Around the beginning of the 20th century, philosophy began to take 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?

How philosophy fell in love with language

The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Is obedience a virtue? History is littered with instances where obedience to bad rulers or unjust laws has resulted in catastrophe. But then it's hard to imagine raising or educating children without obedience being a fundamental requirement. This week we're exploring obedience in the moral domain - and in the domain of classical music, where disobedience to tradition can be the hallmark of genius.

Obedience

What should we think when an academic Humanities journal unsuspectingly publishes a paper that's been written as a hoax, full of fashionable jargon and deliberately specious arguments? Does this demonstrate that the Humanities set a higher value on shallow intellectual trends than on rigorous scholarship - or is there something more nuanced and complicated going on?

Style wars pt 2: Scandals and hoaxes

In the aftermath of the Second World War, France was in a state of creative ferment that affected politics, culture - and philosophy. A new mode of philosophical writing emerged in the form of the review, and it was being done in an idiom that we've since come to recognise as typical of modern French theory: dense, experimental, multivocal, open-ended, very much the opposite of traditional analytic philosophical style. It grabbed scholarly attention then, and is still controversial today.

Style wars pt 1: Postwar France and a new philosophical mode

Pain is part of life, and none of us can escape it. And yet most of us feel that the deal is worth it, that the pleasure of life outweighs the suffering. Anti-natalist philosophy takes a different view.

The predicament of existence

British thinker Mary Midgley (1919-2018) believed that philosophy should be a public undertaking, concerned with issues that have their genesis out in the world rather than within the academy. But what is the proper relationship between public and academic philosophy? And why are we talking about plumbing this week?

How philosophy fell in love with language

Download our free app to listen on your phone