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I approach myth from the standpoint of theories of myth, or generalizations about the origin, the function, and the subject matter of myth. There are hundreds of theories. They hail from anthropology, sociology, psychology, politics, literature, philosophy, and religious studies.

The post In defense of myth appeared first on OUPblog.

Robert Hanna presents an argument based on some highly-plausible Kantian metaphysical, moral, political premises, about a huge real-world problem that greatly concerns me: the global refugee crisis, including its current manifestation in Europe.

The post A world with persons but without borders appeared first on OUPblog.

In a 1929 lecture, Martin Heidegger argued that the following claim is true: Nothing nothings. In German: “Das Nichts nichtet”. Years later Rudolph Carnap ridiculed this statement as the worst sort of meaningless metaphysical nonsense in an essay titled “Overcoming of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language”. But is this positivistic attitude reasonable?

The post Is “Nothing nothings” true? appeared first on OUPblog.

Throughout much of the last century, the idea that we inhabit a somehow disenchanted modernity has exerted a powerful hold in political and public debate. As the political theorist Jane Bennett argues, the story is that there was once a time when God acted in human affairs and when social life, characterized by face-to-face relations, was richer; but this world then ‘gave way to forces of scientific and instrumental rationality, secularism, individualism, and the bureaucratic state – all of which, combined, disenchant the world’.

The post For the love of reason appeared first on OUPblog.

There are massive inequalities in global health opportunities and outcomes.  Consider, for instance, that Japan has around twenty-one physicians per 10,000 people, while Malawi has only one physician for every fifty thousand people.  This radical inequality in medical skills and talents has, obviously, bad consequences for health; people born in Malawi will live, on average, […]

The post Global health inequalities and the “brain drain” appeared first on OUPblog.

Engaging in critical thinking about one’s own belief system does not often include laughing so much you end up breathless and hiccuping but that’s just what happened one evening last week when our bedtime read was Meet at the Ark at Eight! by Ulrich Hub, illustrated by Jörg Mühle, translated by Helena Ragg-Kirkby.

This witty, keenly observed and questioning novella retells the biblical flood story with wave after wave of philosophical observations and deadpan humour. Two (male) penguins smuggle a third aboard the ark when an overworked and stressed-out dove chivvies them along to avoid extinction.

Deep in the hold of the boat the friends continue what they started on land: trying to tease out in their own minds whether God exists, and if so, what he is like. Conundrums (“We’re birds, but we smell like fish; we have wings, but we can’t fly.“), chance (“Life is so strange. If two other penguins had been standing here, they’d have been given these tickets and we’d have ended up drowning miserably,“), honesty, guilt and the complexities of friendships are explored with a stark innocence that makes the penguins’ questioning all the more powerful.

And these questions are ones that I think come naturally to children when thinking about religion – about punishment, about proof, about the essence of faith. The answers, such as they are in this book, leave a lot of space for making up your own mind; this isn’t a black and white pot-shot at religious fundamentalism, but something much more nuanced, even if some may find the laser-sharp humour hard to marry with their own beliefs.

Whether or not you or your kids pick this book up because of its rich philosophical strand, two further aspects of this moral tale are worth pointing out.

Meet at the Ark at Eight! is extremely funny. One scene in particular had my girls and I barely able to breathe for all the laughter as I read the book out loud to them; when the dove comes to check up on the penguins, one of them hides in a suitcase and pretends to be the voice of God. This scene is just so theatrical (it comes as no surprise to later find out that the author, Ulrich Hub, has written many plays) with perfect timing and exquisite dialogue. “God”‘s game is up when he pushes the boundary just a little too far and asks the dove for some cheesecake; I am putting money on this becoming a family catchphrase that will stay with us all our book=reading lives.

Secondly, the illustrations by Jörg Mühle are wonderful. Nearly every double page spread has at least one illustration and the characterization, especially of the dove, is sublime. I’ve seen very few cases in all the illustrated books I’ve ever read where an apparently simple, nonchalant line can pack such a punch.

I can only heartily encourage you to read this multi-award-winning retelling to find out how three goes into two for the final disembarkation in front of Noah. This novella hides real delight and serious philosophizing in between its slim, sensational pages.

The day after we read Meet at the Ark at Eight! “God” came visiting in his suitcase. We supplied cheesecake, and I’m glad to report that penguins, kids and all the celestial beings we know were all very happy with such a delicious after school treat.

Whilst taste-testing cheesecake we listened to:

Other activities which might work well alongside reading Meet at the Ark at Eight! include:

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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher.

This October, the OUP Philosophy team are highlighting German social and political theorist Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) as their Philosopher of the Month. Known as the founder of revolutionary communism, Marx is credited as one of the most influential thinkers for his theoretical framework, widely known as Marxism.

The post Philosopher of the month: Karl Marx appeared first on OUPblog.

For the most part, the practice of philosophy tends to be collective and conversational and collaborative. We enjoy reading what others have written on a given topic, and we like to hear what others have to say, because different people see things differently.

The post Women in the history of philosophy appeared first on OUPblog.

Consider: a lecture hall of undergraduates, bored and fidgety (and techne-deprived, since I’ve banned computers and devices in class) in distinctive too-cool-for-school Philosophy 101 style.—Ah, but today will be different: the current offering is not Aristotle on causation, or Cartesian dualism, or Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception—no.

The post Our exhausted (first) world: a plea for 21st-century existential philosophy appeared first on OUPblog.

This September, the OUP Philosophy team have chosen Hannah Arendt as their Philosopher of the Month. Hannah Arendt was a German political theorist and philosopher best known for coining the term “the banality of evil.” She was also the author of various influential political philosophy books.

The post How much do you know about Hannah Arendt? [quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.

A reasonable line of thought can give rise to a crisis of commitment: Many a commitment requires persistence or willpower, especially in the face of temptation. A straightforward example is the decision to quit smoking; another is the promise to be faithful to someone for the rest of one’s life.

The post A crisis of commitment appeared first on OUPblog.

In ancient Athens, during the fifth century BC, military service was required of all citizens. To be a citizen meant being a soldier, and vice versa. Because every citizen served in the military, the health of the democracy depended upon the health of its soldiers, and the ability of citizen-soldiers to move fluidly and frequently [...]

Once again, searching for unconventional computing methods as well as for a neurocomputational theory of cognition requires knowing what does and does not count as computing. A question that may appear of purely philosophical interest — which physical systems perform which computations — shows up at the cutting edge of computer technology as well as neuroscience.

The post The philosophical computer store appeared first on OUPblog.

Imagine that, on a Tuesday night, shortly before going to bed one night, your roommate says “I promise to only utter truths tomorrow.” The next day, your roommate spends the entire day uttering unproblematic truths like: 1 + 1 = 2.

The post Paradoxes and promises appeared first on OUPblog.

Our diets are a moral choice. We can decide what we want to eat, though more often than not we give little thought to our diet and instead rather habitually and instinctively eat foods that have been served to us since a young age.

The post Our diet and the environment [infographic] appeared first on OUPblog.

In April this year, we questioned whether or not you could match the quote to the philosopher who said it. After demonstrating your impressive knowledge of philosophical quotations, we've come back to test your philosophy knowledge again. In this second installment of the quiz, we ask you if you can make the distinction between Aquinas, Hume, Sophocles, and Descartes?

The post Can you match the quote to the philosopher? Part two [quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.

The OUP Philosophy team have selected Hannah Arendt (4 October 1906- 4 December 1975) as their September Philosopher of the Month. Born into a Jewish German family, Arendt was widely known for her contributions to the field of political theory, writing on the nature of totalitarian states, as well as the resulting byproducts of violence and revolution.

The post Philosopher of the month: Hannah Arendt appeared first on OUPblog.

This August we are featuring Lao Tzu, the legendary Chinese thinker and founder of Taoism, as Philosopher of the Month. He is best known as the author of the classic ‘Tao Te Ching’ (‘The Book of the Way and its Power’). Take our quiz to see how much you know about the life and studies of Lao Tzu!

The post How well do you know Lao Tzu? [quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.

Traditionally, the story that opens chapter three of Genesis is called The Fall. In the Christian tradition, both the name and the interpretation of the story associated with it were made canonical by Saint Augustine in the first decades of the fifth century AD, about fourteen hundred years after Genesis was written down.

The post The value of knowledge appeared first on OUPblog.

If you’ve worked in an office, you’re probably familiar with “honor box” coffee service. Everyone helps themselves to stewed coffee, adds to the lounge’s growing filth, and deposits a nominal sum in the honor box, with the accumulated proceeds being used to replenish supplies. Notoriously, this system often devolves into a tragedy of the commons, where too many people drink without paying.

The post Moral responsibility and the ‘honor box’ system appeared first on OUPblog.

People exist at different times. My life, for instance, consists of me-at-age-five, me-as-a-teenager, me-as-a-university-student, and of course many other temporal stages (or time-slices) as well. In a sense, then, we can see a single person, whose life extends over time, as akin to a group of people, each of whom exists for just a short stretch of time.

The post Individuals as groups, groups as individuals appeared first on OUPblog.

Theistic literature is full of references and allusions to a self-concealing deity. The psalm writer whose poems are included in the Hebrew Bible regularly calls out, in alternating notes of perplexity, impatience and despair, to a God whose felt presence apparently seemed frustratingly inconstant. But he or she still assumes that God is there.

The post Does ‘divine hiddenness’ belong to theists or to atheists? appeared first on OUPblog.

A 'Liar cycle' is a finite sequence of sentences where each sentence in the sequence except the last says that the next sentence is false, and where the final sentence in the sequence says that the first sentence is false.

The post Curry paradox cycles appeared first on OUPblog.

Since roughly the middle of the last century, there has been a thriving philosophical debate about the nature of action. What is it that makes us agents rather than patients? What makes us responsible for the things that we do rather than the things that happen to us?

The post Many forms of doing: a surprising source for pluralism about agency appeared first on OUPblog.

Lao (Laozi) Tzu is credited as the founder of Taoism, a Chinese philosophy and religion. An elusive figure, he was allegedly a learned yet reclusive official at the Zhōu court (1045–256 BC) – a lesser aristocrat of literary competence who worked as a copyist and archivist. Scholars have variously dated his life to between the third and sixth centuries BC, but he is best known as the author of the classic Tao Te Ching (‘The Book of the Way and its Power’).

The post Philosopher of the month: Lao Tzu appeared first on OUPblog.