The novelist Alexander McCall Smith, a former professor of medical law, suggests that forgiveness of the right kind and at the right time can be an important social emollient. Read more...
Preliminary experimental evidence has produced some unsurprising yet amusing results concerning ethicists' behaviour. It's a long-running professional joke that those who study it are often the least well-behaved. Or is this paper a parody? Read more...
Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly believe that nihilism has bottomed out and that philosophy can restore a sense of wonder, gratitude etc.. But are they right? Read more...
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...
Who should get the best flutes? Michael Sandel discusses Jeremy Bentham, Immanuel Kant, and Aristotle in this interview about justice transcribed from the Philosophy Bites podcast. Read more...
Have philosophers lived well? Mostly not. What does that show? That living the examined life is harder and less potentially rewarding for most than it was for Socrates? Sarah Bakewell, author of a recent book about Montaigne, examines Examined Lives. Read more...
Julian Savulescu argues that choosing the eye and hair colour of your baby is not eugenics, whereas choosing healthy rather than diseased embryos is. He's for free parental choice using genetic testing provided the child will have a life worth living. Read more...
Forgiveness is not simply about lightening the burden of toxic resentment: it expresses fundamental moral ideas. Does that mean 'unforgiveable' is an oxymoron? Read more...
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...