Newsletter: February 2023

Reflecting on the religious conflicts of his time, Zera Yacob resolved to use reason to determine which aspects of these religious traditions did indeed derive from God and which were the inventions of contentious humans.

Newsletter: January 2023

Starting with Plato, philosophy has systematically marginalized both literature and animals as beneath the dignity that philosophy has established for humankind.

[Starting Points] Effective Altruism and SBF

My character is shaped by the people around me and the prevailing norms of my culture. If I throw myself into a line of work in which profit maximization overrides all other interests, I’m unlikely to be unchanged by the experience.

Newsletter: December 2022

How are animals of the same species subjected to such different treatments? Part of the answer, I think, is that we humans don’t quite know what to make of creatures that are both so similar to us and so different.

Newsletter: November 2022

Humour and horror both provoke surprise by confounding our ordinary way of making sense of things. But humour creates an atmosphere of absolute safety and horror creates an atmosphere of absolute danger.

Newsletter: October 2022

Maybe true freedom lies not in being free from all obstacles but in imposing the right obstacles—that is, the ones that channel you in the direction you want or need to go.

[Reflections] Why Does the History of Philosophy Matter to Philosophy?

By situating my own thinking within a broader historical tradition, I can see more clearly how my particular concerns and preoccupations are mine rather than just the objectively and timelessly important ones that all people with philosophical inclinations might turn themselves to.