Philosophers' Mail

Max Weber is one of the three philosophers best able to explain to us the peculiar economic system we live within called Capitalism (Karl Marx and Ada [...]

The 19th-century designer, poet and entrepreneur William Morris is one of the best guides we have to the modern economy - despite the fact that he die [...]

Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig in 1788. In later years, he looked back on the event with regret: "Human existence must be a kind of error," he [...]

We generally think that philosophers should be proud of their big brains, and be fans of thinking, self-reflection and rational analysis. But there’ [...]

In the developed more secular parts of the world, it is common, even among unbelievers, to lament the passing of the great days of religious architect [...]

The news is the most powerful and prestigious force in contemporary society, replacing religion as the touchstone of authority and meaning. What are w [...]

For hundreds of years now, humans have tended to believe that the best sort of government is one which leaves its citizens maximally 'free'. [...]

We generally hold culture - by which we understand art, museums, cinema, literature and the study of history - in extremely high regard. But, equally, [...]

In the West, philosophers write long non-fiction books, often using incomprehensible words and limit their involvement with the world to lectures and [...]

In the West, we have a vague sense that poetry is good for our ‘souls’, making us sensitive and wiser. Yet we don’t always know how this should [...]

Little is truly known about the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (sometimes also known as Laozi or Lao Tze), who is a guiding figure in Daoism (also transl [...]

The story of the Buddha’s life, like all of Buddhism, is a story about confronting suffering. He was born between the sixth and fourth century BC, t [...]

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is teach us how to suffer. It can do so by evoking scenes that are dark, melancholy or [...]

We live in a world saturated with false glamour. In truth, the problem does not lie with glamour itself, but with the things we have collectively agre [...]

The cultural elite gets nervous about cheerful or sweet art. They worry that pretty, happy works of art are in denial about how bad the state of the w [...]

Abstract art continues to provoke annoyance and confusion in equal measure. You know the kind of thing: a large empty white canvas, with a solitary de [...]

[...] contestants, but in the competitive history of incomprehensible German philosophers, Martin Heidegger must, by any reckoning, emerge as the overall victor. [...]

[...] food. Here we inaugurate a new series, Philosophy in the Kitchen, by considering the work of Martin Heidegger, with the help of shrimp, jelly babies and other foods. [...]

[...] Martin Heidegger is, without doubt, the most incomprehensible German philosopher that ever lived. Nothing [...]

Donald Winnicott (1896-1971) was an English paediatrician, who early on in his career became passionate about the then new field of psychoanalysis. He [...]

Melanie Klein (1882-1960) was a highly creative and original Viennese Jewish psychoanalyst who discovered the work of Freud at the age of 26 and devot [...]

Among our deepest and seemingly most natural aspirations is the longing to form stable, satisfying relationships: to thrive in partnerships that are g [...]

We’re particularly down on people we call ‘defensive’. They blame others for what’s probably their own fault. They hear reasonable criticism a [...]