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Originality and Artistic Impulse: From a Medieval Scottish Friar to Malevich’s Black Square
Read more: Originality and Artistic Impulse: From a Medieval Scottish Friar to Malevich’s Black SquareIs there any such thing as a new idea? Bryony Coombs discusses similarities in artistic expression, centuries apart.
Moving forward with Aristotle
by John M. Pemberton Is the world changing? When you cycle along on your bicycle, are you moving? If you ask the woman on the Clapham omnibus, then the answer will be an emphatic: ‘Yes, of course!’ However, many of…
A Sociologist and a Philosopher Attempt to Learn from COVID
Edward Avery-Natale, interviewed by Colin C. Smith My childhood friend Dr. Edward Avery-Natale is a professor of contemporary sociology, while I am a lecturer in ancient philosophy. Although Ed studies the modern world and I the ancient, we are often…
Aristotle and the Open Future
By Jason W. Carter How much do we know about the future? Some people think that we can know a lot about the future – even the distant future. We might now know, for instance, that a catastrophe caused by…
An Aristotelian Antidote? Scientific Explanation in Philosophy of Biology
By Anne Siebels Peterson Aristotle did not merely engage widely in natural science. He articulated the distinctive methods and principles that should guide one in seeking explanations of nature, and distinguished these methods and principles from those used in other…
Ancient reflections on tèchne: A lesson not learned?
By Stefano Maso The way we think and approach life nowadays is rooted in Greek and Latin antiquity. There is where the belief was born that man is able, with tèchne, to translate his will into practice. Tèchne – as…
Stoic advice on the coronavirus crisis
By Christopher Gill Many of the themes regularly used for life-guidance based on Stoic philosophy can help with responding to the current coronavirus crisis; here are a few suggestions. Drawing a clear distinction between what we can and cannot control,…
The wisdom of greed?
By Nicholas Baima Greed is clearly unjust, but is it foolish? In Book 1 of Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus defends the value of injustice by arguing that it is in one’s self-interest to be greedy. Justice, he argues, is nothing more…
God in Aristotle’s Ethics
By Tom Angier Does ethics need religion? Do we need to believe in God to be good? These are standard questions in moral philosophy. Strangely, however, they are not asked about (arguably) the greatest philosopher in the Western tradition: namely,…