The following answers to this fundamental question each win a random book. Life is the aspect of existence that processes, acts, reacts, evaluates, and evolves through growth (reproduction and ...

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 ...

World Congress: a report from Rome • Morality found to change with weather • Critic & philosopher Fredric Jameson dies — News reports by Anja Steinbauer ...

Philippa Foot has for decades been one of Oxford’s best-known and most original ethicists. Her groundbreaking papers won her worldwide recognition but at the dawn of the new century she has finally ...

Richard Floyd explains a notorious example of Wittgenstein’s public thought. Wittgenstein is certainly a special case. He is perhaps the only philosopher who could have produced an argument for which ...

David Deutsch is a distinguished quantum physicist and a member of the Centre for Quantum Computation at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University. He has received the Paul Dirac Prize and Medal ...

After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists. Philosophers who aspire to describe reality without resort to myth, too often remain in thrall to the myth of ...

Some feminists say women should forget old-fashioned ethical rules and focus on developing positive aspects of their characters. Not so, says Sarah Conly. Clearly, virtue ethics’ emphasis on the ...

Tim Wilkinson on the physics & philosophy of parallel universes. In his 1895 essay Is Life Worth Living? the American philosopher William James wrote, “Truly, all we know of good and duty proceeds ...

Yahia Lababidi meditates on the aesthetics and ethics of two great contrarians. The externals of their lives could not be more different. One was a celebrated wit and dramatist, the other a reclusive ...

Kimberly Blessing tells us René Descartes’ advice on reading philosophy. Anyone who has sat down to read a primary text in philosophy knows that it’s often not easy! Fortunately, French philosopher ...

Sally Scholz traces the major currents of Simone de Beauvoir’s main work. Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was one of the twentieth century’s leading intellectuals, and certainly its most famous ...