Philosopher's Zone

Can AIs be friends?

22 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence is beginning to revolutionise many aspects of human existence - but how does it rate on friendship? The question is less theo...

Kant and religion

15 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

It's often claimed that the Enlightenment was a time when Europeans awoke from their superstitious slumber, discovered rationality, got started on sc...

Speech acts and AI

09 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Speech acts - utterances that have the power to make things happen in the world - are increasingly being created by AI, especially in certain workpla...

'Being a burden' and assisted dying

01 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Caring for a terminally ill person can place huge pressure - financial, emotional, physical - on the caregivers, who are often family members. And it...

Sincerity, irony and metamodernism

25 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The supposed evils of postmodern culture have been endlessly catalogued: moral relativism, the loss of shared values, ironic detachment, a pathologic...

Is it time to get rid of legal gender status?

18 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us have Male or Female registered on our birth certificates - but what does this certification mean, in terms of its effect on our lives? The...

Medieval Jewish philosophy and the lessons of history

11 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We secular moderns sometimes make the assumption that philosophy is what you do when you're interested in the Big Questions of human existence, but n...

The reluctant feminist: Clara Zetkin and International Women's Day

04 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) is widely celebrated as the founder of International Women's Day, yet she saw herself first and foremost as a socialist revo...

Move fast, break everything: Nick Land and accelerationism

26 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Land is one of the more interesting contemporary philosophers, and one of the most disturbing. This week we're talking with the author of a new ...

Can 'planetary civics' save us from techno-catastrophe?

18 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us are a little anxious these days - and for good reason, as advances in technology and the rising intensity of climate change are set to cau...

Racism and racial regimes

11 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

It's a well-rehearsed argument that systemic, structural racism has more significant bearing on the lives and opportunities of racialised minorities ...

Do we still love art?

05 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

There has never been as much art around as there is today - digital tools are incredibly cheap, artistic production and distribution can bypass the t...

Who am I? Individual and collective identity

29 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The question of identity, and whether each of us is best understood as an individual or a member of a collective, has vexed philosophers for centurie...

What's the point of education?

21 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Of course, education has a point - but establishing exactly what that point is, can be a surprisingly difficult task. Do we educate children in order...

Albert Camus, fascism and America

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Living and writing through the years before, during and after the Second World War, French author and philosopher Albert Camus witnessed the rise of ...

How feminism changed primatology

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, primatologists believed that primate societies were structured around aggressive alpha males - until a remarkable push from feminist sci...

What's the time? Indigenous temporalities and the 'Everywhen'

31 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We tend to think of time as a universal experience, something that carries us all along in the same direction at the same pace. So it might seem stra...

Buddhism and nationalism

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Buddhism in the West is often thought of as an ethical or philosophical system first and foremost, based on principles of non-self and impermanence, ...

Innocence and 'child rescue' in the colonial imagination

17 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The forced removal of First Nations children from their families was active government policy in Australia between the 1910s and the 1970s, and still...

Distributed intelligence and the problem with 'doing your own research'

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Conspiracy theorists are turning out to be a resilient bunch, and no amount of refutation or mockery will make them go away. It's a problem, because ...

Can atheists be virtuous? The moral philosophy of Catharine Trotter Cockburn

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679-1749) is best known as a contemporary and defender of John Locke - but she was also a fascinating philosopher in her...

What are we doing when we read?

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reading seems like a simple, uncomplicated activity that most of us enjoy without thinking too much about it - but how simple is it really? Literary ...

Love, compassion and gloom: the contradictions of Arthur Schopenhauer

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's been said that the work of the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer should come with a health warning, so stark and pessimistic w...

Poverty and punishment

13 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 2023 Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme exposed a system that unfairly (and illegally) subjected vulnerable people to stress and trauma -...

Knowledge, culture and parenting apps

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There's an app for everything these days, including parenting and childrearing - but at what cost? Women in the Global South are increasingly using p...

The contradictions of democracy

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Democracy is a powerful force for progress, but it's also vulnerable and beset by its own internal contradictions. Plato thought that democracy was a...

Environmental techno-utopias: building nature better

22 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Conservation is the name of the game in most ecological thinking - but in the eyes of some environmental philosophers, conservation is a backward-loo...

Slopaganda

14 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Are you troubled by the way that social media has enabled the spread of propaganda? Well, get ready for slopaganda, which is propaganda that's AI-pow...

Indigenous literature and the academy in Australia

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As an academic discipline, Australian literature has been a largely white affair, with the canon of "great Australian authors" dominated by Anglo-Eur...

Albert Camus, fascism and America

02 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Living and writing through the years before, during and after the Second World War, French author and philosopher Albert Camus witnessed the rise of ...

What beauty apps are doing to us

25 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Beauty apps are becoming more and more miraculously high-tech, but also more and more invasive. You might feel OK about an app that gives your face a...

Are babies conscious?

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Babies cry, smile, laugh and react to their environment - so it seems odd to look at a baby and wonder whether or not it's conscious. But consciousne...

How AI could transform reading

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If there's one thing AI has in common with all new technology, it's that a lot of people are scared of it. When it comes to AI and education, horror ...

Is it time to get rid of legal gender status?

04 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us have Male or Female registered on our birth certificates - but what does this certification mean, in terms of its effect on our lives? The...

Who's responsible for extreme beliefs?

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's easy to say that people who hold extreme antisocial beliefs should be held responsible for those beliefs. But in fact, many extremists operate w...

Is a blobfish beautiful or ugly? Science, aesthetics and the natural world

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 2019 bushfires that devastated the east coast of Australia had one upside: the smoke in the atmosphere made for some stunning sunsets. But is a b...

Who's responsible for solving the world's problems—me, or The System?

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When it comes to global problems like climate change, it can be easy to feel as though your own individual efforts to stop it are too small to make a...

Disability, discrimination and disgust: why gut issues are a philosophical problem

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Digestive disorders are a common source of distress and social anxiety - which might seem to be an odd topic for philosophy, until you start to think...

Nature, gender and discomfort with 'woke' language

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When someone complains about feeling pressure to use 'woke' language, their discomfort is that of a stranger in an unfamiliar world. For people in ma...

What's the time? Indigenous temporalities and the 'Everywhen'

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We tend to think of time as a universal experience, something that carries us all along in the same direction at the same pace. So it might seem stra...

Is it time to bring back natural philosophy?

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Once upon a time, what we now call scientists were known as "natural philosophers". These were people who studied the physical universe through obser...

Judgement and remorse: a conversation with Raimond Gaita

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Is it possible to have judgement without blame? And what does it mean to say - as Socrates did - that it's better to suffer evil at the hands of othe...

Freud, Wittgenstein and the unconscious

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We routinely refer to "the unconscious" in a way that suggests we all agree on what it means - but in fact, the unconscious is a highly contested dom...

Buddhism and nationalism

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Buddhism in the West is often thought of as an ethical or philosophical system first and foremost, based on principles of non-self and impermanence, ...

Philosophy's problem with its history

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Analytic philosophy has often understood itself as being in some sense "above" history - using reason and logic to explore problems that are timeless...

Authority and medical diagnosis

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Medical diagnosis these days is not as straightforward as it seems. Doctors still diagnose, but so do a great many people who previously didn't - wel...

Nationalism and immigration

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Nationalism is often associated with rightwing politics and anti-immigration sentiment - but is that a necessary connection? This week we're looking ...

Speech acts and AI

29 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Speech acts - utterances that have the power to make things happen in the world - are increasingly being created by AI, especially in certain workpla...

Belief, emotion and trust

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The traditional philosophical view of belief is that it's a rational cognitive affair, evidence based and directed toward truth. According to this ac...

In defence of workism

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"Workism" is defined as the tendency to put work at the centre of one's identity and life meaning - and according to many recent commentators, it's a...

How feminism changed primatology

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, primatologists believed that primate societies were structured around aggressive alpha males - until a remarkable push from feminist sci...

History and the left

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The defeat of the Democrats in last November's Presidential election has prompted much soul-searching on the political left. But according to this we...

Henri Bergson, philosopher of past and future

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

100 years ago, Henri Bergson was the most famous philosopher on earth, drawing traffic-stopping crowds to his public lectures and scandalising the Fr...

Style wars pt 2: Scandals and hoaxes

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What should we think when an academic Humanities journal unsuspectingly publishes a paper that's been written as a hoax, full of fashionable jargon a...

Style wars pt 1: Postwar France and a new philosophical mode

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the aftermath of the Second World War, France was in a state of creative ferment that affected politics, culture - and philosophy. A new mode of p...

LIVE EVENT: What use is philosophy?

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Does philosophy answer questions, or just keep asking them over and over again? Some say that compared to the sciences, philosophy has few runs on th...

Queer theory and animal rights

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week we're exploring links between queer liberation and animal subjugation, and discovering how the struggles for acceptable queer identity are ...

AI, reliability and trust

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

AI is making all kinds of important decisions for us these days, but how far can we trust it? Or rather, what kind of trust is appropriate to bring t...

Innocence and "child rescue" in the colonial imagination

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The forced removal of First Nations children from their families was active government policy in Australia between the 1910s and the 1970s, and still...

What is a conspiracy theory?

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We all feel we know what a conspiracy theory is: it's a belief held by other people about a conspiracy or conspiracies. Nobody likes being identified...

Getting past post-truth

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our current "post-truth" environment means it's getting harder to trust what we see, hear and read - and this is a problem for all of us, but especia...

Expanding our moral circle

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our "moral circle" encompasses fellow humans, other primates, dogs, cats and other animals to which we attribute feelings and interests. But as scien...

Knowing what things are like

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Conventional wisdom has it that if you've never fallen in love, if you've never given birth to a child, if you've never tasted Vegemite... then you c...

How important is aesthetic education?

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's often said that we're experiencing a crisis in the arts and Humanities, with declining student numbers in subjects that aren't deemed suitable f...

Rediscovering Wilfrid Sellars

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The American thinker Wilfrid Sellars died in 1989, and has been remembered as a primarily analytic philosopher. But today, Sellars is being rediscove...

Auschwitz: experiencing what can't be experienced

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week marks 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz at the end of the Second World War. Representation in literature and cinema of the horrors...

Summer season: History and narrative

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Historians are commonly thought of as being a little like archaeologists or scientists - they're in the business of uncovering facts, and then presen...

Summer season: Libertarianism and freedom

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Libertarians are hard to pin down – they have a number of seemingly contradictory commitments that we normally associate with people on either the ...

Summer season: What is swearing?

01 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What exactly is it about swearing that gives it its offensive power? None of the standard philosophy-of-language explanations really gets to the bott...

Summer season: How philosophy fell in love with language

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Around the beginning of the 20th century, philosophy began to take what's come to be known as "the linguistic turn". All major philosophical questio...

Summer season: Music, taste and AI

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When you think about the music you like (or don't like), what does it tell you about your taste? Do you think you have good taste? And if you do, why...

Stability, security and survival: a conversation with Mary Graham

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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

Hannah Arendt and the aesthetic

04 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was someone who thought and wrote about some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century...

Sense, sensibility and the authentic self

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Authenticity, vulnerability and empathy are all positive character traits - but is there something in the modern ritual performance of these traits t...

Philosophy and mysticism

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mysticism is a phenomenon commonly associated with religion and the kind of experience that bypasses the rational, critical mind - which is probably ...

Health care ethics: otherness and belonging

13 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In ethical terms, health care systems are supposed to be "blind" to culture, offering the same level of care and respect to all patients regardless o...

Sentience

07 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sentience is a puzzle - and an increasingly important one. The question of exactly what constitutes sentience, and which organisms possess it, is hot...

Nationalism and immigration

30 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nationalism is often associated with rightwing politics and anti-immigration sentiment - but is that a necessary connection? This week we're looking ...

Philosophy, history and religion

24 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With the launch this week of a new Centre for the History of Philosophy at Notre Dame University, we're talking about the value of philosophical insi...

The 2024 Alan Saunders Lecture: Krushil Watene

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Maori philosopher Krushil Watene is an outstanding scholar and part of a global leadership network working toward a sustainable future and a healthie...

Is there purpose in the cosmos?

10 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 poss...

Feminism and freedom

03 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is freedom the primary goal of feminism? It's popular these days to define feminism as something that frees women - from traditional gender roles, fr...

Indigenous literature in Australia

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As an academic discipline, Australian literature has been a largely white affair, with the canon of "great Australian authors" dominated by Anglo-Eur...

Deep ecology

18 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With the climate heating up and our planetary support systems breaking down, how does an eco-philosopher manage to stay cheerful? This week's guest h...

AI and reading

11 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

AI is like all new technology, insofar as many people are afraid of it. When it comes to AI and education, scare stories abound of students using Cha...

The philosophy of history in China

04 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ancient China seems like a place and a time far removed from our own - but when we look at how ancient and medieval Chinese scholars thought about th...

Extremism, gender and science

28 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Extremists used to be easy to spot: they were seen as irrational, unstable and... well, extreme. But in recent years, we've seen extremists on the po...

Orwellian equality: What can this philosophical outsider teach us about how to live

23 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Few English language writers enjoy the position of authority, even reverence, that the journalist, essayist, novelist George Orwell does.While Orwell...

Can philosophy save us from the tyranny of toxic positivity?

16 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ever since Plato’s cave, the darkness has been considered something to be left behind. This is the founding myth of philosophy, the beginning of th...

Why liberalism needs fewer defenders, and more devotees

09 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last decade, liberalism has found itself on the ropes. Even many liberals seem to regard it as too soft a political disposition for hard tim...

What is AI doing to our humanity?

02 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Whatever else artificial intelligence is, according to Professor Shannon Vallor, it is first and foremost a projection of the human. And so whatever ...

De-extinction, pt 2

24 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The project of bringing extinct animals back into being is sexy, hi-tech and could confer significant environmental benefits - but at what cost? Som...

De-extinction, pt 1

17 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Gene technology has brought us to the point where it's theoretically possible to bring back extinct animals from the "species grave". But the scienc...

What's your story? Life narrative and "main character" thinking

09 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you're like most people, you probably think about your life as a story - it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and the main character in the st...

History and narrative

02 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Historians are commonly thought of as being a little like archaeologists or scientists - they're in the business of uncovering facts, and then presen...

The ancient key to modern happiness

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us aspire to achieve happiness in life, but is our understanding of happiness somewhat misguided? Could the wisdom of the ancient philosopher...

Fighting fatphobia with Kate Manne

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What moral judgements are made in philosophical thinking about fat bodies, and how does that culturally impact how we move through the world?

The philosophy of emotions

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Philosophers have long debated how to define emotions and their relationship to our bodies. So, what are the different schools of thought? Why is the...

Civil Disobedience with Noëlle McAfee

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How should we engage with politics and protest? We explore the history of political engagement and ask what role civil disobedience plays in our live...

Why time doesn't pass

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...