Ideas to change your life Eternity projects By Marina Benjamin When the British Museum in London was in the process of acquiring its spectacular wave-form roof in […] Issue #025: Death
Ideas to change your life The obsolete human being By William Watkin Now Take one last look at your smartphone. You probably regard it as the cutting edge […] Issue #15: the future
Environment Humans of the Anthropocene By Roy Scranton. You can walk to the beach from where we are staying. It’s a long peel of dun-coloured […] Issue #23: being human
Illusions Human trafficking By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore A man walks into a mall. His eyes scan the crowds. Finally, he spots what he’s looking […] Issue #23: being human
Ideas to change your life Doing away with death By Allison Arieff Consider this fact of modern life: nearly all of the technological products that we buy and use […] Issue #23: being human
Illusions Caught in the web By Antonia Case “Can anyone doubt today that all the millions of individuals and all the innumerable types and […] Issue #23: being human
Ideas to change your life The ethics of political power “From this we learn that a wise prince sees to it that never, in order to attack someone, does he […] Issue #21: power
Society & Culture How power corrupts Zan Boag: Have you arrived at your own definition of power? Keith Dowding: No, I don’t really have one, actually, […] Issue #21: power
Society & Culture A property crisis: interview with Thomas Piketty “Over a certain wealth level, particularly if you are Bill Gates, if you have several dozen billion dollars, you know […] Issue #09: property
Philosophy and you 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 […] Issue #08: travel
Environment A new human era Earth has lost half of its wild animals in the last forty years. What does it mean to be philosophical […] Issue #14: nature
Society & Culture An antidote to prejudice It was a time of deep divisions, much like our day. Hatred seemed intractable and the curse of bias rife, […] Issue #17: communication
Money & Consumerism Medicating the masses In November of last year I took part in a public debate in London; the motion – which I proposed […] Issue #07: health
Illusions 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 […] Issue #09: property
Environment Divorced from nature: interview with Jane Goodall Dr Jane Goodall interviewed by New Philosopher’s editor Zan Boag in the ‘Nature‘ edition. Photo by Michael Neugebauer. Zan Boag: […] Issue #14: nature
Ideas to change your life Being mortal Editor of New Philosopher Zan Boag interviews Hilde Lindemann, Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University and the former editor […] Issue #07: health
Ideas to change your life 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 […] Issue #07: health
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 […] Issue #06: progress
Environment An app for an ailing planet It is often said that the first full image of the ‘blue planet’, taken by the Apollo 17 space mission […] Issue #06: progress
Philosophy and you 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 […] Issue #06: progress
Philosophy and you 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 […] Issue #15: the future
Money & Consumerism Alternative hedonism Imagine if we all wore the same clothes, lived in the same sort of house and drove the same sort […] Issue #06: progress
Philosophy and you Human engineering You know the situation is getting desperate when three bioethicists propose genetically modifying humans to reduce our environmental impact. In […] Issue #06: progress
Ideas to change your life Rat race to the afterlife So you’ve spent your life accumulating money – you’ve worked hard, invested wisely; every waking moment has been devoted to […] Issue #06: progress
Ideas to change your life Are we the barbarians? The ancient Greeks invented a whole bunch of important stuff: democracy, tragedy, philosophy (if you ignore India and China, which […] Issue #06: progress
Ideas to change your life The fourth revolution We live in amazing times. Digital media and the Internet have transformed how we exchange ideas, how we learn, how […] Issue #06: progress
Philosophy and you 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 […] Issue #10: fame
Philosophy and you 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
Philosophy and you Getting high on search A friend of mine recently sat in a waiting room in Singapore. The room was only large enough to hold […]
Philosophy and you 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 […]
Philosophy and you 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 […]
Philosophy and you 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 – […]
Ideas to change your life 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 […]
Ideas to change your life 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 […]
Ideas to change your life Which mask is yours? I once had an introverted student who painted his fingernails black and doodled lines from Marilyn Manson songs in his […]
Happiness 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 […]
Ideas to change your life Factory Earth The family is worried. Suggestions are passed between siblings, and aunts and uncles are eager to set things right. What […] Issue #04: work
Society & Culture Rush hour Interview with Adam Magyar What prompted you to do the “stainless” series, as well as your earlier work “squares” and […] Issue #04: work
Ideas to change your life Work less, live more Why do we work so much? Why do we even work at all? For a great chunk of human history […] Issue #04: work
Ideas to change your life Prosperity paradox Picture for a moment a world where technological innovation and industrial automation have finally brought us an era of unprecedented […] Issue #04: work
Philosophy and you Subscribe now Click here to subscribe now and receive New Philosopher quarterly print magazine delivered to your door. 132 ad-free pages to […] Issue #19: life
Happiness Pleasure spots2 Some months ago I cut out of a shiny magazine some paragraphs written by a female journalist and describing the […]
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 […]
Illusions 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
Literature & Writing 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 […]
Society & Culture 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 […]
Philosophy and you 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. […]
Ideas to change your life 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
Literature & Writing 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 […]
Illusions The Identity Toolkit Sum yourself up in a couple of words. Users of social media do it to introduce themselves online. “Surfer, father, […] Issue #10: fame
Illusions 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 […]
Philosophy and you 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 […]
Happiness 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 […]
Philosophy and you Free range ‘debate’ puts the egg before the chicken By Patrick Stokes, Deakin University The announcement that Woolworths will phase out the selling of cage eggs seems like pretty […] Issue #10: fame
Philosophy and you Why philosophy matters By Patrick Stokes, Deakin University And so now we officially know: philosophy is a waste. How can we be sure? […]
Philosophy and you 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 […]
Philosophy and you 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 – […]
Illusions 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 […]
Society & Culture It might be a more free world, but few of us would want to live there By John Daley, Grattan Institute Many are puzzled by the political theory of carbon markets. Why does the Institute for […]
Opinion Life’s a game We sometimes joke about the world conspiring against us. For instance, I might suggest that it will rain today because […]
Illusions Ethics is a jealous God: self-regulation vs self-sacrifice By Patrick Stokes, Deakin University Late one night recently I got a very frustrated email from a close friend. He’d […]
Literature & Writing 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 […]
Environment Is an ethic of biodiversity enough? The environmental crisis has never loomed so large nor been so extensively debated as in the last few years. But […]
Opinion The question is: society defended against whom? Or what? Following my recent work on the possibilities of radical democracy, but most of all, in light of the historical demand […]
Society & Culture When the time comes to disobey: civil disobedience and coal Greenpeace’s attempt to stop a ship carrying Australian coal is an opening shot in what is likely to be an […]
Opinion 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 […]
