Does learning about the inconceivably large universe mean that we must doubt the significance of human life on this planet? Is there a way to account for the intuition that we are just a microscopic blip in the universe and avoid nihilism?
Do you think America is the greatest country in the world? Do you think other countries have bigger problems and worse institutions than ours? Could you never imagine moving to another country?
How will we eliminate racism from all facets of our society, from the institutions to the quotidian interactions? Ibram X Kendi suggests we take people who have been oppressed by racism and give them the positions of power.
Happy 114th birthday to Theodor Adorno, the influential founder of the Frankfurt School. His writings on culture, capitalism, and fascism are as timely as when they were written.
Do bosses operate like mini-monarchs of the workplace? In what ways does your boss have arbitrary, excessive power over your life? Why do we demand democracy in the political sphere, and yet give it up so quickly in the economic?
Suppose our goal is to reduce overall meat consumption. Would it be better to become a vegetarian, who eats no meat, or a flexitarian, who eats a little meat? A recent Aeon article by Alberto Giubilini makes the case for flexitarianism.
Whereas science has accumulated an enormous wealth of knowledge about the world, philosophy hasn’t produced conclusive answers to questions posed thousands of years ago. What’s the reason for this difference? Could it be that philosophy is just harder than science?
Video game use among young, lower skilled men has increased markedly in the past few decades. In general, the underemployment of this demographic has struck many as deeply worrying, foreshadowing changes in the future of work and creating a need for a universal basic income.
Why do we think it’s so important to assign a sex and gender to a baby at birth? Does it serve an important public policy or public health purpose, or does this practice more reflect our irrational need to classify people along these axes as quickly as possible?
Habermas has thought about the rise of a sort of authoritarian populism and the value of an inclusive and equal public sphere. On top of his intellectual pursuits, he has made a concerted effort to not to restrict his thoughts on democracy to the philosophy seminar room.
How did the standard 40 hours a week work schedule become so ubiquitous? Should we keep this standard or abandon it? Would we be more productive if we worked less? Does more time to reflect increase or decrease productivity?
How does censorship really work? And what are its effects? To what extent are ordinary citizens responsible for government censorship? Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei takes to The Stone to make his case.
Why do your musical tastes get frozen over in your twenties? What does this stagnation have to do with the evolution and historicization of music genres? Should we encourage ourselves to listen to new music past our 30s?
What would a world run by Eastern values look like? Would the world look meaningfully different under Eastern versus Western hegemony. Or would there just be different groups of people running roughly similarly structured institutions?
Do bigots have an equal right to free speech? Do the marginalized have the right to silence bigots? Is excluding certain voices the best way to fight against oppression and marginalization?
What are the merits of Robert Nozick’s libertarian, small-government philosophy? Why did Nozick move away from libertarianism as his views on philosophy changed? And what was his vision for the future of analytic philosophy?