Explore philosophy through its most famous quotes! Today: Socrates on knowing that you know nothing. (more...)

Explore philosophy through its most famous quotes! Today: Immanuel Kant on how to treat human beings. (more...)

Explore philosophy through its most famous quotes. Today: Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: “It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul…” (more...)

Joseph Harris (2022). Misanthropy in the Age of Reason: Hating Humanity from Shakespeare to Schiller. Oxford University Press. 304 pages. Hardcover: 73. (more...)

Hell is utterly impossible to put down just because of the sheer force of its language… (more...)

Christopher Hamilton’s “Rapture” is a very pleasant, well-written, intelligent, and inspiring essay on the many meanings of human lives. (more...)

Are we driving ourselves insane? And have we been doing so for over a hundred years? To understand this, we need to understand how we came to think of ourselves as depressed. (more...)

Did you know that singer Olivia Newton-John is the granddaughter of the famous physicist Max Born, one of the two people who claimed to have discovered the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics? (more...)

Pessimism today has an ambivalent status. On the one hand, even a cursory glance at the world reveals a depressing abundance of dreadful events, tendencies, and phenomena. (more...)

Robert Rodriguez is the author of The Book of Hermits and founder and editor of the website Hermitary. In this interview, he talks to us about the history of eremitism and the nature of hermit life. (more...)

Hermits have always lived apart from the societies of their times. But do they have the secret key to happiness? (more...)

We visit three very different hermits: Agafia Lykova in remote Siberia, Mauro Morandi on a Mediterranean island paradise, and Lincolnshire nun Rachel Denton. What unites them and gives their lives meaning? (more...)

Imagine waking up every evening, putting on your happy face, walking over to your immaculately laid out recording studio and… Enthusiastically unwrapping that mysterious package someone just sent you… You have no idea what it is, no really! (more...)

Is abortion morally right? We look at the main arguments for and against abortion. (more...)

We are not water pills. We are highly scientific magic pills based on an ancient organic recipe. (more...)

What sort of rights should a fetus or embryo have? A clear, comprehensive review of the arguments. (more...)

Peter Singer’s Drowning Child thought experiment: If, on the way to the office, we saw a child drowning in a pond, would we think that we have to save it? (more...)

How far does our responsibility extend? What can we rightly be regarded as responsible for? (more...)

Erich Fromm distinguishes between two modes of existence. One can live one’s life in the “mode of having” or in the “mode of being”. (more...)

John Horton Conway (1937-2020), mathematician, inventor of the “Game of Life” simulation of cellular automata. (more...)

September 26: Martin Heidegger’s Birthday (1889-1976) (more...)

Who was Michel Foucault, what did he write, and what did he mean by discourse, power/knowledge, discipline, biopower and the care of the self? A guide to his life, major works, key ideas and why he still matters. (more...)

What is existentialism? A beginner’s guide to the movement from Kierkegaard to Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus – its core ideas, its religious and atheist wings, and the argument that Sartre was never really an existentialist at all. (more...)

Philosophy was once something you did on foot. From Diogenes and Aristotle to Kant and Nietzsche, walking shaped how thinkers thought — and we lost something when it moved indoors. (more...)

What does Judaism teach about love? From the Shema and Leviticus to Maimonides, Hasidism, Buber and Levinas: how Jewish thought understands love of God, of neighbour, of the stranger, and in marriage. (more...)

Who was Mohandas K. Gandhi, what did he believe, and why do his ideas of truth, non-violence, satyagraha and self-rule still matter for how we live and fight for things today? (more...)

The Buddha told a grieving grandmother that those who have a hundred dear ones have a hundred sorrows. The same Buddha taught his monks to love all beings as a mother loves her only child. This guide explains how Buddhism distinguishes love from attachment, sets out the three main forms of the theory – the Theravāda divine abodes, the Mahāyāna bodhisattva ideal, and the Tibetan and East Asian transformations of both – and shows why, in a tradition without a God, compassion took the place that divine love occupies elsewhere. Part of our series on love in the world religions. (more...)