Structuralism arose on the continent, in particular in France, in the early 60s. The first ‘big name’ was Claude Lévi-Strauss, an anthropologist, who took on Jean-Paul Sartre, the leading French ...

Generally for existentialists, one is not born anything: everything we are is the result of our choices, as we build ourselves out of our own resources and those which society gives us. We don ’t only ...

John Greenbank searches history for answers to persistent questions. The history of philosophy must be understood as a series of serious intellectual and moral claims about fundamental issues. For ...

Alan Brody reviews The Metaphysics of Mind by Anthony Kenny. The most famous theory in the philosophy of mind is René Descartes’ view that each human being consists of a mind (which is a non-physical, ...

Van Harvey reflects on Huxley’s and Clifford’s reasons for not believing. In the struggle against obscurantism and the appeal to blind faith that was rampant in Victorian culture, it would be ...

Jeremy Bojczuk on the ethics of cannibalism. If I should happen to drop dead tomorrow, please feel free to use what meat you can find on me. I won’t be able to object because I, as a conscious entity, ...

Jung also suggested that Zarathustra manifests a second personality for Nietzsche, which was perhaps awaiting an opportunity to be expressed. This reading is supported by Nietzsche’s claim that during ...

Stephen Leach considers what Bertrand Russell thought about common sense & reality – and how the one does not necessarily show you the other. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) believed that reality is ...

Frederik Kaufman asks what is and is not discrimination. The concept of discrimination plays roughly the same role in public debate as the concept of terrorism. In just the same way as disliked ...

Richard Floyd explains a notorious example of Wittgenstein’s public thought. Wittgenstein is certainly a special case. He is perhaps the only philosopher who could have produced an argument for which ...

Jesse Prinz argues that the source of our moral inclinations is merely cultural. Suppose you have a moral disagreement with someone, for example, a disagreement about whether it is okay to live in a ...

Tamás Szabados gives it an existential analysis. The heart of the movie Good Will Hunting (1997) is an encounter between Will (Matt Damon), a twenty-year-old working class prodigy, and an apparently ...