An essay marks the 50th anniversary of Hermann Levin Goldschmidt’s Freiheit für den Widerspruch, using a Grimms’ tale to illustrate his dialogic approach to contradiction. It describes a Berlin cemetery’s community gardens and a medical emergency during a Zurich concert.
Ken Burns writes in The New York Times that the United States confronts a fourth great crisis as voters cast midterm ballots, following the Civil War and the Depression and World War II. He attributes it to misinformation he says the current administration encourages, leaving elections doubted, the top court seemingly compromised and democratic guardrails strained.
Wichita State University administrators decided to stop offering a philosophy major, with the program set to end in July 2027 while current majors can finish. The bachelor's program had been placed on a Kansas Board of Regents action plan in 2024 over enrollment and degree-production requirements.
The essay calls 'civic grief' the mourning when faith in fellow citizens and democratic norms erodes, describing denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance as responses. It cites Freedom House's 2026 report finding global freedom declined for a 20th straight year in 2025, worsening in 54 countries and improving in 35.
Two philosophers argue that what distinguishes religious belief is not its content but the attitude involved: religious credence is voluntarily adopted and largely resistant to evidence, unlike involuntary, evidence-driven factual belief. They contend this psychological contrast helps justify Jefferson's separation of church and state.
Marie Snyder reviews Alexander Douglas’s Against Identity, which draws on Zhuangzi, Spinoza and Girard to argue against a fixed, self-invented identity. She outlines how imitation and borrowed models shape desire, and suggests accepting a fluid self may reduce rivalry.
Graham Clay and Caleb Ontiveros are building Pensatura, an AI system meant to deliver rigorous philosophical analysis fast enough for consequential decisions. Its working prototype coordinates arguments, uses Lean to check formalized reasoning, and includes probabilistic assessment, starting with AI research questions.
An essay argues that psychology's influential 'empty self' metaphor, which casts behaviour as driven by fleeting situational cues, has been weakened by the replication crisis. The authors contend that personality traits and an enduring self predict behaviour about as strongly as situations do.
The essay traces Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's 1809 theory that living things drive their own changes and shape their surroundings, an idea ridiculed for two centuries yet influential on Darwin. It notes that some modern biologists are returning to Lamarck's emphasis on organisms' creative role in evolution.
The essay argues that zero cannot be separated from the signs and systems used to handle absence, tracing three formulations: the Arabic numeral, Leibniz's binary system, and Hollerith punched cards. It frames abstraction as rooted in material techniques rather than pure ideality.
Lei Wang reflects on moving from transcendence and nondual awakening toward ordinary emotional life, including therapy, somatic inquiry, and self-help’s contradictions. She argues both needing and not needing to heal can be true, suggesting ego dilution rather than ego dissolution.
Simon Blackburn reviews a large new volume on Bernard Williams, noting the continuing stream of books since his 2003 death. He credits the breadth of Williams's work and his engaging, agile style, while observing that Williams resists easy classification under any philosophical 'ism'.
A University of Kentucky research administrator, David Durman, obtained a Title VII religious accommodation exempting him from using AI at work, citing his Humanist convictions about moral responsibility and human flourishing, with help from the American Humanist Association.
A review-essay on Gil Duran's The Nerd Reich that critiques Silicon Valley's libertarian "network state" vision. It argues such enclaves would serve a cognitive elite, breed conflict and alienation, and reflect loneliness that Arendt linked to totalitarianism.
The essay defends the dilettante against the dictionary view of a shallow amateur, arguing that a wide-ranging, delight-driven pursuit of many interests is a mode of abundance. Drawing on Goethe and Schiller's 1799 essay, it presents dilettantism as a freedom from specialisation and meritocratic pressure.
Philosopher Felix Lambrecht argues that "group wrongs" such as slurs or hate crimes wrong every member of the targeted group, not only the direct victim. The claim rests on such acts constituting social inequality and violating obligations owed within a society, with the disadvantaged group wronged to a greater degree.
A philosophy applicant who faced over 20 rejections argues that culture and philosophers overvalue perseverance, and that quitting has exploratory value because failure reveals one's talents, limits and real passions. He draws on Sarasvathy, Schmidtz, Nozick and Descartes.
Robert Jensen argues that economics, political science, sociology and similar fields cannot be sciences in the way physics is, because human societies are too complex and ethically off-limits for controlled experiments. He holds that they can still reveal useful patterns in human behavior if researchers acknowledge their embedded values and judgments.
A former physics student recounts being fired from his first consulting job in 2001 and uses the episode to examine physics as a way of thinking. He weighs reductionism against treating physics as a framework for navigating chaotic systems, alongside the subject's declining uptake in England and its use by Musk, Cummings and Munger.
A philosophy PhD candidate argues that students cannot properly cite common chatbots, since their training sources are opaque and effectively plagiaristic, which clashes with academic integrity. He favors norms against chatbot use, citing cognitive offloading effects on students.
