Contemporary Philosophers

Briana Toole: does who knows change what is known?

Toole has carried standpoint epistemology back into contemporary debate, and she is also the founder of Corrupt the Youth, a programme that takes philosophy into disadvantaged schools. A single thesis binds the two: knowledge is not independent of the position of the knower.

Badiou's Nietzsche seminar reaches print as 'Anti-Philosophy 1'

Columbia University Press published the first volume of Alain Badiou's seminars on anti-philosophy in June. For Badiou, Nietzsche is not a philosopher at all but an 'anti-philosopher' — a thinker who attacks philosophy from the outside.

Alain Badiou, Friedrich Nietzsche

Agamben's Heidegger notebooks published: the Le Thor seminars

The notes Giorgio Agamben took at Heidegger's Le Thor seminars in Provence in 1966 and 1968 have appeared as 'The Time of Thinking'. Zone Books has also reissued the philosopher's collection 'Profanations'.

Giorgio Agamben

Catherine Malabou receives an honorary doctorate from Leiden: 'The plasticity of the unconditional'

The French philosopher received an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on 9 February 2026. Her public lecture the following day started from Derrida's idea of the 'unconditional university' and asked what has become of it.

Catherine Malabou

Sloterdijk's book on Europe appears in English as The Continent Without Qualities

The German philosopher's essays on Europe have now appeared in English from Polity, translated by Robert Hughes. The title carries an open allusion to Robert Musil's celebrated novel of a man suspended between possibilities.

Peter Sloterdijk

Appiah receives an honorary doctorate from Yale; his new book 'Captive Gods' is out

The New York University philosopher received the degree of Doctor of Humanities at Yale's 325th commencement. His new book, on religion and the birth of the social sciences, is published by Yale University Press.

Kwame Anthony Appiah

New paper from Chalmers: who are we talking to when we talk to language models?

The philosopher who named the 'hard problem' of consciousness asks whether what we converse with is the model or a character the model is enacting. He does not close the door on machine consciousness.

David Chalmers

Judith Butler at The New School: 'Contemporary fascist passions'

Butler gave the keynote at the GSSI Symposium on 23-25 April 2026. In February she spoke to an audience of some two hundred at WashU on 'Who's Afraid of Gender?'.

Judith Butler

Miranda Fricker gives the Uehiro Lectures at Oxford: 'Moral Pressures'

The philosopher who named epistemic injustice used the 2026 Uehiro Lectures to examine how moral demands shape people. She also gave this year's Dewey Lectures at Columbia.

Miranda Fricker