Philosophy Bites Daily

Cultural Pluralism

Bhikhu Parekh suggests that reason is culturally embedded. Read more...

Kwame Anthony Appiah on Stamping Out Evil

Footbinding, dueling, and the Atlantic slave trade have more or less died out. Why is this? Read more...

Squashed Hedgehog

Simon Blackburn leaves Ronald Dworkin's new book, Justice for Hedgehogs, curled up in a ball and probably a bit prickly. Read more...

On Clarity about Morality

Peter Beattie sorts out what is clear and what is obscure in Massimo Pigliucci's account of Sam Harris's recent book about morality. Read more...

Alexander McCall Smith on Forgiveness

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...

Are Ethicists Courteous?

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...

Kant or Rant?

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...

Philosophers Do It Because They Can't Help It

Feet of clay, perhaps, but accusing some philosophers of hypocrisy won't stop them philosophizing. Read more...

Avoiding the Implications of Just War Theory

President Obama knows all about just war theory, but is he, perhaps, avoiding the consequence of defining U.S. actions in terms of it? Read more...

Should you let the goatherds go?

Michael Sandel explores a real moral dilemma with cadets at a military academy. 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...

Ronald Dworkin Asks 'What Is A Good Life?'

Ronald Dworkin thinks that living well isn't about the end result. It's the spontaneity, style, authenticitiy, and daring that we value. Read more...

The Moral Psychology of War

Nancy Sherman explores the moral anguish of soldiers and the psychological consequences of stoicism. Read more...

Montaigne, Sympathy and Proximity

Montaigne had intuitive insights that are consistent with recent neuroscience, or so it seems. Read more...

Michael Sandel on Justice

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...

How to Live, But Not Necessarily How To Live Well

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...

Eugenics and Liberty

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...

On Forgiveness

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...

Sam Harris' Moral Landscape

Sam Harris'manifesto for a scientific secular morality is a curate's egg. 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...