End Times archive

Ann Cahill is a funky feminist po-mo philosophical fabadabadoo who steps up to the groove to think about intersubjectivity in all its guises.She defends big words, considers the astoundingly deep inability of US culture to understand the emotions of miscarriage, finds continental philosophy condusive, considers Foucault's wrong about rape, settles more in Irigaray's camp than Butlers', (but doesn't want to stereotype them), insists on the embodiment of humans, finds there's still a lot to do about sexism in philosophy even though it's getting better, has things to say about beautification and self defence and has thoughts about ways of overcoming objectification through a carnal ethics. All in all this makes her a feminosophical blast. Published on: Jan 22, 2013 @ 11:14

Jason Brennan is a new kickin' kid on the block of political philosophy. He writes about J.S. Mill, communitarians, alienation, paradoxes of justice in Rawls, whether legal guarantees are real, the use and abuse of ideal theories, the virtue of modesty, gets feisty with Richard Posner, isn't firmly in any political camp, doesn't find market society repugnant and finds G.A. Cohen not very interesting, explains what modern libertarians say and why, thinks Globalisation leaves the world's poor sitting ducks, thinks right and left have no place in philosophy even though they're sociologically useful and that an incompetent electorate shouldn't be allowed to vote. You've got to hand it over to this pugnacious dude, he's flaming up our thoughts to get us all philosophically embroiled. Smokin'! Published on: Jan 14, 2013 @ 11:35

Stephen Mumford is cool, calm and collected as he broods on the big issues in the metaphysics of science. He thinks Russell a pivotal figure in metaphysics and more significant in that area than Wittgenstein, thinks of Armstrong's metaphysics as a beautiful whole, is a dispositionalist when thinking about the laws of nature, doesn't want philosophy to go to war with physics, isn't an X-phier, thinks powers are real in their own right, thinks intentionality has a naturalistic explanation in terms of the causal powers of agents and likes the idea that nature, including humans, have hidden powers which we might not have thought of yet. He's also involved in the philosophy of sport and sees sports people as embodied empowered people expressing their freedom. This is all bodacious and hummin', which makes his philosophical party most certainly boss. Chillin'. Published on: Jan 11, 2013 @ 09:00

Jay L. Garfield is a game-changing philosopher of Buddhism, niftily jive-talking between traditional western and Buddhist traditions because he knows that parochialism is neither chillin' nor lovin' but is rooted in colonial and racist attitudes that bring everyone down. He thinks there's been progress but there's still a long way to go so we all need to howl and take a stand. All of which makes him a killer cross-cultural king. Published on: Dec 28, 2012 @ 09:00

Joshua Alexander is a funky philosopher from the x-phi mothership, burning his armchair and flying into a future where philosophy is cosmopolitan. He thinks intuitions are important and diverse and the more we know about them the better. He has a sense of problems but is still uncovering details. He discusses murderous husbands, police officers, car thieves, extra dollars and side effects and knows that the more we learn the more there is to know. Which makes him supercalliphilosophicalidocious. Published on: Dec 17, 2012 @ 09:35

Gary Gutting has his finger on the philosophical pulse, writing books and articles and writing regularly for The Stone philosophers' blog at the New York Times to keep everyone in the know. He's always thinking about why global skeptics are wrong, how we define our moral self-identies, what fundamental convictions can do, about Husserl and Wittgenstein, about Habermas and Taylor and Rorty, whether science is the only way of knowing, about the Enlightenment, about God, and why there's no bridge between continental and analytic philosophy. He thinks Foucault had gifts of creativity and worked on a large scale and there were moments when he didn't have time to be obscure. He's not an existentialist but finds Sartre impressive and Derrida less so, and de Beauvoir kind of wonderful. He wonders whether the modern continentals are as empty as they seem or whether they're just waiting for Being to speak again, and whether continentals will join the analytics in an international scholasticism. He's sure that the internet is getting philosophy a bigger readership and that optimism and pessimism are just ways of avoiding the work of improving this screwed up world. He writes groovy books on all of this that are lucid, smart and complex, bringing the light along with the dark to stick it in, which makes him a Tyranaphilosophicus Rex! Published on: Dec 10, 2012 @ 10:32

John Haldane is a Thomist analytic philosopher who is always brooding on faith and religious belief, philosophers who have strange and oracular remarks that ignite the imagination, the metaphysics of Aquinas and the making sense of immateriality, the depths of ontological arguments, some Aristotelian roots, Hegel's Christian stuff, religion and the philosophy of mind, the link between Aquinas and Anscombe, the link between Aquinas and Wittgenstein, the evasiveness of D.Z. Phillips, when human beings start, Hume and Reid and their attitude to Catholicism, the Scottish Enlightenment, plus Christopher Hitchens and the new atheism all done in the cool hand Luke style of unflappable chill. Which all in all makes him the P Daddy of the philosophy of religion. Published on: Dec 4, 2012 @ 10:02

Anne Jaap Jacobson is the neurofeminist philosofunskster whose mind is setting fire to the boys' club and putting the academy straight whilst doing edgy work in the philosophy of mind. Nuns have called her a 'wicked girl' but she's one of the crazy-gang of experimental philosophers looking at bigotry, bias, cognitive neuroscience, naturalism, worrying about traditional philosophical approaches and wondering how to do things better. She's considered Hume from a feminist perspective, brings a cross-disciplinary jive to the philosophical party and doesn't think looking is like being given pictures. Her mind is a hive of ideas even though she worries that women are having to face too much resignation, bitterness, disillusionment and discouragement in philosophy and everywhere. Which makes her a seminal figure, and bodaciously groovy. Published on: Nov 26, 2012 @ 09:00

Jessica Berry stays cool calm and collected as she pronounces Nietzsche a Pyrrhonian skeptic. She says Nietzsche sees Homer as a counterexample to all our dominant ascetic values rather than an alternative role model but who like himself regarded many of his central questions as psychological questions and was preoccupied with nihilism. She doesn't think Nietzsche thought reality was a flux nor that knowledge is impossible and takes issue with those who say he's some kind of anti-realist about morals because that saddles him with metaphysical views. Everything she says is mind-bombingly, brain-teasingly provocative which makes her an inspirational carpet of philosophical groovaciousness.

Richard Moran thinks shutting down questions is a bad philosophical impulse, is buzzed by the relationship between literature and philosophy, finds his interest in metaphor arising from rhetoric as much as aesthetics or philosophy of language, slaps down high modernism's treatment of emotions, finds Proust a high-five when considering Kant's ideas about beauty,(and more extreme, and more amazing than he dared to imagine) goes deep considering self-knowledge and bad faith, sees deep-cookin' relations between knowledge of actions and knowledge of minds when jammin' off Anscombe, shoots up Wittgensteinian and Gricean wonders about speech and testimony and some, is ice cool and steady with Freud, naturalism and x-phi, and digs Sartre as essential, unfairly bad-mouthed and like John Lennon. Taken together, this is one groovy existentialist jive. Published on: Nov 19, 2012 @ 08:15

Tim Crane asks whether knowing whether knowing what wine tastes like eludes physics and whether not being a materialist means he has to be an immaterialist. He thinks people misread Descartes. He doesn't think what is thought about implies a difference in thought content and that externalism relies on this and so is faulty. He thinks that the world is divided into natural real unities and that naturalism is a methodological not a metaphysical position. He finds Wittgensteinians can be dogmatic, rehabilitates the myth of the given and discards qualia. He's a fan but but not a follower of Fodor, has tolerant views about religion, thinks Stephen Hawking is wrong about philosophy and that the analytic/continental divide is not straightforward. He finds Husserl's intentionalism an escape route from Frege-Russell and doesn't think Meinong insane. This makes him a most bodacious groove. Published on: Nov 16, 2012 @ 12:05

Frances Egan is a mind-bombing philosopher who wonders on explanatory frameworks of science, the fits and starts of mind evolution, the links between neuroscience and meaning, the redness of tomatoes, the difference between horizon and zenith moons, fMRI interfaces with philosophy, mind/computer uploading and the consciousness of the USA. All in all, she is a deep groove hipster of the philo-mindster jive. Awesome! Published on: Nov 12, 2012 @ 07:30