Paul Doolan attends to our culture of attention demanding. ‘Listen’ is composed of the same letters as ‘silent’. Listening to another person means falling silent while the other speaks, opening ...

Jim Mepham quests with philosophers to discover what makes a life good. I have attended a number of funerals recently and it has got me thinking. Imagine after you’ve died, your loved ones are sitting ...

Mike Alder explains why mathematicians and scientists don’t like philosophy but do it anyway. As a mathematician, I take care not to be caught doing philosophy. When I buy my copy of Philosophy Now, I ...

Rogério Severo looks at the brain to see the world anew. It seems there was a time when metaphysicians were all of a single species. Now they appear to make up at least two. Of the newer kind is the ...

Ben G. Yacobi asks if it is possible to live authentically. We are told: “To thine own self be true!” But what do we mean if we say that somebody is an authentic person, or a very genuine person?

Shakespeare never met Wittgenstein, Russell, or Ryle, and one wonders what a conversation between them would have been like. “What’s in a name, you ask?” Wittgenstein might answer “A riddle of symbols ...

Ralph Blumenau on why things may not be what they seem to be. Before Kant, philosophers had divided propositions into two kinds, under the technical names of ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’. Propositions ...

Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil. If Hollywood genre movies can be depended upon to deliver one thing, it is a good hero pitted against an evil foe. Simplistic though ...

Raymond Tallis dreams up a flight of philosophical fancy. The story of Zhuangzi and the butterfly must be one of the best known anecdotes in the philosophical literature. It is also, for me at any ...

Know the name, can’t quite recall what he thought? John-Francis Phipps explains the surprising ideas of the philosopher of vitalism. Bergson’s name is not usually included on shortlists of the ...

The following answers to this question each win a signed copy of How To Be An Agnostic by Mark Vernon. Sorry if you’re not here; there were lots of entries. True beliefs portray the world as it is; ...

Ian James Kidd takes a look at humanity through dark glasses. The condemnation of humankind is very topical these days. Given the global environmental crisis, the rise of far-right ideologies, ...