Philosophy Bites Daily

From Dictatorship to Democracy

Gene Sharp's little book on non-violent resistance and revolution, which has debts to both Machiavelli and Gandhi, is beautifully written. You can download it as a PDF here. Read more...

The Philosophical Novel

Literature deals with the mysterious, the ambiguous and the particular; philosophy aims at solving conceptual problems in  austere, unselfish, candid prose . That was Iris Murdoch's view (which perhaps reflects the Oxford philosophy she encountered rather than an essential feature of the subject). James Ryerson has interesting thoughts on this topic (though omits to mention J.M. Coetzee) Read more...

Death to Obfuscation

Words, sentences, paragraphs, stories: science writer Carl Zimmer's advice on good writing applies just as much to Philosophy as it does to science. Read more...