Author: Philosophy Talk

Along with Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch was one of the “Oxford Quartet” of moral…

You’ve probably heard of the infamous Trolley Problem (we devoted a whole episode to it back in…

It’s that time of year again, when all eyes turn to Hollywood as the Academy…

Jorge Luís Borges is one of our favorite literary authors of all time—and one of…

Is there anything computers can’t do—or at least won’t be able to do at some…

Elizabeth Anscombe was a hugely important 20th-century philosopher who worked on many topics: history, metaphysics,…

How much can we know about Mayan Mythology? Much of the Mayan way of life,…

Is there anything that makes human beings special? You might think language does: it’s pretty unlikely that…

Emma Goldman is a fascinating—and controversial—figure. She lived in my places: from Lithuania and Latvia to New York, London, Berlin, Spain, not to mention the Soviet Union, where she was deported in 1919. J. Edgar Hoover called her “one of the most dangerous anarchists in America.”

Simone Weil was an early 20th-century French philosopher who was born into a Jewish family but later adopted a mystical form of Christianity. She had many strong views, but she often practiced what she preached.

Anna Julia Cooper was born into slavery but became only the fourth African-American in history to earn a PhD. She lived into the 1960s, witnessing Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement. Her book “A Voice from the South” influenced later thinkers like Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Did Karl Marx hate morality? He called morality a bourgeois prejudice, a way to trick workers into being docile drones instead of rebelling against the system. And yet at other times Marx sounds like very much the moralist.

Planning your trip home. Imagining what you’ll do if there’s traffic. Remembering the lyrics to…

Many people know Hildegard of Bingen for her musical compositions, which were really innovative for the 12th century and are still being performed today. In fact in the 1990s, an electronic version of them by Richard Souther even reached number one in the charts.

When we think of people who speak on behalf of us, we usually think of someone elected or appointed to do so: a congressperson, a senator, maybe even a department chair. But what about people who aren’t elected or officially appointed?

Nísia Floresta is often called “the Brazilian Mary Wollstonecraft” because people thought her first book was a translation of Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women.” She does have some things in common with Wollstonecraft, especially with regard to women’s rights.