Existential puppets: existential support

Alienated from the pleasures of work

Zan Boag interviewed Abhijeet Paul, coordinator of the ‘Labor, Philosophy, And Change’ working group at the University Of California, Berkeley. […]

13 questions: Mr John Clarke

1. The question you’d most like to ask others? What are you doing? 2. How free are you? I’ll be […]

J.S.Mill’s dedication to his wife Harriet: “On Liberty”

To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that […]

A property crisis: interview with Thomas Piketty

Power

“Over a certain wealth level, particularly if you are Bill Gates, if you have several dozen billion dollars, you know […]

The lost art of travel

We’re in perpetual motion; we can go anywhere, at any time, and the momentum builds. Before long, we’re planning another […]

Power

An antidote to prejudice

It was a time of deep divisions, much like our day. Hatred seemed intractable and the curse of bias rife, […]

Medicating the masses

In November of last year I took part in a public debate in London; the motion – which I proposed […]

Property’s principal corruption

In the lead-up to the general election in the UK this year, everyone was talking about property. In the crowded […]

Divorced from nature: interview with Jane Goodall

Environment

Dr Jane Goodall interviewed by New Philosopher’s editor Zan Boag in the ‘Nature‘ edition. Photo by Michael Neugebauer. Zan Boag: […]

Issue #14: nature

Death

Being mortal

Editor of New Philosopher Zan Boag interviews Hilde Lindemann, Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University and the former editor […]

Fixing the living to make a killing

Do you trust your doctor? Should you trust your doctor? A recent op-ed in The New York Times suggests that […]

Environment

The end of progress

David C. Wood is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy and Professor of European Studies at Vanderbilt University. Interview by […]

An app for an ailing planet

Environment

It is often said that the first full image of the ‘blue planet’, taken by the Apollo 17 space mission […]

Issue #06: progress

The call to your own true adventure

Think, for a moment, of who you are today, right now, reading this wherever you are – waiting in an […]

Are we getting smarter?

Your typical adult from 1900 was pretty dumb, by today’s standards. Yank one off the street and run them through […]

Does the future matter?

In Tino Sehgal’s installation of his artwork This Progress, each visitor walked into the bottom of The Guggenheim’s spiral rotunda […]

NP22 digital: Time

Money & Consumerism

Alternative hedonism

Imagine if we all wore the same clothes, lived in the same sort of house and drove the same sort […]

Human engineering

You know the situation is getting desperate when three bioethicists propose genetically modifying humans to reduce our environmental impact. In […]

Rat race to the afterlife

Death

So you’ve spent your life accumulating money – you’ve worked hard, invested wisely; every waking moment has been devoted to […]

Are we the barbarians?

The ancient Greeks invented a whole bunch of important stuff: democracy, tragedy, philosophy (if you ignore India and China, which […]

The fourth revolution

We live in amazing times. Digital media and the Internet have transformed how we exchange ideas, how we learn, how […]

Who are we behind closed doors?

In the midst of a nuclear war, an evacuation plane from England crash lands on a deserted, paradisiacal island in […]

Piketty: unequal selves

Thomas Piketty’s recent work Capital in the Twenty-First Century, provides disturbing evidence about the increasing inequality of income and wealth […]

Issue #09: property

The commercial self

It’s an ancient human law and it makes us do extraordinary things. Author Tom Wolfe calls it serial immortality; it’s […]

Death

Dying for your beliefs

Not all arguments are created equal. Many aren’t even arguments at all. Even utterances that appear to be advancing a […]

Do you really know yourself?

“Know thyself,” said the philosophers. No problem, said the rest of us. Self-help, self-esteem, self-fulfillment, inner self, outer self – […]

You are not who you think you are

You are not who you think you are. Philosophers, from the Buddha to David Hume to Derek Parfit, have been […]

Losing ourselves to technology

Millie’s vision became blurred and then she lost consciousness. Stressed and overworked, she took two weeks off, booked herself into […]

Invest in your masterpiece – yourself

Love yourself. Believe in yourself. And your dreams will come true. A few decades ago, psychologists began documenting the appearance […]

Factory Earth

The family is worried. Suggestions are passed between siblings, and aunts and uncles are eager to set things right. What […]

Society & Culture

Rush hour

Interview with Adam Magyar What prompted you to do the “stainless” series, as well as your earlier work “squares” and […]

Dirty thoughts on civilised leisure

By Damon Young “I work, God how I work… I have reduced it to a method and exalted it to […]

NP20 digital: Play

Work less, live more

Why do we work so much? Why do we even work at all? For a great chunk of human history […]

Prosperity paradox

Picture for a moment a world where technological innovation and industrial automation have finally brought us an era of unprecedented […]

Happiness is hard to find

I have been happy. I hope to be happy again. But I am yet to feel something I’d call “happiness”. […]

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Click here to subscribe now and receive New Philosopher quarterly print magazine delivered to your door. 132 ad-free pages to […]

Issue #19: life

Pleasure spots

By George Orwell Some months ago I cut out of a shiny magazine some paragraphs written by a female journalist […]

NP20 digital: Play

Society & Culture

The value of boycott

In July 1846, the American writer Henry David Thoreau went to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax. He […]

Superhero of the mind

To see a person taking in the wonders of the sky is a rare sight when all but a few […]

Issue #11: technology

The project of being alive

It’s not the first time that a movie has been shown to a vegetative audience but for some reason the […]

You are your life, and nothing else

Existentialist philosophers teach us that we alone are responsible for creating a meaningful life in an absurd and unfair world. […]

The ladder of true understanding

How well do you understand the world? Do you think you’ve got a good grasp of reality or not? Greek […]

Issue #10: fame

The Cartoon Philosopher: 13 questions with Michael Leunig

1. What is the biggest threat to our minds? Our minds. 2. What is freedom? Non-compliance and creativity. 3. What […]

The identity toolkit

Sum yourself up in a couple of words. Users of social media do it to introduce themselves online. “Surfer, father, […]

Achieving good work

If I were to ask people around the world what they admire, I am confident that high on the list […]

How are you smart?

The original scene: Paris, 1900‚ La Belle Epoque. The city fathers approached a talented psychologist named Alfred Binet with an […]

If I’m free, why can’t I do what I want?

By Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek I woke up my son Jan (9) for school, as I do every morning. He was […]

Cryptic crossword – issue#2:mind

Set by Gizmogenes Across 1 Take to be hypothetical (8) 5 Perhaps Carol’s volte-face is secret knowledge (6) […]

8 questions: Genís Carreras

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Genís Carreras, a Spanish graphic designer based in London, produced the acclaimed “Philographics” series. 1. What prompted […]

Freedom of thought: the media and propaganda

Please answer True or False: 1. During World War I, the Germans ran a factory to boil down the battlefield […]

The dizziness of freedom

The path laid out for Australian-born Tim Cope was to go to university, get a job, a career, a house […]

Can We Increase Gross National Happiness?

The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is known internationally for two things: high visa fees, which reduce the influx of […]

Our surveillance society

In the perfect prison, I am bathed in light. I don’t languish in the dark – I am put to […]

The Splendid Mess of Personal Identity

Think of the earliest memory you have. For me, it’s looking at the sea through a glass door at about […]

Are we free? 6 philosophers’ views

THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM IN ITS MYRIAD FORMS – BE IT FREE WILL, FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, PHYSICAL OR PERSONAL FREEDOM […]

Bringing thinkers into focus: Steve Pyke

It’s a dismal affair when the faces of people we don’t wish to remember – such as modern-day celebrities – […]

5 Ideas: Is there a solid core that makes you you?

Ideas are powerful things. Even a little one can change the way you look at the world. And the big […]

Shorts: why do it in prison?

“Why do it in prison? Well, why do it anywhere? I do it in prison because I was asked, and […]

Shorts: Epictetus and external events

Think about what usually makes you angry, frustrated, anxious; most likely it has something to do with external events that […]

The news – why do we subject ourselves to it?

Every night at 6.00 pm, I want you to sit in a room for half an hour. During that time […]

Game theory

We sometimes joke about the world conspiring against us. For instance, I might suggest that it will rain today because […]

NP20 digital: Play

A work out for the mind

Have you ever wondered why conversations with some people leave you feeling depleted while with others you feel liberated and […]

The unexamined life is not worth living

I have long been intrigued by the claim, attributed to Socrates, that the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’. For […]

On Shadows and Realities in Education (Plato’s Cave)

The Republic, Plato, Book VII AND now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is […]

Of the things which are in our Power, and not in our Power

EPICTETUS: The Discourses Book One, Chapter 1 Of all the faculties, you will find not one which is capable of […]

The question is: society defended against whom? Or what?

Opinion

Following my recent work on the possibilities of radical democracy, but most of all, in light of the historical demand […]

Is there a cafe philo near you?

Following in the footsteps of Marc Sautet’s café philosophique – which was set up in 1992 and is widely credited […]

Philosophy under attack

I really shouldn’t let myself watch Q&A. Don’t get me wrong, the ABC’s flagship weekly panel show is usually compelling […]

I should be so lucky

Bailed after what he claimed was the accidental gunshot homicide of his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer (“Come on, Bill, let’s […]

Get a life!

“Life,” the American journalist and author Elbert Hubbard once quipped, “is just one damned thing after another.” Like many of […]

Ends and beginnings

In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or […]