Philosophy

The way we think about thought is political. This much was evident at the birth of the modern study of the mind, when Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia wrote to René Descartes in 1643 to question his account of cognition. Her self-deprecation will be familiar to any woman who’s dared to dispute with an eminence, and knows that the best way to begin is ... See more

The unabated “creative destruction” of one kind of capital after another has only further increased the wealth of a few and done nothing to emancipate the overall collective creative spirit, which has remained stagnant. Today, almost every artistic effort inevitably (perhaps unknowingly) reinscribes the values of the ruling capitalist class.

How could gaining knowledge amount to anything other than discovering what was already there? How could the truth of a statement or a theory be anything but its correspondence to facts that were fixed before we started investigating them?

Some philosophers have argued that, despite widespread intuitions to the contrary, knowledge is not merely a mat... See more

The experience of affective friction is similar as well: a loss of fluency combined with negative emotional signals arising from the gap between social expectations and realities. Even when the difference between an old norm and a new one replacing it seems trivial, the disruptions caused by the shift can create feelings of anxiety, awkwardness – a... See more

To give birth, to nourish,

to bear and not to own,

to act and not lay claim,

to lead and not to rule:

this is mysterious power.

More than a penchant for suffering, and more than a need to challenge ourselves, humans are a species that can adapt. In times of flux and epochal change, there’s often a peculiar strain of natural law among nervous, conservative minds — the “natural” way of man is right, so don’t meddle with it. This strain was there when we developed immunization... See more

Who Am I?

Look deep into the recesses of your being, and identify everything you think makes you, you.

Traverse all your mind’s pathways, and locate every desire and thought. Summon every opinion and belief, every interest and passion, and interrogate each and every one, relentlessly.

Ask them where they came from, and who planted them. Ask them if... See more

Revolutions are thus planetary phenomena. But there is more. What they really do is transform basic assumptions about what politics is ultimately about. In the wake of a revolution, ideas that had been considered veritably lunatic fringe quickly become the accepted currency of debate.

But this isn’t just about seeking exit from the turmoil of a modern, connected existence, nor is it merely about recharging our batteries so that we can absorb yet more political polarisation, toxic social media or climate catastrophe. It is also about engaging in a social policy of degrowth as a corrective to practices that are taxing the planet, ... See more