General Articles: Articles

Moral Relativism & Cultural Chauvinism

Members of different cultures with different values and beliefs come into frequent conflict, sometimes violent. Exploiter or entrepreneur? Murderer or martyr? “Great Satan” or “Great – Santa!” Gerald Lang asks if we can still pass judgment.
[Issue 36: June/July 2002]

Philosophy and the Panopticon

Surveillance cameras watch our every move. They reduce crime and maybe save lives. So why the fuss about privacy? Scott O’Reilly discusses the technologies of control.
[Issue 36: June/July 2002]

Cherchez la Femme?

Not in France’s Fortress Philosophy, says Jacqueline Swartz.
[Issue 35: March/April 2002]

The Uses and Abuses of Philosophical Biographies

Tim Madigan on the Lives of the Great Saints (not!).
[Issue 35: March/April 2002]

Can Philosophy Rescue the Art World?

When you cut up a work of art, do you destroy it or create lots of smaller works of art? Michael Philips investigates.
[Issue 35: March/April 2002]

A Womb of Words

Do babies drink in language with their mothers’ milk? Peter Benson surveys the startling semiotics of Julia Kristeva.
[Issue 34: December 2001 / January 2002]

The Problem of Dismissing Induction

The problem of induction, pointed out by David Hume, continues to baffle scientists and philosophers. Theo Clark explains why.
[Issue 34: December 2001 / January 2002]

The World as it is in Itself Revisited

Michael Philips thinks that intelligent aliens could help us sort out the problem of what we can know, by providing a useful new point of view.
[Issue 34: December 2001 / January 2002]

Only Joking?

Last year Laurence Goldstein stepped down from his post as head of the ever-turbulent Philosophy Department at the University of Wales Swansea, following a battery of allegations made by three of his colleagues and a complaint that he had told jokes ‘with sexual overtones’ at a departmental Christmas party. He, and other colleagues who left at the same time, were unwilling to continue working in a department where, for years, brutal hostility has prevailed. On the plus side, however, the experience did inspire him to write this article.
[Issue 34: December 2001 / January 2002]

The True Believer Revisited

Tim Madigan on September 11th and on a longshoreman who understood the psychology of mass movements.
[Issue 34: December 2001 / January 2002]

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