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 ...

Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson argue that artificial moral enhancement is now essential if humanity is to avoid catastrophe. For the vast majority of our 150,000 years or so on the planet, we ...

John R. Lenz tells us why Russell thought philosophy worthwhile. Bertrand Russell did a disservice to philosophy by defining the word. Early in his career he defined philosophy as the logical-analytic ...

Van Harvey reflects on Huxley’s and Clifford’s reasons for not believing. In the struggle against obscurantism and the appeal to blind faith that was rampant in Victorian culture, it would be ...

Chris Wright ponders Plato’s masterplan. One of the purposes of Plato’s Republic is to put forth a conception of the ‘just state’. Plato describes how such a state would be organized, who would govern ...

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 ...

Have you ever wondered whether everyone talks about you behind your back? Whether they are all keeping something from you? John McGuire discusses the Cartesian nightmare that is The Truman Show. Every ...

Stephen Anderson asks what we mean when we ask if existence has a meaning. In their 1983 film The Meaning of Life, Monty Python took their departing shot at the movie-going public, and simultaneously ...

Michael Faust reviews this film in the light of eternity. Is Groundhog Day one of the great philosophical movies? Viewed on the most trivial level it’s just another Hollywood rom-com, but on closer ...

Ching-Hung Woo looks at the many facets of Albert Einstein’s approach to ethics. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) regarded morality as indispensable to the survival of humanity, and he devoted considerable ...

What is it to be rational? An individual appears to be rational, rational being his actions. But what does it mean to act in a rational way? Let us turn to the notion of rationality as a ...

Noson Yanofsky tells us how to deal with contradictions and the limitations of reason that arise from them. We all have conflicting desires. We want to get promoted, but don’t want to work too hard.