The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's ZoneĀ is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
Historians are commonly thought of as being a little like archaeologists or scientists - they're in the business of uncovering facts, and then presenting those facts to the public as accurately as possible. But this week we're considering history as a species of narrative, and the historian as someone who doesn't "discover" the meaning of the past but constructs it.
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Summer season: Libertarianism and freedom
Libertarians are hard to pin down ā they have a number of seemingly contradictory commitments that we normally associate with people on either the left or the right of politics. Libertarians like small government, low taxes and free markets ā but they also favour things like same-sex marriage and drug legalisation. So what exactly is libertarianism, and where did it come from?
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Summer season: What is swearing?
What exactly is it about swearing that gives it its offensive power? None of the standard philosophy-of-language explanations really gets to the bottom of why we swear, why we don't, and what we're doing when we use "obscene" language. This week, the author of a very sweary philosophy book offers some thoughts.
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Summer season: How philosophy fell in love with language
Around the beginning of the 20th century, philosophy began to takeĀ what's come to be known as "the linguistic turn". All major philosophical questions, it was argued, were really questions about language, and this conviction would dominate philosophical discourse for the next century. But are philosophers now starting to turn away from the linguistic turn? And what might be coming next?
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Summer season: Music, taste and AI
When you think about the music you like (or don't like), what does it tell you about your taste? Do you think you have good taste? And if you do, why? What is it about music that determines good or bad taste, and is it possible to cultivate the former?
The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's ZoneĀ is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
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