Brief Lives Etienne de la Boétie (1530-1563) Martin Jenkins looks at the life of an influential early political philosopher. Etienne de la Boétie is probably best known in the English-speaking world ...

Films The Truman Show Have you ever wondered whether everyone talks about you behind your back? Whether they are all keeping something from you? John McGuire discusses the Cartesian nightmare that is ...

Films There Will Be Blood Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil. If Hollywood genre movies can be depended upon to deliver one thing, it is a good hero pitted against an ...

Articles The Last Messiah The first English version of a classic essay by Peter Wessel Zapffe, originally published in Janus #9, 1933. Translated from the Norwegian by Gisle R. Tangenes. One night in ...

Ways of Knowing Analytic versus Continental Philosophy Kile Jones explains the differences between these ways of thinking. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as ...

I asked an AI the question. It listed natural disasters, but also named itself as a possible cause of our demise. However, it also said that humanity could prevent it. I suggest the AI has identified ...

Simone de Beauvoir Becoming A Woman: Simone de Beauvoir on Female Embodiment Felicity Joseph finds that sometimes it’s hard to become a woman. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” Simone de ...

Articles The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond Alan Kirby says postmodernism is dead and buried. In its place comes a new paradigm of authority and knowledge formed under the pressure of new ...

Question of the Month What & Why Are Human Rights? Our readers give their thoughts, each winning the right to a random book. I believe that human rights can be defined as those inalienable rights one ...

Articles Bertrand Russell on Religion, with Buddhist Commentaries Albert Shansky believes many of Russell’s opinions on religion are surprisingly in tune with those of the Buddhists. Those familiar ...

The plot begins with the curious presence of an unloved hat. “The matter is a perfectly trivial one,” Holmes challenges Watson, “Here is my lens. You know my methods.” “I can see nothing,” Watson’s ...

Frankenstein & Philosophy Moral Blind Spots Gerald Jones discusses how we judge the past, how we will one day be judged, and what we can do about it. We do not know how the future will judge us – but ...