by Chris Waldburger. Also published on his Substack
With this piece, Chris Waldburger begins a series in which he examines the philosophical underpinnings and ramifications of the Covid Event. He begins by looking again at the ways in which Nietzsche…Michel Houellebecq’s sexual apocalypse
Looking back, the National Public Radio building in midtown Manhattan felt like the centre of a dying world. I was set to appear on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, where, two days before my 33rd birthday, I would join the …
William MacAskill’s ineffective altruism
In Ray Bradbury’s short story, A Sound of Thunder, the anti-hero, Eckels, is a customer of Time Safari, Inc. (“1. You name the animal. 2. We take you there. 3. You shoot it”). The firm promises to take him back …
Bob Dylan has no philosophy
This is something special, obviously. Consider, for a moment, the author’s credentials. Pelé knows a lot about playing football, as does Floyd Mayweather about boxing, but do they have the chops to transfer their instinctive and acquired expertise into the …
Episode 431 – Unknown Unknowns
What you don’t know won’t hurt you . . . maybe. But it could change your mind about things you believe to be true. We all know this, of course, but do we really keep it in mind when we …
The philosophy of Count Dracula
Those visiting Romania for the first time will often be told that its association with vampires is really an unfair imposition, having mostly to do with Bram Stoker’s invention of a Transylvanian setting for his 1897 novel, Dracula. His tale, …
Charles will be our Perennialist King
King Charles III has often been accused of heresy. As the Prince of Wales, his early support of environmental activism and his (tenuous) involvement in the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset marked him out as a dissenter who might break …
Effective altruism is the new woke
Around 2014, I started to notice that something was up in academic philosophy. Geeky researchers from fancy universities, having first made their names in abstract and technical domains such as metaphysics, were now recreating themselves as public-facing ethicists. Knowing some …
What is it like to be a dolphin?
Imagine you are at the seaside. Sunlight is hitting the surface of the ocean. Some wavelengths of light pass into the water, while others bounce off it, scattering in all directions. A tiny fraction of reflected light happens to reach …
The timeless beauty of Novalis
Penelope Fitzgerald, until her death in 2000, was, by a country mile, my favourite living author. Her novels offer a view of life the wisdom of which is belied by the physical slenderness of the texts. I love all her …
How to save sex
“Is it okay if I touch you?” Half an hour after I’d started chatting with this guy on Grindr he was in my bedroom, beginning a series of questions meant to lead from touching to any number of other acts. …
Where is the moral case for abortion?
The question of when human life begins is like the question of when human life ends: it is a question of values not science. Interviewed by NBC, a woman stood before the Supreme Court building in the US with her …
Your Fitbit has stolen your soul
Philosophers have seldom lived up to the ideal of radical doubt that they often claim as the prime directive of their tradition. They insist on questioning everything, while nonetheless holding onto many pieties. Foremost among these, perhaps, is the commandment …
Why we need fairies
Some years ago, when I was a Man Booker judge, I had a running scrap with one of my fellow judges, David Baddiel. David and I got on well (we all did that year; we even went on holiday together) …
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s war on philosophy
My Cambridge tutor would refuse to shake hands with colleagues out of term because of some medieval university statute which nobody else had ever heard of. I wrote about it for UnHerd and an outraged reader from South Carolina writes …