Smart books for humans on artificial intelligence October 16, 2023 AI’s involvement in everyday life is ever-evolving, with significant implications for how we work, live, and traverse fields from education to healthcare. As this powerful technology is incorporated into more services and products that we rely upon, here are some books that can help us to embrace human agency and navigate this new digital age. Read More
Aristotle and ecology October 12, 2023 Aristotle urges us to study animals closely for what they reveal about the larger world around us, including ourselves. Read More
Myisha Cherry on Failures of Forgiveness September 28, 2023 Forgiveness is one way at repair. It is not the only way. Forgiveness can never reach repair by itself. It requires work from community members as well as victims and wrongdoers. Read More
Plato the constitutionalist—and the Supreme Court July 27, 2023 A cabal of unelected men and women appointed with tenure for life, making the most important decisions for an entire society with no chance of appeal. That is a good description of the United States Supreme Court. It’s also a good description of the philosopher-rulers of Plato’s Republic. Read More
In dialogue: Rethinking climate change and catastrophe July 18, 2023 This month, in pursuit of clarity and advice, we gathered some of our authors and asked the following question: How should we think about the future in the face of climate change? Their perspectives offer us the tools to collectively rethink catastrophe in order to generate alternative possibilities of hope, action, or simple awareness regarding the planet and its beings. Read More
Aristotelian virtues for social media June 23, 2023 There was no social media in Aristotle’s day. But a trio of virtues Aristotle invokes for social situations—and their corresponding vices—nicely capture the landscape of human (mis)behavior on the social media of today. Read More
Night Vision June 08, 2023 Under the light of ancient Western philosophies, our darker moods like grief, anguish, and depression can seem irrational. When viewed through the lens of modern psychology, they can even look like mental disorders. Read More
The therapist and the gadfly May 24, 2023 If you want to improve yourself—be happier, for example—you shouldn’t consult society’s ideas of a good life, as portrayed in magazines, pillows, and posters. Instead, you should find the equivalent of a horse trainer. Read More
Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality May 09, 2023 Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Read More
David Edmonds on Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality April 14, 2023 Derek Parfit was an obsessive. For much of his adult life he had two obsessions. Philosophy was one, photography another. Every year, for many years, he would travel to Venice and St. Petersburg and photograph the same buildings, trying to take the perfect shot. Read More
The origins and importance of talk March 29, 2023 I come from a family of talkers. The household in which I grew up was always noisy. My parents were loud and opinionated, and interrupted and quarreled boisterously with each other. Read More
Yes, the Chinese care about the Western classics January 24, 2023 Much as in Europe and the US, the ancient Greeks live on in China through their works—at least, recently so. Over the past century, the philosophical and political texts of western antiquity, especially those of classical Athens, have sparked the interest of Chinese intellectuals, journalists, reformers, and nationalists. Read More
Flipping failure January 09, 2023 “Failing big” has been much in the news—it’s part of an exciting strategy that also includes “move fast and break things” and “no risk, no reward!” But what about failing small? Read More
Listen in: What Do You Want Out of Life? January 06, 2023 What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money—or work for justice? To run marathons—or sing in a choir? To have children—or travel the world? The things we care about in life—family, friendship, leisure activities, work, our moral ideals—often conflict, preventing us from doing what matters most to us. Read More
Live longer by living better, says Seneca December 05, 2022 Because we can't truly conceive of an endpoint to life, we give to our time far less value than we should, squandering it on useless pursuits or frivolities. Read More
