Such examples point to the possibility of a non-ego-based ethics. They suggest that moral action does not require deliberation or even a sense of being a separate self. (more...)

Who was Aristotle, what did he write, and why does a thinker from the fourth century BCE still shape how we think about logic, nature, happiness and the good life? (more...)

Twenty-four centuries before the periodic table, Democritus of Abdera argued that everything – rocks, souls, colours, gods – is made of tiny uncuttable particles moving in empty space. He was ignored by Plato, refuted by Aristotle, and vindicated by modern science. This is who he was, what he taught, and why his ideas still unsettle us. (more...)

Who was Heraclitus, what did he mean by saying that everything flows, and why has this obscure aristocrat from Ephesus fascinated thinkers from Plato to Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger? (more...)

Is your mind the same thing as your brain? Something separate from it? A pattern of behaviour, a kind of software, or an illusion? This guide walks through the main theories of mind – dualism, behaviourism, identity theory, functionalism, epiphenomenalism, eliminativism and more – with an example for each showing what it explains well and where it struggles. (more...)

Who was Plato, what did he write, and why does a thinker who died almost 2,400 years ago still shape how we think about knowledge, justice, love and the good life? (more...)

Who was Pythagoras, what did he actually teach, and how did a wandering religious leader from the sixth century BCE come to be credited with the idea that the universe is written in mathematics? (more...)

Who was Socrates, why did Athens put him to death, and how did a man who claimed to know nothing become the founding figure of Western philosophy? (more...)

Interview with Rossella Vingelli on the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. (more...)

The question of life stands at the very core of astrobiology, often defined as the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. (more...)

Lani Watson, Q: The Hidden Power of Questions in a World That Wants Answers (The Bodley Head, 2026), 320 pp., £22. (more...)

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...)