Why speaking to yourself in the third person makes you wiser
We credit Socrates with the insight that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ and that to ‘know thyself’ is the path to true wisdom.
Humanity and nature are not separate
We must see them as one to fix the climate crisis From transport and housing to food production and fashion, our civilisation is driving climate
Fascisms: then, and now? Arendt and The Origins of Totalitarianism
Re-reading Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism is something of a wake-up call. Some of the evidence from her book, makes for a chilling comparison with current political episodes.
Memory in Montréal: on (re)capturing Leonard Cohen
Memory can place us in time and space, can make us feel at home, it can transport us. In doing so memory can hide things we really should see.
The Force of Fiction
How do you relax at the end of a long day? Chances are you do something so commonplace to many of us that we seldom
Radical Philosophy: read the entire archive
Explore all the issues of Radical Philosophy featuring essays and interviews from many of the modern thinkers.
What is a University?
When medievals first spoke of university they were referring not so much to institutions as to people.
Eat green to save the environment, says IPCC – how to tell if that really means you
Governments need to do more to make sustainability possible; addressing climate change means also addressing inequality.
Three Thousand
In this short film, Inuk artist Asinnajaq plunges us into a sublime imaginary universe—14 minutes of luminescent, archive-inspired cinema that recast the present, past and future of her people in a radiant new light.
The Fruit Salad Maker: an interdisciplinary tale
There seems to be a lot of excitement about interdisciplinarity but are “the disciplines” ready to see beyond the primacy of their fields?
Philosophy and Kant
Towards the conclusion of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason he writes something that might come as a surprise.
Learning Online
Information is everywhere. Here’s our growing list of places that keep learning alive online.
Liberal Arts Education by and for Women
Liberal Arts Education owes much to a female mastermind.
Pale Blue Dot
Watch Carl Sagan deliver his now famous Pale Blue Dot speech for the very first time to a live audience.
Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’
According to Ubuntu philosophy, people are born without ‘ena’, or selfhood, and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time.
How is global warming heating up the Earth?
Is global warming heating up the Earth? A question from Raphael, aged 11, Auckland, New Zealand.
Is there a hierarchy to free speech?
Subjectivity UK presents a conversation that explores the consequences and complexities of free speech in the 21st century.
Colons and Semicolons
Grammar is recognised as one of the seven liberal arts. The School of Life offers a brief but fascinating explanation of the subtlety of the semicolon.
Time: The History & Future of Everything
Time makes sense in small pieces. But when you look at huge stretches of time, it’s almost impossible to wrap your head around things.
Learning and the Soul
In Plato’s Republic the allegory of the cave reveals that each of us has a unique capacity to learn.
Nietzsche on the Body
The body is a great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd.
Why are we here?
In 1977 a team of NASA scientists sent two spacecraft into the distant reaches of our universe.
On Inequality
What is the Origin of the Inequality among Mankind? Jean Jacques Rousseau’s now classic work, ask the question most powerfully.
Plato’s Apology
So persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth. Read one of Plato’s most powerful works.
We need a new Romanticism
Neuroscience was part of the dinner conversation in my family, often a prerequisite for truth. Want to talk about art? Not without neuroscience.
This is Water
This is Water is a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace on 21st May 2005 at Kenyon College.
Learning changes you
Higher education has now joined the growing list of subjects about which it is increasingly difficult to have an informed public argument.
Education: the two most important things.
Might it be said that the two most important things that education has to do contradict each other.
Most people don’t grow up – Maya Angelou
Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace
A powerful short film based on a speech by David Foster Wallace.