The Crisis of Fake News Isn’t News At All

Technological Change, Skepticism of Authority, and Relentless Politicization Have Always Undermined the Power of Facts

To be human is to have cognitive bias. And these human biases—and the institutions that benefit from promoting these biases—have fueled the current epidemic of fake news and the rejection of scientific data, said panelists at a Zócalo/Getty event titled “Did Truth Ever Matter?”

The three panelists—New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, Boston University philosopher Lee McIntyre, and RAND Corporation political scientist Jennifer Kavanagh—confronted the evening’s topic from perspectives ranging from the artistic to the scientific. Sandy Banks, former columnist for the Los Angeles Times, moderated the discussion before a full house at …

No, We Do Not Have a “Nihilist” in the White House

Far From Being “Mindless,” This Nineteenth Century Philosophy Requires a Deliberate, Desperate Awareness of the Horror of Our Condition 

There has been, quite literally, much ado about nothing of late. Shadowing the rise of Donald Trump is the rise of what Friedrich Nietzsche called the “uncanniest of guests”—namely, nihilism. …

The Philosopher Who Coined the Term ‘Nationalism’ Also Preached Inclusivity

275 Years Ago, Johann Gottfried Herder Imagined Nations Forming Around a Common Language and Culture, Not a Common Enemy

Since the French Revolution, a brilliant cast of ideologies has starred on the world stage, ranging from conservatism to liberalism to communism. Yet the -ism that has been most resilient, …

How an Ancient Greek Notion of Goodness Can Help Us Live Right in the Modern Age

As the Anglo-Irish Writer Iris Murdoch Learned From Plato, by Overcoming Our Egotistical Desires We Can Find a Higher Truth 

By swotting the classics of Western morality, can one learn to be good? Philosophy is having a pop culture moment thanks to The Good Place, a sitcom about people in …

When Is It Right (or Wrong) to Rebel?

Considering Syria Through the Writings of Thomas Hobbes Shows the Promise and Perils of Revolution

When protesters confronted the autocrats of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria early in 2011, many liberally minded people around the world hailed this Arab Spring as a moment of great …

Why One of France’s ‘Most Subversive’ Philosophers Chose to Work in a Factory

Simone Weil Saw Assembly Line Labor as a Distillation of French Society’s Hierarchies and Inequities

In December 1934, Auguste Detoeuf interviewed an applicant for a job at one of his factories. Ordinarily, Detoeuf did not make hiring decisions—he was, after all, the director of Alsthom, …