Concepts

This Day in Philosophy — 10 August: the birth of Jean-François Lyotard

The French philosopher who defined 'the postmodern condition' and announced the end of grand narratives was born on 10 August 1924.

Nietzsche's genealogy: asking what our values are worth

The Genealogy does not set out to refute morality; it reminds us that morality has a history. Master and slave, ressentiment, bad conscience and the ascetic ideal — and the long afterlife of the method, from Nietzsche to Foucault.

Friedrich Nietzsche

This Day in Philosophy — 9 August: the death of Ernst Haeckel

Darwin's loudest voice in Germany, the man who coined the word 'ecology' and turned monism into a world-view, Ernst Haeckel died at Jena on 9 August 1919.

Plato's cave: what does an allegory told for two thousand years actually say?

The allegory of the cave in Book VII of the Republic sets out the difference between knowledge and appearance. Why it is invoked so often in arguments about screens, algorithms and information.

This Day in Philosophy — 7 August: Tagore dies, Goodman is born

Rabindranath Tagore died in Calcutta on 7 August 1941. On the same day in 1906, Nelson Goodman, who rebuilt the philosophy of induction and of art, was born.

This Day in Philosophy — 6 August: the death of Theodor Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno, the best-known figure of the Frankfurt School, died in Switzerland on 6 August 1969. Nicolas Malebranche was born on the same date in 1638.