In this opening essay of our recent issue on Violence, Brad Evans argues that "violence of disappearance" is the most extreme and visible form state sovereignty and power takes in contemporary times. This kind of violence often translates into the literal removal and destruction of actual human bodies, irrespective of age and gender, but always only those belonging to particular races, ethnicities or ideologies, by means of genocide, abductions, forced migrations and (un)civi

"Philosophical theorizing is made for human beings, and it should fit human beings, and not the other way around."

"My brother, Sashka, ran away from home when he was fifteen. It is not quite right to say he ran away from home; our home deserted us."

"Publishing is a nearly limitless act that has the potential to build communities, expand minds, and offer new perspectives."

"What defines the human on which the “we” of this nation was (truly) founded?"

We may think of animals as having moral value. But, because they are property, they don’t have moral value. They are just thing."

"Han implies that philosophy is not for professional philosophers but for everyone, so that we can better understand our exhausting times."

"For restorative justice to work, the perpetrators’ delusions, entitlement, rationalizations, and smearing of victims must stop."

"What sort of selves do literary works create? More broadly still, what kinds of selves does any manner of artwork create?"

"The more we affect and are affected by others, the more we can perceive and understand the plurality of other human lives and experiences."

"Comedic happiness, initiated through surprise and propelled by laughter, must constitute an act of subversion."

"Our habitual ways of speaking and thinking can seem inadequate to the task of expressing the reality of being human."

"Absurdity, most generally, consists in a disparity between our expectations or pretentions and reality."

"Trust has value in itself because it is an expression of our agency, even of what we might call our personhood."

"I want to be able to condemn the structural conditions of my exploitation without condemning the person I ended up becoming as a result."

"if philosophical pessimism is to be seen as something more than a 'mere' temperament or attitude, what might this be?"

"We can perhaps summarise the philosophical problem of contemporary punishment outlined above as: it doesn’t work, and yet we need it."

"Home is our anchor point within reality which gives us orientation and allows us to set out in new directions."

"The emphasis on immediate economic returns overlooks the long-term societal benefits of a populace well-versed in philosophical reasoning"

"The dialectical link between our scholarly and civic activities implies that the future of public philosophy lies in the universities."