Reviews

15 min read

"Inheriting the Poetry of Survival": Caleb Ward reviews "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Keywords: Poetry; Biography; Black Feminism)

"Something as insubstantial as a poetic image, if it touches on some truth or real feeling, can launch transformations."

Isabelle Laurenzi

20 min read

Reviews

"Reclaim or Let Go?": Isabelle Laurenzi reviews The Joy of Consent by Manon Garcia and The Feminist Killjoy Handbook by Sara Ahmed (Keywords: Desire; Feminism; Emancipation; Conceptual Engineering)

"If Ahmed’s sources of killjoy inspiration dislodge a reader’s sense of the most important feminist thinkers, all the better."

Jana Schmidt

10 min read

Reviews

"The Place of Hannah Arendt": Jana Schmidt reviews "We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience" by Lyndsey Stonebridge

"Politics is that activity which is seen most clearly by the one who has no place."

Deryn Thomas

15 min read

Reviews

"A Different Dream of Labour": Deryn Thomas reviews "Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living" by John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle (Keywords: Public Philosophy; Post-Work; Simone Weil; Hannah Arendt)

"The momentum of the pandemic has facilitated an important shift in the way many people think about wage labour, employment, and capitalism"

"Japanese Philosophy between Eurocentrism and World Philosophy": Leon Krings & Francesca Greco review "The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy" by Bret W. Davis (ed.)

Leon Krings and Francesca Greco

19 min read

Reviews

"Japanese Philosophy between Eurocentrism and World Philosophy": Leon Krings & Francesca Greco review "The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy" by Bret W. Davis (ed.)

"A philosophical argument can draw on a set of culturally specific ideas while also aiming at cross-cultural or universal insights."

Andy West

10 min read

Reviews

"The House Always Wins. Or Does It?" Andy West reviews The Idea of Prison Abolition by Tommie Shelby

"The abolitionist is calling for such a radical reform of society that we actually don’t know how humans will behave in that new future."

Nathan Oseroff-Spicer

15 min read

Reviews

"Everything You Love Has Gone Woke": Nathan Oseroff-Spicer reviews "Left Is Not Woke" by Susan Neiman

"Without clear descriptions, definitions, or examples of “woke”, it may seem Neiman is battling a series of straw-people."

"The Hegemony of Now": A Review of "Chronos: The West Confronts Time" by François Hartog

Daniel Woolf

12 min read

Reviews

"The Hegemony of Now": A Review of "Chronos: The West Confronts Time" by François Hartog

"As a species, we still glance at the future, but it is now through a foreboding mist of dread more than an aspirational cloud of hope."

Alexandre Leskanich

23 min read

Reviews

"On the Feeling of Some Essential Failure": Alexandre Leskanich Reviews "In Praise of Failure" by Costica Bradatan

"We can only ever become, at best, more perfect failures: failures who finally understand the failures they are."

Peter Wolfendale

36 min read

Reviews

"The Weight of Forever": Peter Wolfendale reviews "What We Owe the Future" by William MacAskill

"I don’t think we owe the future anything, strictly speaking, and this is why the future can be so exciting."

Helena de Bres

10 min read

Reviews

"Doing Philosophy While Doing Time": Helena de Bres reviews "The Life Inside" by Andy West

"I confess to persistent envy while reading The Life Inside about the urgency that philosophical questions have in West’s classrooms. "

Alexandre Leskanich

17 min read

Reviews

"An Excess of Reality": Alexandre Leskanich reviews "On the Future" by Martin Rees

"In possession of a historical consciousness that has never before been so excruciatingly heightened, we are bowed beneath its weight."

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes

13 min read

Reviews

"Psychedelics and the Limits of Naturalism": A Review by Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes

"One of the important contributions that psychedelics bring is to offer a person novel conceptualizations of reality."

Tim Crane

13 min read

Reviews

"Taking Simulation Seriously": Tim Crane reviews "Reality+" by David Chalmers (Keywords: Philosophy of Mind; Technology; Virtual Reality)

"The mere possibility that we might be living in a VR simulation is considered to be a reason to take it seriously as a theory of reality."

Eraldo Souza dos Santos

11 min read

Reviews

"Seeing Civil Disobedience Like a State": Eraldo Souza dos Santos reviews "Seeing Like a State" by Erin Pineda (Keywords: Political Philosophy; Liberalism; Activism)

"To see civil disobedience like an activist is to see civil disobedience as a decolonizing praxis."

Jason Blakely

11 min read

Reviews

"Rationality is Me": A Review by Jason Blakely (Keywords: Pinker; Social Science; Enlightenment)

"In Pinker’s tale the rational, technocratic, liberal middle is a kind of virtuous and beleaguered minority."

Leo Zaibert

48 min read

Reviews

"Embracing Retributivism": A Review by Leo Zaibert; Plus Response from Gregg D. Caruso

"A 'morality' that jettisons moral responsibility, and that affirms that no one is deserving of anything, strikes many as implausible."

Linsey McGoey

10 min read

Reviews

"Hopeful Ignorance": Linsey McGoey reviews A Passion for Ignorance by Renata Salecl

"It is not knowledge but rather ignorance that helps us to believe that new types of emancipation are someday possible."

Alexander Douglas

10 min read

Reviews

"The Rewilding of Philosophy": Alexander Douglas reviews "The Parmenidean Ascent" by Michael Della Rocca

"Distinctions can be made among things, but only from some or other arbitrary point of view."

David Livingstone Smith

14 min read

Reviews

"Are We Decent Deep Down?": David Livingstone Smith reviews "Humankind" by Rutger Bregman

"A large part of human nature is our capacity to use culture to engineer human nature itself, for good or for ill."

THE PHILOSOPHER

Published since 1923

THE PHILOSOPHER

Published since 1923

Official journal of the Philosophical Society of England (PSE), a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO). Registered UK Charity No. 1205921.

About Us

Donate

Current Issue

Contact

PRIVACY POLICY

GROUPS & CLASSES POLICY

SIGN UP TO OUR MAILING LIST: