In collectivist societies, personal failure is rarely experienced privately. One person’s choices are seen as reflecting upon the entire family. (more...)

The tragedy may be less about desire than we assume, and more about origin, order, and the wrong inner position. (more...)

Humans are the only species that can both cause and contemplate their own extinction. Our enormous technological and philosophical abilities put us in a unique existential situation. (more...)

Instead of pretending that animal rearing is a just endeavour, may we face the real nature of this practice. (more...)

Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt renders this shift visible through a sexual misconduct allegation at Yale University. (more...)

James Romm (2026). Since You’re Mortal…: Life Lessons from the Lost Greek Plays. W.W. Norton and Company. 176 pages. Get it here: Amazon US, publisher’s website. (more...)

The beauty of the bird and its songs is appropriated for human enjoyment, creating a power imbalance that the Capabilities Approach identifies as unjust. (more...)

After discussing God and his choice of world, Leibniz turns to a more technical question: what are the fundamental constituents of reality? (more...)

One folly is the belief that governing is a skill requiring experts. (more...)

Every so often, a student comes to tell me they’re planning to step away from studying for a while. They want to go out into the world, they say — to gain some real experience. (more...)

Plato presents Socrates' skepticism toward the written word, and the limits of what can be derived through the process of reading, in the Phaedrus. (more...)

An interesting idea and a great table of contents, but the execution is unclear about who the ideal reader is — and will really satisfy nobody. (more...)

Ethical AI is less about building machines with moral status and more about building institutions with moral stamina. (more...)

Feeling pain for pain may be the ethical superpower nature and evolution gave us, but is it useful enough? (more...)

Why does 2+2=4…? The answer may not be as simple as one thinks. (more...)

This raises a question: does Darwin’s argument no longer hold up in a Kurzweilian world where we might not die of old age at all? (more...)

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was interested in self-reliance, self-preservation and self-promotion. These things motivated his writing of The Prince and these were its themes. (more...)

Leonardo Caffo interviews Paul B. Preciado (more...)

Solon stood before the people of Athens, their murmurs rising and falling like the waves crashing against the harbor behind him. When he spoke, his voice carried conviction enough to command them all. (more...)

What is meant is a form of respect that is a condition, one might say a conceptual precursor, to love proper. (more...)

Some philosophers think that proving the existence of God might also disprove the existence of the Devil. (more...)