Issue 26 - No.4/2019

New Philosopher

For curious people

New Philosopher1 min read
Change
Fairy tales and myths are replete with stories of change, be it person to stone, rags to riches, a prince to a frog, or everything to gold. While there are certainly plenty of other messages contained in these myths, the story that change is inevitab
New Philosopher1 min read
Online At Newphilosopher.com
newphilosopher.com is an online portal for exploring philosophical ideas on ways to live a more fulfilling life. Read the articles, join in discussions, watch free online documentaries and plan your trip to the next festival near you. What makes a
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Contributors
L.A. Paul is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Yale University. She is the author of Transformative Experience and Causation: A User’s Guide, which won the American Philosophical Association’s Sanders Book Prize in 2014. Paul’s main re
New Philosopher2 min read
Some Things Never Change
Self-help manuals contain endless pages on personal progression. It seems that we humans are most happy when we’re moving ahead, achieving things, getting on with it. There’s that thrill of delight when a child takes her first step, and that joyful s
New Philosopher2 min readRelationships
Creative Obliteration
The American poet Alice Notley once wrote: I want to shriek atany identitythis culture gives me claw it topieces; has nothing todo with me ormy baby and never will,has never perceived ahuman being.[…]he is born and I am undone — feel as ifI willneve
New Philosopher2 min read
Cambridge Changes
The President of the United States goes to the dentist and has a tooth removed. At that moment, he has been changed. A moment ago he had the standard adult complement of thirty-two teeth; now he has thirty-one. It’s a small change, but, nonetheless,
New Philosopher1 min read
Backwards And Forwards
“We all want progress but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back the soonest is the most progressive.” C.S. Lewis When three British artists banded toge
New Philosopher5 min read
The Stranger Up Ahead
Think back to when you were ten years old. What did you want to be when you grew up? There’s a good chance you winced just now. For many of us, remembering what we thought adulthood would be like, and what our role in it might be, is either embarrass
New Philosopher1 min read
Change
The first synthetic plastic ‘Bakelite’ was produced in 1907. In 2015, 381 million tonnes of plastic was produced, roughly equivalent to the mass of two-thirds of the world population. In 2001, almost half of British children had imaginary friends, bu
New Philosopher5 min read
Can You Change Who You Are?
In the last decade of his life my Canadian father-in-law became so averse to change that he would not contemplate moving a piece of furniture from one side of the room to the other. I know that elderly people can get this way – stubborn, fixed – but
New Philosopher5 min read
Changing Minds
Jonathan Swift was one to choose his words carefully. In a letter from 1725 written to his good friend, the poet and satirist Alexander Pope, he contested the contemporary definition of humanity. “I have got materials toward a treatise, proving the f
New Philosopher4 min readPoverty & Homelessness
Move Fast And Break Things
In an interview in 2009, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg famously declared that his developers needed to “move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough”. Implicit in Zuckerberg’s slogan is the assumption t
New Philosopher4 min read
Forever Shifting
In his poem of grief and loss In Memoriam, the Victorian poet Alfred Lord Tennyson adapts an ancient image of change to describe the seemingly solid earth beneath his feet: The hills are shadows, and they flowFrom form to form, and nothing stands;Th
New Philosopher6 min readPsychology
Fifty To Know The Fate
What prompted you to undertake the series of photographs in your work ‘Identical Twins’? I was born in Shandong province and went to two primary schools, two middle schools, and five high schools. Sometimes, just when I had adapted to an environment
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Why We Fight For Change
There is a widespread myth that says that moral progress will eventually happen in due course. The thought is that no matter how bad things are now, if we only give it time, things will get better. One historical document that stands out as perpetuat
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The Students Are Revolting
On 10 May 1968, Michel Foucault listened in breathless anticipation to the sounds coming through his telephone. His partner, Daniel Defert, was on the other end of the line. But the sounds that so enchanted Foucault were not whisperings of love. They
New Philosopher15 min read
Transformative Experience
L. A. Paul is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Yale University. Paul is best known for her research on the counterfactual analysis of causation and the concept of ‘transformative experience’. Paul’s principal research interests are in
New Philosopher4 min read
Unexpected Change
Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher, left us to interpret and apply his often-cryptic aphorisms. One of the fragments that survives from his writing declares, “All is flux, nothing stays still”, a phrase that Plato quoted in the Cratylus. Who co
New Philosopher2 min read
Ethical Children
When I grow up, I know my body will look different, but will I still be me? Let’s imagine a clever scientist has invented a machine that allows you to swap bodies with somebody else. Your memories, interests, love for the special people in your life
New Philosopher3 min read
Ethical Dilemma
I’m in my 60s and when I see my old school friends after a few more years have passed, we seem to draw each other back into our old selves. (At least that's how it seems to me.) Although we’ve all had varying degrees of success and failure in our car
New Philosopher6 min read
A Change Takes Place
There was once on a time a poor man, who could no longer support his only son. Then said the son, “Dear father, things go so badly with us that I am a burden to you. I would rather go away and see how I can earn my bread.” So the father gave him his
New Philosopher4 min read
Change
Why should a change of paradigm be called a revolution? In the face of the vast and essential differences between political and scientific development, what parallelism can justify the metaphor that finds revolutions in both? One aspect of the parall
New Philosopher5 min read
Learning To Walk
The factors which come together in the coniunctio are conceived as opposites, either confronting one another in enmity or attracting one another in love. -Carl Jung I could not make any playdates for my daughter. A single, semi-foreign-semi-local
New Philosopher5 min readMedical
A New Mindset
You would think that the best remedy for the fatigue and stress experienced by two out of three American workers would be better working conditions. But researchers at UCLA’s School of Management have a different solution: a new mindset. Work on a ho
New Philosopher2 min read
The Perfect Gift For Family & Friends
Extraordinary quality in all respects. New Philosopher is one of the best things happening. I love how the writing reminds me that the types of issues we are grappling with today are similar to those grappled with by philosophers for centuries. I lov
New Philosopher2 min readPopular Culture & Media Studies
Around The Web
In 2018, for the first time in history, persons aged 65 years or over worldwide outnumbered children under age five. Projections indicate that by 2050 there will be more than twice as many persons above 65 as children under five. By 2050, the number
New Philosopher6 min read
Metamorphosis
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by a
New Philosopher3 min read
Our Library
For choices involving dramatically new experiences, we are confronted by the brute fact that we can know very little about our subjective futures. This has serious implications for our decisions. If we make life choices in the way we naturally and in
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What’s On
Launched in 2017, this philosophy discussion series is held each month amidst the vats of a working brewery in Hobart, Australia. The format is participatory rather than dictatorial and a topic is chosen ahead of time to allow attendees to prepare. P
New Philosopher5 min read
Trying To Escape The Sea
Seneca was a Roman Stoic with a sensitive stomach. In a letter addressed to Lucilius, he recounts the time he found himself seasick aboard a boat, his illness so unsettling that he threw himself overboard and flailed to shore. Seneca craved land, ter

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