https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benedictus_Spinoza._Line_engraving_by_W._Pobuda_after_(A._P._Wellcome_V0005578.jpg

Nice Guy Spinoza Finishes…First?

The Dutch Jewish philosopher Spinoza died in 1677, which is when the battle to define his life—and work—began.
illustration of a woman's body on abstract blob background

Do You Own Your Body?

The idea that our bodies are our own may be intuitive, but when it comes to market transactions like surrogacy, our beliefs and feelings get more complicated.
An illustration of two people talking

What Is Intellectual Humility?

Almost all of us are far more confident in ourselves than we probably should be. If we humbly admit this, does it improve how we deal with conflict?
The School of Athens (detail) featuring Euclid by Raphael

Data: Not Just Another Four-Letter Word

For early modern theologians, data were assumptions of truths for which there was no need for explanation. How things—and data—have changed.
Albert Camus in the garden of his Paris studio, 1952.

The Existentialism of Style vs. Substance

Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir were misread, misunderstood, and misperceived by English-speaking readers due to interventions of publishers and editors.
Covers for Plusieurs vies by Rachid O.; l’Enfant de sable by Tahar Ben Jelloun; and Une mélancolie arabe by Abdellah Taïa

Queer Literature from North Africa and the Maghreb: A Reading List

Theoretical and literary works that explore themes of queerness, identity, and resistance within the context of North Africa and the Maghreb.
Image showing the sixty-four hexagrams from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.

The I Ching in America

Europeans translated the Chinese Book of Changes in the nineteenth century, but the philosophy really took off in the West after 1924.
Christ's Descent into Hell by Hieronymus Bosch

Fire and Brimstone

If our conception of hell was absent from Christianity at the time the religion was born, whence exactly does it hail?
Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch

The European MonEUlith: Nietzsche and Nationalism

What can Nietzche’s geophilosophical modes of thought offer us for understanding globalization in his time and pan-European politics today?
Ganesa writing the Mahabharat, dictated by Vyasa. Page from an illustrated manuscript of the Mahabharata

The South Asian Human Rights Tradition

Human rights discourse drawing on ancient Sanskrit texts focuses more on the responsibilities of individuals and states than on the rights themselves.