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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.
At the end of August the American Philosophical Association gathered philosophy teachers for a two-day forum called 'The Examined Algorithm'. The question beneath the discussion is not cheating: in philosophy, is writing the record of thought, or is it thought itself?
The American Philosophical Association has chosen Kit Fine to deliver the 2027 Nicholas Rescher Prize Lecture. The decision points not to one man but to the fortunes of a field: metaphysics, declared meaningless for much of the twentieth century, is back at the centre of analytic philosophy.
The annual doctoral prizes of the philosophy department at the London School of Economics answer a question most academic prizes leave alone: what exactly is a thesis good at? The stated criteria — originality, technical competence and interdisciplinary contribution — give young researchers a plain map.
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 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 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.
