A Letter From London, Where a Philosopher Ponders Self-Isolation, the Social Contract, and When the Pubs Will Reopen

The Current Crisis Is Forcing Londoners to Decide What Kind of City They Want to Live In

It has now been more than 20 weeks since the start of some form of lockdown for Londoners. As we slowly come to terms with the relaxing of restrictions and hesitantly discover which formerly “everyday” activities are no longer on hold (if not illegal), we are also starting to reflect on what has happened to us this year. As a teacher and writer of philosophy, I have been trying to make sense of the situation.

One of my favorite philosophers is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who is widely regarded as the foremost …

by Chris Bloor | August 14, 2020

Why Hawaiian Pidgin English Is Thriving Today

Continuously Evolving, the Language Gives Its Diverse Speakers a Common History and Shared Values

by Kianoosh Hashemzadeh | May 22, 2019

The origins of the Hawaiian pidgin language reflect the history and diversity of the islands. First used in the mid-19th century by the sugarcane laborers who spoke Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, …

How Moving to England Cured My ‘American Verbal Inferiority Complex’

The Beauty of Rule-Based American English Is That It's More Democratic Than the Brits' Version

By Lynne Murphy | April 17, 2018

I had lived in England for three years when Eats, Shoots and Leaves struck in 2003. English writer Lynne Truss’ “zero tolerance approach to pronunciation” became a British publishing phenomenon—helped …

Chimpanzee Behavior Isn’t Just Monkey Business. It’s Culture.

Grooming, Using Tools, and Fishing for Termites Show the Humanity of Our Primate Cousins

By Craig Stanford | March 14, 2018

In 1961, famed primatologist Jane Goodall discovered that wild chimpanzees were fashioning tools from sticks and using them to fish termites out of their nests—revolutionizing our understanding of culture and …

The Sanitized Rhetoric That Makes Nuclear War More Likely

To Rid the Planet of Atomic Weapons, We Should Dismantle the Language That Makes Them Possible

By Paul Carroll | February 1, 2018

The nuclear age began 73 years ago when a brilliant, terrible flash lit up the pre-dawn sky in the New Mexico desert. That first explosion at the Trinity site in …

The Austrian Philosopher Who Showed That Words Can Spark Humanism—or Barbarism

Ludwig Wittgenstein Saw Language as a "Game," and Whoever Makes the Rules Holds the Power

By Christopher Phillips | January 31, 2018

Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian-British philosopher and logician, famously coined the term “language-game”—a term meant, as he writes in his Philosophical Investigations (1953), “to bring into prominence the fact that the …

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