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PHILOSOPHERS NEWSContemporary philosophers · ideas · books
Edward Coke died on 3 September 1634; Oliver Cromwell on 3 September 1658. One wrote that the king stands under the law; the other executed the king and failed to build a lasting order in his place. Two deaths on the same date hold the founding question of modern political philosophy from both ends.
Newsroom · 3 September 2026
Two philosophers in Singapore have launched the first international competition for philosophy papers written by artificial intelligence. David Chalmers and John Hawthorne sit on the panel. The real argument, though, is not about the prize money: what is the criterion for a good philosophical text, and who sets it?
David Chalmers
J. G. A. Pocock changed the rules for the history of political thought. He asked not what philosophers thought but which language let them think it. His notion of 'political languages' shows that what a text can say is settled in advance — and it applies to today's arguments too.
Christian Tornau, a Latinist at Würzburg, has identified two previously unknown sermons by Augustine in a monastic manuscript held in Poland. Their subject is the Witch of Endor summoning a dead prophet — which is to say, the question of whether God is omnipotent. The sermons give no answer; they leave the congregation to think.
The world congress of logic, methodology and philosophy of science has met every four years since 1960. The eighteenth is at Kobe University in August 2027. The call for papers is open — and the single word added to the congress's name tells you how the field has changed in a quarter of a century.
His name turned into an adjective: 'Machiavellian'. Yet he spent most of his life defending a republic, gave his longest book to the wisdom of the people, and wrote The Prince in exile and out of work. His radicalism lies not in immorality but in treating politics as a field of knowledge separate from morality.
Amy Olberding, who works on Confucian ethics, meant to write a cool-headed book about grief when she took over the family farm in the Ozarks. She could not manage it. The book that emerged is also about the class mask that academic philosophy quietly demands — and the title comes from that mask.
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In its forty-fifth volume, the Philosopher's Annual has named the ten best papers of 2025. The range runs from racial capitalism to Malebranche on the passions, from harm in pregnancy to a defence of Bayesianism. The objections to the selection are more interesting still.
