The following readers’ answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book. What’s the problem? Isn’t it enough that things are as they are? No, because we are sometimes deceived. We ...

Barbara Hands considers whether it is ever right for the law to limit your freedom of choice and action, for your own good. Fred and Bob are a gay couple who have been together for 15 years. Fred is ...

Peter Sjöstedt-H introduces Whitehead’s organic awareness of reality. The philosophy of organism is the name of the metaphysics of the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Born in ...

Emrys Westacott asks a probing question. Imagine that right after briefing Adam about which fruit was allowed and which forbidden, God had installed a closed-circuit television camera in the garden of ...

Mark Conard reveals the metaphysical truths lurking under the rug in Tarantino’s cult classic. Nihilism is a term which describes the loss of value and meaning in people’s lives. When Nietzsche ...

Shamanistic shyster or intellectual innovator, creative charlatan or exalted pioneer of philosophy – however one views him, Pythagoras remains the most famous name at the starting gate of Western ...

Dana Andreicut tells us about their philosophical differences and similiarities. Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged has recently made a comeback after more than half a century, largely due to the ...

Ramsey McNabb introduces moral particularism. Usually, when someone is called a ‘person of principle’ it is meant as a compliment. For the most part, we take that phrase as applying to the ethical ...

In his Introduction to Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (1837), Hegel argues that there are three ways of doing history. The first of these is original history. Original history refers to ...

Stephen Anderson sternly judges a cause célèbre. There was a time – some years ago – when to profess disbelief in a Supreme Being could be hazardous to one’s health. You could get hacked to pieces ...

Richard Floyd explains a notorious example of Wittgenstein’s public thought. Wittgenstein is certainly a special case. He is perhaps the only philosopher who could have produced an argument for which ...

Stephen Ferguson asks whether mathematical objects are real. I work on the philosophy of mathematics – in fact, I’m just finishing off my PhD dissertation. When I meet people and they ask what I do, ...