political theory and philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt, survived. Nearly a year ago, he began chronicling his experience undergoing a stem cell transplant to treat his secondary myelofibrosis, a kind of bone-marrow cancer, that developed from his pre-existing essential thrombocythemia, at On Being (a) Patient. The treatment w..
A Story about Death, Medicine, Race, and Philosophers
A 13-year old African-American girl goes to the hospital for a tonsillectomy. What ends up happening is heartbreaking, infuriating, surprising—and, in part, a result of the work of philosophers and bioethicists. (more…)
Philosophy: Not Just About Argumentation
We are no longer able to detect the philosophical unless it comes to us in the form of the peer-reviewed academic article, published (preferably in English) in a journal with a stellar ranking and a top-notch editorial board. No wonder philosophy has become so irrelevant today. Why should anyone need philosophers, if philosophy limits itself so radically? (more…)..
The “Self-Valorizing Vanity” of Philosophers
Philosophy professors, is your job (A) just a way to pay the bills, (B), a “fun and challenging” career but certainly not the only thing worth doing, as “there is more to living,” or (C) the best career, and so, properly the overwhelmingly dominant focus of most of your life?
That’s a question Eric Schleisser (Amsterdam) asks at Digressions & Impressions and that..
What Philosophy Makes You Worse At
Over at the group blog, A Philosopher’s Take, new contributor Mike Steiner (a philosophy PhD who went into the business world) has a post up asking what studying philosophy makes one worse at.
To Live After, and During, the Reflection
Nakul Krishna, a graduate student at Oxford, has written a beautiful essay at The Point called “Add Your Own Egg.” Go read it, and we can talk about it here, if you’d like.
The essay originates from the feeling that something is missing from contemporary philosophical practice. It is not a piece of simple declinism that romanticizes the past. Rather, it wonders whe..
Is “Life” Useless?
I have received lots of advice from friends about the blog, including “get a life.” Turns out this is easier said than done, since defining “life” is notoriously tricky. See this post at Scientific American for some of the problems nailing down the concept, and for further discussion, check out this special issue of Synthese.