Jean-Luc Nancy and Paragraph

By Peggy Kamuf In tribute to Jean-Luc Nancy, whose death was announced in August, Peggy Kamuf looks back on a landmark special issue of Paragraph (‘On the Work of Jean-Luc Nancy’, Paragraph, Vol. 16, Issue 2) which she edited in…

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The dignity of pointing

by Hilan Bensusan Pointing is a thoroughly situated activity. One points at what is somehow around – even when one needs complex language devices for the exercise. Maybe because thinking often aims to be indifferent to where one is, pointing…

Remembering Sarah Kofman in the 2020s?

By Jacob Bates-Firth Sarah Kofman and the Relief of Philosophy (ed. Bates-Firth and McKeane) is out now as a special issue of Paragraph, 44:1 (March 2021) and concurrently in book form with Edinburgh University Press. Backdrop When John and I began to…

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…

The myth of the selfless philosopher

By Enrico Galvagni There is a myth that spans the history of western thought: the myth of the selfless philosopher. True philosophers, the myth says, are ethereal creatures who dropped every trace of pride, egoism, and vainglory to devote their…

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…

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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,…