Top News, Articles, and Interviews in Philosophy

Romanticism and the Re-Invention of Modern Religion: The Reconciliation of German Idealism and Platonic Realism

12. September 2019 Philosophy News News
2019.09.08 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Alexander J. B. Hampton, Romanticism and the Re-Invention of Modern Religion: The Reconciliation of German Idealism and Platonic Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 253pp., $105.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781108429443. Reviewed by Allen Speight, Boston University Contemporary philosophical interest in the movement loosely called Romanticism -- especially in the more narrowly-defined circle of Early German Romantics (Frühromantiker) associated with Schlegel, Novalis and others in the Jena circle -- shows no signs of abating. Part of the renewed interest in the Romantics can of course be explained just in terms of the large philosophical stakes involved in the questions that have most recently been at the forefront of discussion -- for example, whether the Early German Romantics should be characterized as more concerned with issues of epistemology (Manfred Frank), metaphysics (Fred Beiser) or both (Dalia Nassar); whether German Idealism and Romanticism should be considered separately or seen as a dynamic of moments within a larger trajectory extending toward the nineteenth... Read [More]
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Gender as Identity vs Gender as Norms

11. September 2019 Philosophy News News
Earlier this year, the Institute of Art and Ideas invited scholars and activists to consider the question, How Can Philosophy Help Us Understand Transgender Experiences? Following the publication of this article, three of the authors withdrew their contributions and issued a statement of retraction outlining their reasons for doing so. In this third article, one of the original contributors Holly Lawford-Smith responds to arguments raised in the retraction with her own perspective on the debate around gender.Radical and gender critical feminists think the best way to understand gender is as a set of harmful norms, which are applied to people on the basis of their sex. A female person, for example, is subjected to norms that tell her to take great care over her appearance, to be helpful, kind, caring, and warm. A male person is subjected to different norms, for example telling him to be strong, bold, clever, and stoic, to not care much about his appearance. What's key here is [More]
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Philosopher’s Annual Selections

11. September 2019 Philosophy News News
Philosopher’s Annual is “an attempt to pick the ten best articles of the year” in academic philosophy. Volume 38, covering articles from 2018, is about to be released. The ten articles in that volume are: Mark Alfano, J. Adam Carter & Marc Cheong, “Technological Seduction and Self-Radicalization,” from the Journal of the American Philosophical Association Jc Beall, “The Simple Argument for Subclassical Logic,” from Philosophical Issues Selim Berker, “The Unity of Grounding,” from Mind Guillermo Del Pinal, “Meaning, Modulation, and Context: A Multidimensional Semantics for Truth-Conditional Pragmatics,” from Linguistics and Philosophy Louise Hanson, “Moral Realism, Aesthetic Realism, and the Asymmetry Claim,” from Ethics Remco Heesen, “When Journal Editors Play Favorites,” from Philosophical Studies Matthias Jenny, “Counterpossibles in Science: The Case of Relative Computability,” from Noûs Dilip Ninan, “Quantification and Epistemic Modality,” from the Philosophical Review Amia Srinivasan, “The Aptness of Anger,” from the Journal of Political Philosophy  Kenneth Walden, “Practical Reason Not As Such,” from the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy An attempt to compile a list of the best articles in philosophy is, the editors admit, “as simple to state as it is admittedly impossible to fulfill,” given the massive volume of publications in philosophy each year and the diversity of criteria that may be employed. The results are the work of [More]
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Virtue, Happiness, Knowledge: Themes from the Work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin

10. September 2019 Philosophy News News
2019.09.07 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews David O. Brink, Susan Sauvé Meyer, and Christopher Shields (eds.), Virtue, Happiness, Knowledge: Themes from the Work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin, Oxford University Press, 2018, 318pp., $70.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198817277. Reviewed by Iakovos Vasiliou The Graduate Center, City University of New York Anyone who has done even rudimentary research in the history of western philosophy must have come across the work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin. While best known for their books and essays on ancient philosophy, each of them has published significant work on figures from various periods over their prolific careers. Stemming originally from a conference at Cornell University in 2013, this volume is a Festschrift marking their retirements from the University of Oxford and from Cornell. Edited by three former students, the collection consists of the editors' Introduction and fifteen chapters by former students and close colleagues of Gail and Terry (as they are known and referred to throughout the volume), concluding with complete bibliographies of the honorees up to 2016.... Read [More]
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Two Philosophers Make British Academy Book Award Shortlist

10. September 2019 Philosophy News News
The British Academy, the UK’s national organization for the humanities and social sciences has released the shortlist of candidates for its 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. The £25,000 ($30,900) annual prize, established seven years ago, “rewards and celebrates the best works of non-fiction that have contributed to global cultural understanding and illuminate the interconnections and divisions that shape cultural identity worldwide,” according to an announcement from the British Academy. Six books made the shortlist, including two by philosophers: The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity (Profile Books) by Kwame Anthony Appiah  How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy (Granta Books) by Julian Baggini The other books on the list are: A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (Allen Lane) by Toby Green Maoism: A Global History (Bodley Head) by Julia Lovell Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided (Hurst) by Aanchal Malhotra Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture (Verso) by Ed Morales There were originally 80 books under consideration for the prize. The president of the British Academy, Sir David Cannadine, says of the shortlisted books: Such rigorous, timely and original non-fiction writing provides the rich context the global community needs to discuss and debate present-day challenges. Each of the writers nominated for this year’s [More]
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