New Philosopher

For curious people

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Purpose
Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that life had no meaning; instead, it was up to us to imbue our lives with the meaning that we choose. His contemporary and friend-turned-foe, the reluctant Existentialist Albert Camus, pushed a similar line, denying that the
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New Philosopher
Zan Boag Antonia Case Carlos Egan, Aida Novoa Genís Carreras Nigel Warburton Mariana Alessandri, Marina Benjamin, Gregg Caruso, Antonia Case, Tom Chatfield, Myisha Cherry, André Dao, Christina Easton, Carrie Jenkins, Allan Lake, Massimo Pigliucci, Cl
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Online At
Visit newphilosopher.com , our online portal for exploring philosophical ideas on ways to live a more fulfilling life. Read the articles, join in discussions, and watch free online documentaries. newphilosopher.com Apocaloptimism shouldn’t be mist
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New Philosopher Writers’ Award
Entries are open for the New Philosopher Writers’ Award. Enter now to win $1,000 and have your work featured in the magazine. Up to 1,500 words of fiction or non-fiction, based around the theme ‘purpose’. For more details and to enter online visit:
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To receive your copy of the beautifully-designed, perfect-bound 132-page print version delivered directly to your door, subscribe now at: www.newphilosopher.com/subscribe ■
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Contributors
Gregg D. Caruso is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning, Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University, and the Co-Director of the Justice Without Retribution Network ( JWRN) at the University of Aberdeen School of Law. His books includ
New Philosopher2 min read
Searching For A Why
As we float on the ocean of life, we may at times be faced with the unsettling question: What’s the point of it all? Psychologists put a gentler spin on it, enquiring what might be our ‘purpose’: In the short time you have, what would you like to get
New Philosopher2 min read
The Characteristic Activity Of Life
Well, do the carpenter and the tanner have characteristic activities and actions, and a human being none? Has nature left him without a characteristic activity to perform!? Or, as there seem to be characteristic activities of the eye, the hand, the f
New Philosopher2 min read
Kafkaesque
In A Hunger Artist, one of Franz Kafka’s final short stories, the eponymous artist starves himself for the amusement of crowds. In his heyday, the artist drew admiring audiences in all of Europe’s major cities. Eventually his popularity declines, and
New Philosopher2 min readPersonal Growth
A Bovine Existence
“Nature,” wrote Jeremy Bentham, “has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.” Thus, for Bentham, the supreme good is to minimise pain and maximise pleasure – or, as he put it in his famous maxim, “the good is
New Philosopher2 min readPersonal Growth
Following Our Purpose
If your happiness were represented by a pie chart, about 40 per cent of your happiness, just under half the pie, consists of what you do – that is, the activities that fill up your days – suggests research on ‘sustainable happiness’ by academics Kenn
New Philosopher1 min readMedical
Purpose Anxiety
People who possess a higher sense of purpose tend to live longer, according to a report in the February/ March 2016 Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine. Researchers reviewed 10 studies involving more than 136,000 people and eval
New Philosopher5 min readPersonal Growth
Does Having A Purpose In Life Make Us Happy?
Before John Major’s government converted Britain’s erstwhile polytechnics into universities in the 1990s, higher education in Britain was strictly a two-tier affair. Universities, channelling the now-distant model of Grecian gymnasia – still snooty a
New Philosopher2 min read
Purpose
During an 8.5 year period of The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), only 9 per cent of the high wellbeing category died, compared to 29 per cent in the lowest category. According to Andrew Steptoe of University College London, based on res
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We Must Imagine Sisyphus As Having Met Camus
Author/illustrator: Corey Mohler, Existential Comics. For more comics visit existentialcomics.com ■
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Seeking Purpose
“Have we vanquished an enemy?” the legendary English mountaineer George Mallory once asked about his perilous, and finally fatal, expeditions. “None but ourselves.” “Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No… and
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What’s Philosophy For?
Once a year, my university hosts an open day for (mostly) high school students who are considering what they might like to study after graduation. Over the course of the day I’ll speak to many students – and their parents – who like the idea of study
New Philosopher2 min read
Purpose
“You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement.” - Woodrow Wilson “Purpose has no place in biology, but history has no meaning without it.” - George Kubler “There is su
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Tragic And Ridiculous
“Oh, I know it’s an absurd situation,” the doctor at the heart of Albert Camus’s novel The Plague says as the epidemic around him escalates, “but we’re all involved in it, and we’ve got to accept it as it is.” Camus’s 1947 novel has found new readers
New Philosopher2 min readPsychology
A Purposeful Life
Explorations of Chinese concepts of purpose indicate that one’s sense of purpose is divided into senses of professional, moral, and social purpose. In Korea, youth were found to view purpose as less an individual pursuit to be undertaken, and more
New Philosopher5 min read
Bad Attitude
Studs Terkel, the great oral historian, begins his definitive book on working life in 1970s America with Mike Lefevre, a 37-year-old labourer in a steel mill near Chicago. Lefevre describes himself as a mule, doing “strictly muscle work”. When a fore
New Philosopher8 min readMotivational
Self-actualisation
Any of the physiological needs and the consummatory behaviour involved with them serve as channels for all sorts of other needs as well. That is to say, the person who thinks he is hungry may actually be seeking more for comfort, or dependence, than
New Philosopher1 min read
Purpose In Life Test
Instructions: Write the number (1 to 5) next to each statement that is most true for you right now. ■
New Philosopher2 min readMotivational
Hierarchy Of Needs
1 There are at least five sets of goals, which we may call basic needs. These are briefly physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualisation. In addition, we are motivated by the desire to achieve or maintain the various conditions upon whic
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The Purpose Of Life
Is there a purpose to human life? Philosophers and theologians have argued the issue for millennia.The answer depends on what exactly one is asking. If the question is: “Is there an objective, universal purpose informing and directing human living?”
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Living Philosophy
What is philosophy for you? An indispensable undesirable element of human life. Why is philosophy important? Because it helps to reveal what is hidden. It allows us to see the world around us with new eyes, which may first eventually lead to a c
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Protests¡ What Are They Good For¿
In his 1979 article ‘Symbolic Protest and Calculated Silence’, Thomas E. Hill, Jr. asked a philosophically rich and pragmatically relevant question: Why would someone protest a serious injustice when the protest “cannot reasonably be expected to end
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Purpose /ˈpəːpəs/
1. The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists; 2. (usuallypurposes) A particular requirement or consideration, typically one that is temporary or restricted in scope or extent; 3. A person’s sense of resolve o
New Philosopher10 min read
The Myth Of Sisyphus
Belief in the meaning of life always implies a scale of values, a choice, our preferences. Belief in the absurd, according to our definitions, teaches the contrary. But this is worth examining. Knowing whether or not one can live without appeal is al
New Philosopher6 min read
Wonder And Doubt
The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realise what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can – if I may put it this way – find that Archimedian point, and as soon as I have
New Philosopher19 min read
On Purpose
Before we delve into your ideas about free will, I think it would be helpful to clear up a few common misconceptions people often have about what philosophers are referring to when it comes to free will. Would you mind explaining what ‘free will’ mea
New Philosopher3 min read
Purpose
“It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance
New Philosopher4 min read
The Purpose Of Art
Does art have a purpose? What’s the purpose shared by a Beethoven late quartet, a photograph by Cindy Sherman, a poem by T.S. Eliot, Duchamp’s Fountain, and a novel by James Baldwin? The simple answer to this is that the question assumes we can defin
New Philosopher2 min readPsychology
What Matters?
The Pew Center asked adults in the US to write, in their own words, about the things that give them a sense of meaning and satisfaction with their lives. The survey report states that “respondents mentioned many different topics, with family emerging
New Philosopher13 min readPersonal Growth
Looking For Meaning In Life
1988 Fellow, British Psychological Society 2001 Fellow, Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) 2003 Member, Academia Europaea (MAE) 2007 Elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) 2010 Fellow, Academy of Behavioral Medicine Res
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My Purpose Holds
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; The long day wanes; the slow moon c
New Philosopher6 min read
Growing And Betraying
“I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school.” Tara Westover spent her childhood in readiness for the imminent apocalypse, with summers spent bottling fruit so tha
New Philosopher2 min read
Family Triptych
Toxic proximity may stunt but does not usually kill a determined young weed. What son would hang around, let alone return? For silent mum in this yarn an entangled life sentence. Don’t ask why till Jesus drops by annual Whine & Messiah Fest. Distance
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Writers’ Award
Word length up to 1500 words, the winner receives $1000 and will have their work published in the next edition of New Philosopher magazine. Award XXVIII: Climate Closes 10 September 2020 Award XXIX: Purpose Closes 10 December 2020 Email your piece
New Philosopher3 min read
Our Library
I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gl
New Philosopher1 min readCrime & Violence
Documentaries
What’s the purpose of prison? Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay’s examination of the US prison system looks at how the country’s history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarcera
New Philosopher2 min readPsychology
Around The Web
In 1972, the first year of the General Social Survey, fathers were over 20 per cent less likely than childless men to report being “very happy”.The happiness premium for dads steadily rose over time. By the time the 2016 survey rolled around, fathers
New Philosopher2 min readPsychology
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Love’s Meaning
Scholar and critic bell hooks argues that loving someone is not a matter of how you feel. Love is something you do, on her view. It is active rather than passive: we choose to love, it’s not something that simply happens to us. hooks is inspired, in
New Philosopher1 min readPsychology
Andrés Roemer
In conversation with Zan Boag Andrés Roemer is UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Social Change and the Free Flow of Knowledge. Illustration by Aida Novoa & Carlos Egan What is your demon? Imbalance. What is the most important part of your education?

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