Philosophers have always enjoyed asking awkward and provocative questions, such as: What is the nature of reality? What are human beings really like? What is special about the human mind and consciou

René Descartes is famous as the philosopher who was prepared to doubt everything- even his own physical existence. Most people also know that he said ‘I think, therefore I am’, even if they are not a

Illustrated guide to the crucial French philosopher who denied bring a philosopher at all. ‘I am like no one else in the whole world …’ Thus begins Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s defiant Confessions – an au

Father of existentialism or the Eeyore of philosophy? Known as the first modern theologian, Søren Kierkegaard was a prolific writer of the Danish ‘golden age’. A philosopher, poet and social criti

What is the place of individual choice and consequence in a post-Holocaust world of continuing genocidal ethnic cleansing? Is "identity" now a last-ditch cultural defence of ethnic nationalisms and c

Bertrand Russell changed Western philosophy forever. He tackled many puzzles—how our minds work, how we experience the world, and what the true nature of meaning is. In Introducing Bertrand Russell w