The End of the Beginning by Douglas Penick

If a character born with every perfection is a poor premise for a story, then a God who is almighty, omniscient and eternal is even worse.

by Justin E. H. Smith I. I used to get very upset at the suggestion that there might be such a thing as ‘non-Western philosophy’. Some years ago a German anthropologist friend told me she had heard, out on Broughton Island in Arctic Canada, Inuit elders using their free...

David and Goliath Play Chess, Siegfried Zademack by Bill Benzon I’m heading toward language, imaginary objects, and the cognition of ontology. But I’m not ready to go there, not yet. There’s some preliminary hemming and hawing I want to do, so bracketing, as it were. What’s with Withdrawal? I’m...

I met Castro in 2006 after receiving an honorary degree from the Academy of Fine Arts of Cuba. It was a beautiful meeting in his office for over three hours on a Sunday afternoon. We talked about a variety of subjects: the Cuban revolution, Khrushchev, the EU parliament, G....

Female factory workers in Shenzhen, China, Douglas Johnson From Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: In 1923, the British House of Commons had what was termed “a great debate”: “Socialism or Capitalism: Which?” Not so long ago, books were regularly published on this thorny topic; but now, even on the left,...

Dignity and Impudence, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, 1839 by Donna Hicks Nobody wants to be treated badly or to feel inferior. Yet, it is not uncommon for everyone to experience a violation of that dignity on a daily basis. It happens everywhere humans come in contact with one another:...

Rabbi with Torah, Hyman Bloom, 1955 by Alan Montefiore The origins of A Philosophical Retrospective – Facts, Values and Jewish Identity lie in a much more ambitious project, one of looking back on all that I have written over the years on the topics which have been of most...

by Patrick Riley I: Iustitia Caritas Sapientis It is worthwhile to try to recover a tradition of thinking about justice which, since the eighteenth century, has largely disappeared from view: the tradition which defines justice as positive love and benevolence and “charity” and generosity, not as merely following authoritative...

Green Guy, Pete Mandik, 2003.  Photograph by Rachelle Mandik by Eric Schwitzgebel Many philosophers consider the era of “modern” philosophy to begin with René Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637) and Meditations on First Philosophy (1641). In these works, Descartes aims to ground human knowledge of the external, material world – the...

Walt Disney Pictures, via From Philosophy Now: “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation” Rainer Maria Rilke. “Your task is not to...

Zellig Harris by Robert F. Barsky I began corresponding with Noam Chomsky in the late 1980s, on a range of issues that concerned me as a young graduate student studying language and literature, but interested in human rights and the history of radical movements. From the very beginning, my...

Commedia dell’arte, 18th Century engraving by Yahia Lababidi A fraction of a poem’s power resides in words, the remainder belongs to the spirit that moves through them. Poetry: the native tongue of hysterics – adolescents and mystics, alike. Bow so low and you kiss the sky. There are many...

Mark Rothko From The Philosophers’ Magazine: We’ve probably all had the experience of being on the verge of acting from anger or jealousy, when someone advises us to act reasonably. A typical picture of motivation for action is one in which emotions or desires drive us one way and...

Despite Foucault’s oft-cited interest in Nietzsche, only a couple of pieces on him were ever published...

Recently there has been a flowering of interest among philosophers, but also psychologists and neuroscientists, in the nature of our perception and appreciation of tastes and smells and in the pre-eminent complex human artefact constituted of them, wine...

   Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, and is one of the most influential political theorists of our time. Jonathan Bruno and Jason Swadley sat down with him recently in Cambridge with 12 questions on the craft of...