Philosophy Monkey

After having been unjustly convicted of the bogus charges brought against him in that most infamous and influential of trials, Socrates was asked to propose a penalty for himself. Defying everyone's expectations (exile, paying a fine, delivering a public...

Ever since I first watched Memento and its fascinating exploration of the philosophical question of personal identity as constituted by memory through time, film director Christopher Nolan has been on my radar. And, Insomnia aside, he has consistently...

The philosophical problem of evil—the question of how the existence of unnecessary suffering is possible in a world created and sustained by an all-powerful, all-knowing and benevolent deity—has vexed theologians and philosophers for millennia.
Apologists have attempted to vindicate God's goodness in various versions of what is known as theodicy. One of the most famous was articulated by the Enlightenment polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Given that he thought the existence of contingent...

Life is hard enough as it is. Existence, in many ways, is suffering. Obviously, some have it much worse than others, and that matters, but at some point in our lives we all experience pain, disease, loss, betrayal. We struggle with existential angst...