Ralph Blumenau tells us what great thinkers said about great music. Today some universities have courses in the Philosophy of Music. They study such questions as: What is the definition of music? What ...

Emrys Westacott asks a probing question. Imagine that right after briefing Adam about which fruit was allowed and which forbidden, God had installed a closed-circuit television camera in the garden of ...

Why do some physicists now believe that there are many parallel universes very like our own? And if there are, how will this help us build faster computers? Quantum mechanics was developed in the ...

Jesse Prinz argues that the source of our moral inclinations is merely cultural. Suppose you have a moral disagreement with someone, for example, a disagreement about whether it is okay to live in a ...

Van Harvey on the metaphysical aspects of an anti-metaphysical philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche shared at least one fundamental concern with the religions and metaphysical systems that he so criticized ...

Gisle Tangenes describes the life and ideas of a cheerfully pessimistic, mountain-climbing Norwegian existentialist. “This world,” mused Horace Walpole, “is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to ...

Fred Leavitt reveals how the whiteness of swans proves the blackness of ravens. Many scientific theories and laws are of the form “All A is B.” Two examples are “Water at sea level boils at 100 ...

Alan Kirby says postmodernism is dead and buried. In its place comes a new paradigm of authority and knowledge formed under the pressure of new technologies and contemporary social forces. I have in ...

Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil. If Hollywood genre movies can be depended upon to deliver one thing, it is a good hero pitted against an evil foe. Simplistic though ...

Imadaldin Al-Jubouri on the medieval Islamic philosopher who pioneered the scientific understanding of history. Some consider the Italian philosopher Vico (1668-1744) to have been the founder of ...

Michael Rockler compares two ethics of statemanship for two American presidents. United States presidents, beginning with George Washington in his policy regarding the French Revolution, right up to ...

The first English version of a classic essay by Peter Wessel Zapffe, originally published in Janus #9, 1933. Translated from the Norwegian by Gisle R. Tangenes. One night in long bygone times, man ...