The use and abuse of antiquity for life
Ryan J. Johnson examines the journey that brought him and his co-editors to Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Practice.
Reconceiving ‘Wellbeing’ in AI Governance: Prosperity without Autonomy?
by Theodore Scaltsas We are all accustomed to thinking of wellbeing in Aristotelian terms, assuming the agent’s choice (proairesis) for the preferences and actions that constitute their wellbeing. The agent chooses what is good for them and performs the relevant…
Plato on how to describe the changing world
by Takeshi Nakamura From time to time throughout his dialogues, Plato complains how difficult it is to capture the transient natural world with inert language (e.g., the Theaetetus and the Cratylus). After all, the world in flux changes as you…
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…
Understanding Stoicism with Deleuze: Laughter and Perversion
by Ryan J. Johnson Stoicism seems to be everywhere these days – bestseller lists, email blasts, social media posts, corporate training sessions. Stoicism seems just another self-help trend. But I think they all get it wrong. Stoicism is strange, very…
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…