Philosopher's Zone

Mary Graham is one of Australia's most distinguished Aboriginal academics and authors. In this conversation, she articulates a political philosophy of relationality, conflict management and much more.

Libertarians are hard to pin down – they have a number of seemingly contradictory commitments that we normally associate with people on either the left or the right of politics. Libertarians like small government, low taxes and free markets – but they also favour things like same-sex marriage and drug legalisation. So what exactly is libertarianism, and where did it come from?

Cynicism is a philosophical tradition that existed for centuries in the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Its influence can be found in the Christian gospels, throughout the Western philosophical tradition, and arguably up to the present day in the work of such protest groups as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion - not bad for a philosophical school whose most famous early practitioner lived in a wi...

Biology is a scientific discipline, notionally given to the pursuit of hard facts and empirical evidence - so what can philosophy bring to the table?

Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" thesis has been hugely influential in moral philosophy, but how well does it hold up today? This week we're asking if Arendt's characterisation of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann as a mindless functionary, devoid of ideology, was accurate - and whether or not it's still important to understand evil as something that doesn't always appear as dramatic of colourful...

The legal definition of Aboriginality is a complex issue, raising questions that have to do with identity, epistemology and politics. And while "race" as a biological category has been scientifically discredited, it still persists in Australian society, culture and law. So how should Aboriginality be defined?

The idea that race is a "natural" category, grounded in biology, has long been discredited - and yet it persists in a surprising number of places. This week we're looking at how medical practice has been shaped by outmoded assumptions about race, and how these assumptions directly affect the health of racialised people.

To many people, the notion that the universe has consciousness and purpose belongs back in the pre-scientific era. This week we're exploring the possibility that cosmic purpose is defensible not only philosophically, but also scientifically.

When billionaires want to make a positive difference in the world, many of them turn to philanthropy. Which is fine in principle, but this week we're asking if giving away money via huge global philanthropic foundations is really an unalloyed good.

This year's Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme exposed a system that unfairly (and illegally) subjected vulnerable people to stress and trauma - but was it deliberately punitive? And to what extent does our welfare system reflect negative public attitudes toward people living in poverty?

Daniel Dennett is one of the world's leading philosophers and cognitive scientists - at 81, and with a new memoir published, he's still as provocative and inspiring as ever. 

The politics of victimhood is a feature of our contemporary cultural landscape - but according to French philosopher René Girard, the impetus behind victim politics has been driving human civilisation for millennia.

AI-powered beauty apps are becoming increasingly popular, as people use them to evaluate, rate and enhance their facial appearance in selfies and other images. But exactly what's going on behind the technological wizardry raises a host of troubling ethical and philosophical concerns.

There are plenty of features of our faces and bodies that we don't necessarily like - but does this make them aberrations that require medical intervention? As the cosmetic surgery industry goes from strength to strength, the answer would increasingly appear to be Yes.

When we think of 19th century German philosophy, we perhaps think first of Nietzsche, or Hegel, and then some other men - but Germany in the 1800s was also home to a number of women philosophers.

What might a society without police look like? For some, the idea of police abolition evokes a vision of danger, anarchy and chaos - but for heavily-policed communities subject to high rates of incarceration, it's a survival imperative. 

For many on the political left, the end of capitalism is a cherished ideal - but what if capitalism ended and we found ourselves with something worse? This week we're exploring the possibility that Western liberal democracies could be sliding in the direction of "neofeudalism" and devolving into a much nastier set of economic and social structures than the ones we presently have.

What makes a true friend? Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics outlines certain conditions for virtuous friendship, but he sets the bar high, and his estimation of women's capacity for friendship is low. This week we're putting Aristotle in dialogue with Mary Astell, an early modern (and proto-feminist) English philosopher who also wrote extensively on friendship.

Gaslighting is the word on everyone's lips right now – in fact, Merriam-Webster named it their Word of the Year for 2022. But what is it about gaslighting that has us all talking about it? And why is it philosophically interesting?

Most of us experience time as something that passes, or flows like a river - or at least we think we do. Could it be that the sense of time passing is just an illusion? This week we're getting to grips with a theory of time that denies the reality of "flow" - and we're asking why time seems to speed up or slow down in certain situations.

Tourette Syndrome is not well understood, even by clinicians, and it raises a host of fascinating philosophical questions around volition and free will. Is Tourette's-related behaviour intentional? And if it is, should it be understood as action that carries moral responsibility?

There was once a time when mythology and philosophy got along perfectly well together. But since the Enlightenment, philosophy has come to regard myth as something of an embarrassment – especially in political theory, where the memory of "blood and soil" Nazi ideology is still fresh. Is there a role for myth in secular democratic politics, and in modern philosophy?

Transgender is commonly invoked as an identity, but this week we're asking if it is better understood as something that points to experience. 

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?

Life is hard - disappointment, regret and suffering come with the territory - and if the projections of climate scientists and epidemiologists are correct, it's not going to get easier any time soon. But then, life has always been hard. What do philosophical traditions have to say about the incurable toughness of human existence?