Mary Midgley says that branches of knowledge are like maps – each answers a different set of questions so they can’t necessarily all be ‘reduced’ to physics.

Plato translation unveiled • Prison TV drama takes philosophical turn • UNESCO creates ethics code for neurotech — News reports by Anja Steinbauer, Olivia Gill and Martin Cohen Translating from ...

Friedrich Nietzsche was destined, like his father and grandfather before him, to become a Lutheran minister. From his earliest days he was steeped in a Christian setting, growing up in a household of ...

Not as much as some people think, says Phil Badger. What is being referred to when we speak of ‘The Enlightenment’ is not always easy to pin down, but in broad terms, it can be considered as an ...

Jeremiah Conway says that philosophy is profoundly useless but incredibly worthwhile. Anyone who has taught or studied philosophy is familiar with the question. It is a standard question of ...

Stuart Greenstreet explains how analytical philosophy got into a mess. This year’s centenary of the First World War coincides with Ludwig Wittgenstein beginning writing his Tractatus ...

Michael Faust reviews this film in the light of eternity. Is Groundhog Day one of the great philosophical movies? Viewed on the most trivial level it’s just another Hollywood rom-com, but on closer ...

Duane Cady tells us why pacifism isn’t sitting back and letting the masters of war have their way. Pacifism rarely gets taken seriously due to a widespread cultural bias: ‘everybody knows’ that ...

Terri Murray says that Jean-Paul Sartre was simply wrong about gay people and self-deception. Bad faith is Sartre’s conception of self-deception. Bad faith arises out of the human predicament – that ...

Hand lets amputees feel • Philosophy dept in sexism row • Putin’s favourite thinkers • Philosopher becomes party leader — News reports by Sue Roberts ...

Alexander Hooke finds hell & existentialist hope in prison. Hope helps keep us alive and anticipating the next sunrise with joy rather than gloom. It enlivens projects and maintains focus. Hope is ...

Chris Wright ponders Plato’s masterplan. One of the purposes of Plato’s Republic is to put forth a conception of the ‘just state’. Plato describes how such a state would be organized, who would govern ...