Argument and Civility
Catherine Hundleby, a friend of firstphilosophy.ca and one of our earliest contributors, has died. Catherine was a fine philosopher and better person. Her TEDx …
Catherine Hundleby, a friend of firstphilosophy.ca and one of our earliest contributors, has died. Catherine was a fine philosopher and better person. Her TEDx …
Six unlikely friends, romance, snappy, funny dialogue, and… loads of philosophy. The Good Place has an unusual combination of elements for network television, but …
Long before the advent of modern computers, even before electricity was harnessed to power the kind of circuitry that makes large-scale computational processing possible, …
The range of respectable lives for Seventeenth Century women in Europe was sharply restricted. As a young woman Gabrielle Suchon had two options available …
Reitter, Paul & Chad Wellmon, Permanent Crisis: This work argues that the narrative that the humanities are in crisis is not new. This complaint …
What provokes us to laugh? Aristotle dropped some hints about laughter and comedy in what remains of his Poetics, but the account of Comic …
One way to combat mis-information and dis-information is to reinforce good information with patiently explained evidence. But according to Ilana Redstone, the deeper problem …
Detectable traces of philosophical influence are evident in the maneuvers of both Vladimir Putin and NATO. Santiago Zabala and Claudio Gallo help make sense …
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism: Plato defined philosophy as the love of wisdom. Philosophers ever since have quested for the Truth. Sextus Empiricus suggests …
Economists often venerate Adam Smith’s monumental Wealth of Nations (1776) as the Newtonian origin of their discipline. Smith’s memorable image of an invisible hand …
Unlike Archimedes — who made one of his defining discoveries in a single flash, a Eureka moment — Darwin’s hypothesis about natural selection emerged …
“BS!”, like “bull!”, “crap!”, “humbug!”, “buncome!” and similar expressions, can seriously damn a rival’s claim or their personal authority. It can also serve as …
Remarkably, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch graduated from Oxford within a few years of each other in the 1930s. Each …
Saving Private Ryan (1998, directed by Steven Spielberg): In addition to being an action movie set in World War II, this film is a …
Plato, Symposium: This is one of Plato’s literary masterpieces, along with the Republic. It contains several speeches on the nature of love given by …
Theodor Lessing–controversialist, satirist, and spur to Nazi flanks–fled Germany in early 1933 to Marienbad, Czechoslovakia. He foresaw danger on the horizon in his native …
Since ancient times, readers have recognized that the dogs, foxes, lions, ants, grasshoppers, and other creatures in Aesop’s fables represent features or types of …
To combat the corrosive affects of contemporary cynicism implicit in the ineffectual carping that has so many people feeling defeated these days, Arthur C. …
Ancient Cynicism, ancient philosophy for contemporary life Read More »
Edith Hall and Ansgar Allen are interviewed by Tom Sutcliffe on BBC’s “Start of the Week”. Edith Hall talks about the value of reading …
Ancient Philosophy, Classical Education, & Class Read More »
In 1996, Richard Rorty delivered a series of lectures at the University of Girona in Catalonia, Spain. By then, Rorty had long turned away …
Pragmatism or Philosophy? Countering authoritarianism Read More »
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logio-Philosophicus is an ambitious reconsideration of what philosophy is and what it can accomplish. A previous item on First Philosophy celebrates …
Bhagavad Gita: The Bhagavad Gita begins with a moral dilemma: should Arjuna the great warrior, fight a fratricidal war and kill members of his extended …
David Haig, From Darwin to Derrida: From Darwin to Derrida (2020) is a roller-coaster ride for intrepid thinkers. Dawkins (1976) introduced the endlessly productive …
It’s a tantalizing idea that dates back to the parable of the cave in Plato’s Republic VII: a special perspective unclouded by the illusions …
Ludwig Wittgenstein‘s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a bold experiment in literary form and expression, in addition to being a monumental work of 20th Century philosophy. …
Philosophy as Poetry – Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logio-Philosophicus Read More »
Two different ancient schools called themselves “skeptical”, the Academic Skeptics and the Pyrrhonian Skeptics. Both expressed fundamental doubts about the possibility of human knowledge. …
Pyrrhonian Skepticism, an ancient school for contemporary life Read More »
What is knowledge? How much can we know? And how do we know anything? One major field of philosophy is the study of knowledge, …
Being a rational agent is difficult. But why? We often think of it as psychological challenge, which it is. But that’s not the only …
Meat eating, like almost anything else we do, raises its own moral questions. Traditionally, objections to meat eating concentrated on the ethics of killing …
Epicurus, Letters and Maxims: The ancient world’s self-proclaimed autodidact, Epicurus was revered by his followers and reviled by his critics. He founded a community …
When George Yancy, a philosopher, interviews historian Robin D. G. Kelley, what happened on the streets of Tulsa in 1921 is only a point …
Philosophers pride themselves on thinking clearly by seeing what follows from what, exposing sophisms, spotting fallacies, and generally policing our reasoning. Many have spent …
Søren Kierkegaard’s reflections on worry are useful reading for those in lockdown. As John Lippitt explains, two of Kierkegaard’s books can help us think …
If embarking on a second year of shutdowns, social restrictions, constant health risks, and existential dread has eroded your sense of life’s ultimate meaning …
The science you can come across today can often appear to be full of contradictory claims. One study tells you red wine is good …
On the occasion of World Philosophy Day 2020, UNESCO is offering a range of content for the Late Night with Philosophers event on 20 …
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: In this landmark of third-wave feminism, Judith Butler advances a novel conception of gender identity. Against the prevailing tradition that …
These squiggles have a meaning. So do spoken words, road signs, mathematical equations and signal flags. Meaning is something with which we’re intimately familiar – …
My words have meaning, your parrot’s do not. Wittgenstein explains Read More »
Vertigo (1958; directed by Alfred Hitchcock): Vertigo is Hitchcock’s best film, ranking #1 in the Sight & Sound critics’ poll of the ‘best movies …
Tree of Life ((2011; directed by Terrence Malick): Malick’s film is the only one I know in which the origin of the universe, and …
Memento (2000; directed by Christopher Nolan): Ostensibly Memento is a film about a man with a brain injury that renders him unable to form …
L’Année dernière à Marienbad[Last Year at Mariebad] (1961; directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet & Alain Resnais, French with English subtitles.): Philosophers like Descartes took solipsism …
L’Année dernière à Marienbad [Last Year at Marienbad] Read More »
Breaker Morant (1980; directed by Bruce Beresford): In 1902, several Australian soldiers in the British army’s struggle in the second Anglo-Boer War were court-martialed …
Blade Runner 2049 (2017; directed by Denis Villeneuve): Blade Runner 2049 is the long-awaited sequel to Ridley Scott’s (1982) Blade Runner. Set 30 years …
Blade Runner (1982; directed by Ridley Scott): On the surface Blade Runner, appears to be just another dystopian sci-fi film loosely modeled on the …
Alien3 (1992: directed by David Fincher): Alien3 is Fincher’s first film, and its famously troubled production and mixed reception have contributed to its being …
Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue Book: This small volume conveys a vibrant sense of the life of philosophy. With intellectual honesty reminiscent of Augustine’s Confessions, we …
Upanishads: A repository of some of humanity’s earliest philosophical explorations – including an appearance by the first documented female philosopher, Gargi. Through dialogues, stories, …