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PHILOSOPHERS NEWSContemporary philosophers · ideas · books
Michel Serres was born on 1 September 1930; Stanley Cavell on 1 September 1926. One brought philosophy together with science and myth, the other with cinema and ordinary language. Two thinkers born on the same day did the same work by different routes: opening philosophy's border with something from outside it.
Newsroom · 1 September 2026
Hermann von Helmholtz was born on 31 August 1821; his account of perception as a system of signs took Kant into the laboratory. On the same day in 1867, Baudelaire, who gave the word 'modernité' its present sense, died in Paris. Both were born in 1821, and both asked what the modern eye sees.
The Scottish department marked for closure this summer has forced a retreat after a campaign. But the victory is conditional: the programme survives only in reduced form. This is the first time the wave of closures has been turned back, and it shows which argument can defend a philosophy department.
The Chicago philosopher objects, in Open Socrates, to the familiar portrait: Socrates was not a sceptic but an intellectualist. In conversation with Merve Emre she explains why the distinction matters — and why philosophy cannot be done on one's own.
The Oxford political theorist traces the assault on American research back to a settlement made in 1950: science was defended as a domain outside politics, and that is precisely why it now stands exposed. Her proposal runs the other way — politicise science further.
The Hume scholar who put trust at the centre of moral philosophy made a proposal about academic assessment thirty years ago: judge a candidate not on everything they have published but on four papers of their own choosing. Now that machines write for nothing, it is back.
The philosopher who has pressed the most persistent objection to the moralising of political philosophy returns to the problem of orientation in a new collection from Polity. The title alludes to Heidegger's image of the forest path: most of them lead nowhere, but they become paths by being walked.
The American Philosophical Association's prize picks its winners not for what they agree on but for what they do not. This year it goes to Felipe De Brigard and Sarah Robins — both philosophers of memory, and each with a different view of what memory is.
