The following readers’ answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book. What’s the problem? Isn’t it enough that things are as they are? No, because we are sometimes deceived. We ...

The story of Russell’s philosophical account of the evils of German politics starts with the chaotic jingoism of the First World War. Prior to 1914, German scholarship had been widely respected in ...

Roger Caldwell responds to an analysis of Nietzsche’s morality. For many, Nietzsche and morality make an unlikely conjunction. Certainly, for all his challenging views – or perhaps because they proved ...

Ralph Blumenau tells us what great thinkers said about great music. Today some universities have courses in the Philosophy of Music. They study such questions as: What is the definition of music? What ...

Brent Silby asks, is this the real life, or is this just fantasy? The Simulated Universe Argument suggests that the universe we inhabit is an elaborate emulation of the real universe. Everything, ...

Eva Cybulska dispells popular misconceptions about this controversial figure. “Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Übermensch – a rope over an abyss.” For Nietzsche, the idea of Übermensch was ...

Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, and founder and Director of Chicago’s Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values. Angela Tan chatted with him ...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has had a run-away success with The Black Swan, a book about surprise run-away successes. Constantine Sandis talks with him about knowledge and scepticism. As I find myself in ...

Sophia Gottfried meditates on the emptiness of non-existence. In philosophy there is a lot of emphasis on what exists. We call this ontology, which means, the study of being. What is less often ...

Martin Jenkins looks at the life of an influential early political philosopher. Etienne de la Boétie is probably best known in the English-speaking world through a footnote in his friend Michel de ...

Mary Daly is a world-renowned Radical Feminist philosopher, theologian and author. Professor Daly, what is Radical Feminism? Well, I actually define that in my Wickedary, which is a ‘dictionary for ...

I admit that laughing out loud when I heard this joke about the famous blind and deaf writer was not my finest moment – as a woman or as a decent human being. As soon as I stopped laughing, I came to ...