What is a concept? A twenty-two-chapter inquiry from Cambridge

'Concept' is among the words philosophy uses most and questions least. A new Cambridge collection follows its history from ancient Greece to Chinese and Indian thought, from Islamic philosophy to Kant and on to conceptual engineering. The result is less a history of philosophy than philosophy inspecting its own instrument.

Where is philosophy looking? A map of 2026

Philosophy's centre of gravity is moving. Set the past week's calls for papers, new books, prizes and journal articles side by side and the picture is clear enough: the discipline has eight live fronts, and nearly all of them run back to the same three questions.

Schopenhauer: not the creature who suffers but the creature who wants

The label 'gloomy pessimist' fixes on Schopenhauer's weakest side. His real thesis is more disquieting: the source of our unhappiness may not be what the world does to us but the fact that we must always be wanting something. And from there a road runs to compassion.

Thirty years on, Chalmers has not solved the hard problem — but he has kept it alive

When he set out the hard problem of consciousness in 1996, artificial intelligence was still a laboratory matter. In June the book's thirtieth anniversary was debated in Bochum. Chalmers now argues that virtual reality is real, that machine consciousness is possible in principle, and that the real danger lies in erring in the wrong direction.

Eric Schwitzgebel, David Chalmers, Peter Godfrey-Smith

Octopus, bee, crow: the consciousness debate moves beyond the human

The declaration signed in New York in 2024 held that consciousness in birds and mammals enjoys strong scientific support, and that in fishes, reptiles, cephalopods and insects it is 'a realistic possibility'. A conference at Duke in November asks the next question: what is welfare, and how is it measured?

Peter Singer, David Chalmers, Peter Godfrey-Smith

The philosophy books of 2026 in three words: consciousness, prophecy, artificial state

Look at the year's leading books together and a pattern emerges. Pollan maps consciousness; Véliz argues that prediction is an instrument of power rather than of knowledge; and Lepore puts a name to whatever is displacing the nation-state: the Artificial State.

This Day in Philosophy — 4 September: two critics of modern civilisation

Ivan Illich was born on 4 September 1926; Albert Schweitzer died on 4 September 1965. One asked at what point institutions built for people begin to govern them; the other opened the boundary of the moral community to all living things. Both regarded the idea of progress from a critical distance.