The following answers to this artful question each win a random book. Art is something we do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but it is even more ...

Massimo Pigliucci surveys the views of ancient schools. As we all know, the telos of life is eudaimonia. Or to use English, the goal of life is happiness. This immediately leads to two crucial ...

Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, lawyer and theologian, is well-known in Iran for bringing religion closer to the people, AmirAli Maleki asks him about Islam and philosophy. What is Islamic philosophy? What ...

Alejandra Mancilla uses an example from Robert Nozick to question the claims to ownership made by breeders of genetically modified organisms. John Locke’s justification of property rights started with ...

Structuralism arose on the continent, in particular in France, in the early 60s. The first ‘big name’ was Claude Lévi-Strauss, an anthropologist, who took on Jean-Paul Sartre, the leading French ...

Katharine Merow asks what’s buzzing around in the head of the Sphex wasp. Folks who think about thinking for a living have a favorite genus of wasp. These cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind ...

Michael Sandel’s critiques of our actions are under scrutiny by Philip Badger. That What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets is a subtle and sophisticated analysis of the impact of the free ...

Peter Caws considers how much is lost in translation. There’s a story about an American evangelist who was challenged about something in his preaching that didn’t agree with the Greek of the New ...

Michael Philips on the shaky foundations of the most popular philosophical theory of modern times. Most academic philosophers these days will tell you, without hesitation, that they are materialists.

John Greenbank searches history for answers to persistent questions. The history of philosophy must be understood as a series of serious intellectual and moral claims about fundamental issues. For ...

Colin Brookes reflects on ethical and aesthetic issues between vampires and us. Let the Right One In (2008) was critically acclaimed internationally and received several prestigious awards. It stands ...

Wendell Wallach tells us what the basic problems are. If a train continues on its current course, it will kill a workcrew of five down the track. However, a signalman is standing by a switch that can ...