Issues
Issue 32: June/July 2001
EDITORIAL
Now We Are Ten!
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: June/July 2001
The Boys from St. Barnabas • Dutch opt for death on demand • Aristotle makes guest appearance in Dhaka • Chocolate shakes theory • Church warms to philosophy
EXISTENTIALISM
Becoming a Philosopher
Jonathan Rée on Søren Kierkegaard and the struggle to become a real thinker.
Existentialism
An introduction to our existential special issue by Anja Steinbauer.
Existentialism & Literature
More than any other recent philosophical movement, the existentialists communicated their ideas through plays, novels and short stories. Peter Rickman asks: why did existentialism resort to literary expression?
Heidegger, Metaphysics & Wheelbarrows
Richard Oxenberg gives a poetic introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time.
Imagination & Creativity in Jean-Paul Sartre
Understanding the imagination was central to Sartre’s attempts to understand what it is to be human, and how we should live. Maria Antonietta Perna thinks he had important insights which are still worth considering.
Rodents to Freedom
Matthew Coniam says that Groundhog Day explains existentialism more entertainingly than Sartre.
The Forgotten Existentialist
Matthew Coniam on Colin Wilson.
ARTICLES
Dan Dennett and my Quantum Proposition
Stephen Szanto on trying to combine the views of Roger Penrose and Dan Dennett on consciousness by what he calls his own modest proposition.
Design, Yes. Intelligent, No.
Were we designed by an intelligent creator? In our last issue Todd Moody described Intelligent Design theory as a scientific alternative to Darwinian evolution. Here, Massimo Pigliucci takes a more critical view of ‘ID’.
Moral Luck and Moral Theory
Michael Philips asks whether you have to be lucky in order to be good.
On Having One Too Many
Les Reid on the insights the demon drink can provide into the philosophy of mind.
INTERVIEWS
Donald Davidson
Donald Davidson’s theories about mind and language have been incredibly influential in shaping modern analytic philosophy. Giancarlo Marchetti recently asked him about his life and his ideas.
Hans Saner
Hans Saner is both an original thinker and a link to the great days of existentialism. Filiz Peach asked him about his relationship with Karl Jaspers, and about the future of philosophy.
LETTERS
Bombing Baghdad
On 16th February, it was widely reported that American and British planes had bombed a suburb of Baghdad, causing a number of civilian deaths. In our last issue we invited readers to say what they thought about the incident.
Letters
Electronics Explained • Virtue and the Value of Life • Dismissing Christianity? • Plato’s Ladder of Food • Singer Hits Right Note • Enquiry Not Certainty • Australian philosophers migrating • Hacking the Illusions • We’re All Desperately Wicked • Mysterious Designs • The Death Penalty
COLUMNS
Dear Socrates
Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.
The Right Way to Make a Left Turn
by Joel Marks
REVIEWS
Logic and its Limits by Patrick Shaw
Edward Ingram enjoys a surprisingly lively introduction to logic by Patrick Shaw.
Towards the Definition of Philosophy by Martin Heidegger
Roger Caldwell reads some never-before translated lectures by an ambitious young Martin Heidegger.
The Truman Show
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.
FICTION
Major Change
A short story by Michael Wreen, with apologies to Raymond Chandler.