Philosophy Now Forum

Deeper yet. Could it be that those Greeks with their aisthetikos (in their unrefined way) were just interested in sense perception - before Kant pinched the word and put them right?

I didn't need pejazzling but I now have lovely fingernails.

During a recent contemplative stroll I passed a small frontage advertising Juliette: Licensed Aesthetician . I entered, hoping to encounter a scholar of philosophy but was disappointed. 'Aesthetics' on the high street apparently is to do with 'beauty' on the high street. I did get a cup pf tea thoug...

Brings to mind Montaigne's 'small back room' but perhaps his writing was insufficiently technical to have him considered a philosopher?

John Creigan considers whether hope helps us thrive or holds us back. https://philosophynow.org/issues/167/Hope_Blessing_or_Curse John Creigan usefully tells us that "hope" is etymologically connected to "hop", and I think he does a fair amount of hopping about. I think it would...

Points taken.

Thanks for the offer of introductions but I feel this would only add to my suffering.

I fully agree with this. I chose philosophy as one of my A-level subjects at school, and it was all pretty dry. There's a very similar argument made about the difference between academic history and popular history, and, indeed, with archaeology too. I'm sure it must be the case with pretty much an...

Thanks for interesting response which has considered carefully my and our points. Many important words are 'semantically overloaded' which is why context is so important, and lifting from one to another requires caution. An adequate biological understanding of life may refer to an organism that has ...

I the April/May 2025 edition of the magazine, academic philosopher Artur Szutta at the University of Gdansk reviews Inner Space Philosophy by another academic philosopher, James Tartaglia at the University of Keele. The latter, the reviewer writes, bemoans the detailed and highly technical tone of m...

Semi-articulations of your synthesis is, e.g. Spinoza ( conatus ), Bergson( elan vital ) and Schopenhauer ( Will ). All three make sharply divergent claims. I think it is important to be as precise as possible about what you mean by 'Life'. Routinely, it is accepted by philosophers and scientists th...

Yeah. That would make the philosophy of religion the attempt to humanize (make understandable to humans) the religious environments in which humans exist...? Though I guess saying what something 'is', putting it in a categorical box, may not tell the whole story. Language can be fun, especially when...

As an answer to the last question in my post, yes. Neat. I wonder, though, if a similarly neat answer to the question 'What is philosophy?' as 'that which includes all categories of philosophy such as those on this Forum' perhaps is only a partial answer. ( As an aside, at least some philosophy seem...

Philosophy does not ignore its 'children' which were born of it. So, for instance it may consider psychological or sociological approached to religion. But how does the 'philosophy of religion' relate to its own major explorations? Clearly, ontology and epistemology are important. So too, taking Kie...

Well, I think he, like many philosophers, thinks Ethics can be (or, more insistently, should be) a help to a person's negotiating their own moral life. I agree with him on this. I don't think that contradicts what I was trying to say. It is possible that some would disagree - with him, you, me - on ...

Not to comment directly on any possibly implied branching enterprises, I think it may be good tentatively to hold to the idea that Ethics is a philosophical umbrella term signifying myriad enterprises. I think that often it is good to clearly distinguish between that major area of philosophy called ...