Philosophy Bites Daily

Who was Socrates?

Did Socrates' anti-democratic teaching hand out knives to madmen like Alcibiades and Critias? Should Socrates have taken more responsibility for the effect of his words? Read more...

Rethinking the Other

Can we get beyond 'us and them' and embrace a healthy cosmopolitanism? Although they weren't exactly 'Obamas in togas', perhaps the experience of the Ancients can teach us something. Read more...

Bernard Williams Remembered by Martha Nussbaum

Bernard Williams was brilliant, sometimes elliptical, never quite at home in British philosophy. Martha Nussbaum's 2003 essay, which focuses on his contributions to ethics, combines astute critical analysis with autobiography. Read more...

Examined Lives

Socrates famously declared that the unexamined life was not worth living for a human being. Most philosophers have concluded that the examined life is better, though that doesn't necessarily follow, as their lives perhaps reveal. Read more...

Addiction, Choice and Aristotle

Addiction implies loss of voluntary control, yet the first steps to becoming an addict are almost always voluntary. Aristotle's discussion of the voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary aspects of behaviour may have something to offer present day investigators of addiction. Read more...