If prison is justified because it protects society, rehabilitates offenders, deters future crime, and/or restores justice, then it must ultimately be judged by whether it accomplishes those ends. (more...)

Suppose one day your child says: I want to become a modern-day Confucius. – Would you feel proud or worried? (more...)

This paper sets out to challenge the uncritical claim, presented as a mantra implying a virtual truism, that we should aim for ‘evidence-based decisions’. (more...)

Stock’s latest work will annoy supporters of the UK’s attempts to legalise consensual assisted dying. (more...)

A hundred years ago, activists were building parks and libraries and community centres so that workers would put the newly found free time to good use. (more...)

It is no longer only about how we treat others, but about what kind of collective future we are rationally justified in pursuing. (more...)

The photograph captures what the eye measures. Van Gogh captured what the mind feels the sky to be. Whose account of the night is truer? (more...)

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...)

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...)