Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
Read MoreYesterday (June 14th) was a great day for teachers of Philosophy in secondary schools. Not only did SOAS release their Decolonising the Philosophy Curriculum Toolkit, but it was the 2nd annual conference of the Association of Philosophy Teachers (APT)…
Read More“As a self-identified punk since my teenage years, I am very used to feeling shame about watching the Eurovision Song Contest each year, and even hiding the fact from people who know me…“
Read More“This is not just Hollywood stuff. This is not just the entertainment business. This is all work under capitalism.“
Read More“The entire UK political system operates, arguably, on a mission to intentionally create a permissive environment for the perpetual violence of the state, for its intolerance of disorder and dissent, and for its hatred of alternatives.“
After many years of weekly posts every Monday during term-time at 6am, I have decided to ease up the pressure on myself to write something new each week just for the sake of it and, as of March 2024, will no longer be posting a new essay to PU every Monday morning.
There I was - a Sunday afternoon, void of ideas again, scratching my head in order to produce something, anything, for you readers to enjoy, when I realised a far better alternative might be to take Wittgenstein’s advice and simply not write anything at all: whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.
Clues have abounded in recent titles - Burn It Down, Reaching Rock Bottom, Inferring the End… While writing to a deadline can be, and has been, energising and fun, I feel it can also eventually lead to a scraping of the bottom of the barrel of ideas just so that something is there to publish each week. Although I have endeavoured to maintain the quality of each post, I am finding myself publishing on here these days because I have set the deadline, rather than publishing because I have something that I really want to say.
I still intend to post on here regularly - just no longer every week. Sometimes it might be several times a week if inspiration strikes, other times I might be silent for months. Who knows? But after five years and 180 posts, with very few submissions from other writers to help ease the burden, I realise that my own sanity and happiness each weekend is worth more to me now than meeting a self-imposed deadline that I’m not convinced anyone even cares about but me.
Read More“Philosophy is difficult. But it is only as difficult as we choose to make it. Rigorous thinking does not have to be alienating. It does not have to speak a secretive and opaque language different from the way non-philosophers speak. That is a choice, not a necessity. Nor too should academic specialisation and disciplinary complexity be mistaken as necessary components of philosophy. Navel-gazing is still just navel-gazing, even when it props up an entire job market. So too is self-interested gatekeeping intended to preserve a questionable system rather than make it accessible to the masses.“
Read More“We had seen the signs that things weren’t going well. That the wheels were falling off a bit. And we had made the inference - this place was going out of business. And the inference was right.“
Read More“As a Jew, I want to live in a world without anti-Semitism. I also want to live in a world with a free Palestine. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, or in tension with each other. And we need to ask questions of motivation from those repeatedly peddling the myth that they are.”
Well that went fast! Just a five week half-term. But hopefully you enjoyed the handful of new PU posts you got in that short period and, if you’re missing your fix this week there’s not only our complete archive to look at, but I have a new paper out in the Journal of Philosophy of Education about why punishment in schools is unjustified. We’ll be back Monday February 19th with something new…
Read More“I guess what I am really doing is posing the following thought experiment: do you think a sober society would have sat by and done nothing for twenty-four years as their country failed to meet even the most basic standards of functioning anymore? And does the fact that England is not a sober society give us some explanation as to why the English have seemingly done exactly that?“
Read More“those who cling on to the old ways things were need more than an appeal to their personally liking the old standards to maintain them. They need to explain why keeping the bias, and the inequality and lack of inclusion those biased standards cause, is more important to them than making things better.“
Read More“is Madonna’s late start really “unconscionable, unfair, and/or deceptive”? In philosophical terms: are such late start times, different from those advertised, genuinely immoral?“
Read More“It is epistemically wild to watch how fellow human beings construct seemingly viable theories of knowledge out of the flimsiest of observations and inferences.“
As the bloke from Slade says: ‘it’s Chriiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssstmas’ and that means I’m taking a long break to recharge after a big old year (new job, new book, new album) and will see you good people in the new year. Philosophy Unleashed will be back on Monday January 15th. Until then: enjoy the archives.
Read More“I’ve got to be honest folks…I am exhausted. More than that - I’m ill.“
Read More“When you speak to a classroom of teenagers about the possibility that playing violent video games might make them violent, you can immediately see the smirks and ready yourself for their knee-jerk defensiveness. After all, they are the smirks and defensiveness you, yourself, have given in response to the same suggestion your whole life…“
Read More“Sunak’s latest descriptive wish of a ‘safe’ Rwanda is just another modern day Gaunilo’s island: a stark example of the demonstrable failings of the ontological argument’s logic and, perhaps, of the UK Prime Minister’s troubling commitment to perpetuating damaging linguistic fantasies instead of solving actual problems in the real world.”
Read More“When things are so awful everywhere all the time, they lose their impact as being awful. Exploiting children to bring us cheap consumer goods is no longer an outrage, it’s just good business. Taking a home away from someone is just what happens. Another bomb is dropped on Gaza, we hit another year in the Russian invasion of Ukraine - this is just life for those people. We glaze over. We don’t think too much about it. We share some more funny memes and watch videos of people injuring themselves online.“
Read More“Asking for a cease-fire and ending a bloody conflict is the very definition of honouring those who died in the futility of war. Seeking peace instead of violence is the only worthwhile message of “never forget” when we remember those who needlessly lost their lives in wars or else we are forgetting.“
Read More“in a world where there is a very real epistemological threat coming from falling down online rabbit-holes into algorithm-guided conspiracies, we teachers are spending a lot of our own free-time guided by those very same dangerous algorithms as we hunt and click for hours looking for the perfect clips for our students. We then normalise this behaviour to our students“