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 …
Philosophy on Television: The Good Place
Six unlikely friends, romance, snappy, funny dialogue, and… loads of philosophy. The Good Place has an unusual combination of elements for network television, but …
Mediaeval and Modern Roots of Computers
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, …
Gabrielle Suchon, Seventeenth Century Feminist
The range of respectable lives for Seventeenth Century women in Europe was sharply restricted. As a young woman Gabrielle Suchon had two options available …
Permanent Crisis
Reitter, Paul & Chad Wellmon, Permanent Crisis: This work argues that the narrative that the humanities are in crisis is not new. This complaint …
Laughing Matters: But how?
What provokes us to laugh? Aristotle dropped some hints about laughter and comedy in what remains of his Poetics, but the account of Comic …
What makes misinformation stick? Certainty
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 …
Philosophers informing sides in the Ukraine
Detectable traces of philosophical influence are evident in the maneuvers of both Vladimir Putin and NATO. Santiago Zabala and Claudio Gallo help make sense …
Outlines of Pyrrhonism
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism: Plato defined philosophy as the love of wisdom. Philosophers ever since have quested for the Truth. Sextus Empiricus suggests …
Economics & Human Sympathetic Faculties
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 …
The evolution of evolutionary theory
Unlike Archimedes — who made one of his defining discoveries in a single flash, a Eureka moment — Darwin’s hypothesis about natural selection emerged …
Varieties of BS
“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 …
Four Formidable Women Philosophers
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
Saving Private Ryan (1998, directed by Steven Spielberg): In addition to being an action movie set in World War II, this film is a …
Symposium
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 – prophet, outcast, & anti-Nazi
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 …
Nature and Human Nature in Aesop’s Fables
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 …
Ancient Cynicism, ancient philosophy for contemporary life
To combat the corrosive affects of contemporary cynicism implicit in the ineffectual carping that has so many people feeling defeated these days, Arthur C. …
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Ancient Philosophy, Classical Education, & Class
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 …
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Pragmatism or Philosophy? Countering authoritarianism
In 1996, Richard Rorty delivered a series of lectures at the University of Girona in Catalonia, Spain. By then, Rorty had long turned away …
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The Centenary of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
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
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 …
From Darwin to Derrida
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 …
“Take the Red Pill”
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 …
Philosophy as Poetry – Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logio-Philosophicus
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. …
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Pyrrhonian Skepticism, an ancient school for contemporary life
Two different ancient schools called themselves “skeptical”, the Academic Skeptics and the Pyrrhonian Skeptics. Both expressed fundamental doubts about the possibility of human knowledge. …
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Contemporary theories of knowledge
What is knowledge? How much can we know? And how do we know anything? One major field of philosophy is the study of knowledge, …
Why is it so difficult to be rational?
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 …
Should we eat meat?
Meat eating, like almost anything else we do, raises its own moral questions. Traditionally, objections to meat eating concentrated on the ethics of killing …
Letters and Maxims of Epicurus
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 …
Yancy & Kelley: on the Tulsa Massacre
When George Yancy, a philosopher, interviews historian Robin D. G. Kelley, what happened on the streets of Tulsa in 1921 is only a point …
The Philosophy Toolkit
Philosophers pride themselves on thinking clearly by seeing what follows from what, exposing sophisms, spotting fallacies, and generally policing our reasoning. Many have spent …
Dread, Time, and the Pandemic
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 …
Good News for Nihilists
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 …
Making sense of contradictory science
The science you can come across today can often appear to be full of contradictory claims. One study tells you red wine is good …
World Philosophy Day
On the occasion of World Philosophy Day 2020, UNESCO is offering a range of content for the Late Night with Philosophers event on 20 …
Gender Trouble
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 …
My words have meaning, your parrot’s do not. Wittgenstein explains
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 – …
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Vertigo
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
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
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 Marienbad]
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 …
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Breaker Morant
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
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
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
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 …
Blue Book, The
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
Upanishads: A repository of some of humanity’s earliest philosophical explorations – including an appearance by the first documented female philosopher, Gargi. Through dialogues, stories, …