Ethics

Philosophy books for autumn 2026: algorithms, ethics and a new Zarathustra

The September-October lists of the university presses are out. Philippe Huneman's critique of profiling, Stephen Batchelor's comparison of the Buddha and Socrates, and Stanford's Nietzsche volume stand out.

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

A philosophy journal has published a largely AI-written article

The text of the article in Philosophy & Public Affairs was written by Claude; the thesis came from Simon Goldstein of the University of Hong Kong, who edited the piece. The decision has opened a debate about what authorship means in the field.

Alasdair MacIntyre's legacy: why did virtue ethics come back?

The author of After Virtue died in 2025 at the age of 96. His thesis that the modern moral vocabulary is a heap of unintelligible fragments is still being argued over.

Alasdair MacIntyre

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

The hero of Paul Schrader's new film is a philosophy professor

'The Basics of Philosophy', directed by Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader, screens out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on 4 September. At its centre is a philosophy professor living with the guilt of a decision made long ago.

AI companies are hiring philosophers

Demand for people with a philosophy training is rising on ethics, reasoning and safety teams. Luciano Floridi describes the move from departments to technology companies as a 'haemorrhage'.

Luciano Floridi

Kant's categorical imperative: can morality rest on a single principle?

Immanuel Kant looks for the measure of moral rightness not in consequences but in the principle of the act. The three formulations of the categorical imperative, and why they are still argued about.

Schwitzgebel and Pober: consciousness may not be specific to carbon

A study in Philosophers' Imprint argues that consciousness is 'substrate flexible': it could arise in silicon- or sulphur-based structures that carry enough complexity.

Eric Schwitzgebel, Jeremy Pober