Siobhan Lyons tries not to use either to explain what and why they are. As a schoolgirl in a Catholic Primary School, I often had to attend church. In W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, the ...

Robert Griffiths argues that humanist ethics has significant limitations. There are many people who do not believe in gods in any sense. Some are fervent atheists, but there are also very uninterested ...

Omid Panahi finds that finding a solution is not the problem. The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment first devised by the Oxford moral philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967. In her paper titled ‘The ...

In his Introduction to Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (1837), Hegel argues that there are three ways of doing history. The first of these is original history. Original history refers to ...

The following answers to this fundamental question each win a random book. Life is the aspect of existence that processes, acts, reacts, evaluates, and evolves through growth (reproduction and ...

Greg Stone presents the evidence. When Johnny Depp raises a wry eyebrow on screen, it’s an ‘existential performance’. When Donald Rumsfeld says there are ‘unknown unknowns’, they call it ‘existential ...

Shakespeare never met Wittgenstein, Russell, or Ryle, and one wonders what a conversation between them would have been like. “What’s in a name, you ask?” Wittgenstein might answer “A riddle of symbols ...

The following answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book. Sorry if your answer doesn’t appear: we received enough to fill twelve pages… Why are we here? Do we serve a ...

Alexander Jeuk says overspecialization, academic debate focusing, and simplistic argument structures, are prominent missteps in modern philosophy. It is likely that most current academic philosophers ...

Duane Cady tells us why pacifism isn’t sitting back and letting the masters of war have their way. Pacifism rarely gets taken seriously due to a widespread cultural bias: ‘everybody knows’ that ...

James Sirois gives us a strong warning about overusing the net. The internet has become so all-pervading that even the word seems a little old-fashioned now. No-one really uses it much anymore. We ask ...

Welcome to the 4th Philosophy Now Award for Contributions in the Fight Against Stupidity. I’m delighted to say that we’re giving this year’s award to Professor Noam Chomsky. Stupidity comes in many ...