Against ‘Effective Altruism’

Effective Altruism (EA) is a programme for rationalising charitable giving, positioning individuals to do the ‘most good’ per expenditure of money or time. It was first formulated – by two Oxford philosophers just over a decade ago – as an application of the moral theory consequentialism, and from the outset one of its distinctions within […]

The philosophical disability of reason: Evald Ilyenkov’s critique of machinic intelligence

Present theories of computation and artificial intelligence often claim that philosophy should either discard its principal modes of gnoseology (that is, its theories of knowledge and cognition) and anthropomorphic genesis, or declare philosophical speculation obsolete altogether, since it fails to provide any precise knowledge regarding the most significant contemporary scientific and technological concerns. If post-structuralism […]

Feminism and the Enlightenment

• Feminism and the Enlightenment Pauline Johnson The recent turn taken by feminist theory towards a critique of the spirit of humanism would have surprised de Beauvoir and the early delineators of the concerns of ‘second wave’ feminism. According to The Second Sex, feminism is an expression of humanism in a quite straightforward sense.! Indeed, […]

61 Editorial

EDITORIAL Since the late ’80s, all those with sympathies on the Left have had to reconsider their position. In the editorial of the last RP, Greg Elliott, from a knowledge of the recent history of Western Marxism, considered the changed situation of marxist philosophy over the twenty years of RP’s existence. He expressed opposition to […]

Reason Without Emotion

Reason Without Emoti·on Carol Jones J In ‘Reason and Emotion’ (RP 57), Miranda Fricker objects to the polarisation of reason and emotion, the separation of which she sees as a factor in the conflict between rational, patriarchal modes of reasoning and the ‘expressive power of emotions’ which feminists have tended to prefer. Seeking to refute […]

Women and the High Priests of Reason

Women and the High Priests of Reason Janna Thompson Introduction Women are not supposed to be truly rational. The conviction that women can at best worship in the outer precincts of the temple of reason has a long tradition. It has survived philosophical and social revolutions. The idea is not that women are incapable of […]

John MacMurray: A Neglected Philosopher

JOHN MACMURRAY: A NEGLECTED PHILOSOPHER PhilipConford A search for John Macmurray’s name in John Passmore’s 100 Years of Philosophy is enough to establish that he is neglected by the establishment of academic philosophers. Macmurray rates one mention, in a footnote only; a footnote which implicitly dismisses him as an eccentric Scot. The one work of […]

Primordial Being: Enlightenment, Schopenhauer and the Indian subject of postcolonial theory

Primordial Being Enlightenment, Schopenhauer and the Indian subject of postcolonial theory Chetan bhatt century Enlightenment philosophers – others could have been chosen – considered the place of ʻIndiaʼ and some of its religions and philosophies in their grand civilizational, cultural and philosophical chronographies. This is a difficult area whose complexities can be elided by the […]