Sam Dresser
Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche
Sam has been with Aeon since its launch in 2012. He’s most interested in how to do philosophy and in the continental/analytic divide. History and politics are also amusing to him. He considers Evelyn Waugh to be a very funny writer and enjoys pubs more than he should.
Written by Sam Dresser
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Thinkers and theories
Peak ellipsis
Does philosophy reside in the unsayable or should it care only for precision? Carnap, Heidegger and the great divergence
Sam Dresser
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Anthropology
The meaning of Margaret Mead
Mead argued that non-Western cultures offered alternative (often better) ways to be human. Why was she so vilified for it?
Sam Dresser
idea
Thinkers and theories
Freud versus Jung: a bitter feud over the meaning of sex
Sam Dresser
idea
History of ideas
How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free
Sam Dresser
Edited by Sam Dresser
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Language and linguistics
Our language, our world
Linguistic relativity holds that your worldview is structured by the language you speak. Is it true? History shines a light
James McElvenny
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Thinkers and theories
We’ll meet again
The intrepid logician Kurt Gödel believed in the afterlife. In four heartfelt letters to his mother he explained why
Alexander T Englert
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Philosophy of mind
What colour do you see?
New research is uncovering the hidden differences in how people experience the world. The consequences are unsettling
Gary Lupyan
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War and peace
The two Chomskys
The US military’s greatest enemy worked in an institution saturated with military funding. How did it shape his thought?
Chris Knight
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Ethics
Ethics has no foundation
Ethical values can be both objective and knowable – torture really is wrong – yet not need any foundation outside themselves
Andrew Sepielli
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Philosophy of mind
What is it like to be a crab?
Consciousness science should move past a focus on complex mammalian brains to study the behaviour of ‘simpler’ animals
Kristin Andrews
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Values and beliefs
How traditions progress
The colourful Swiss sport of stone putting illuminates Aristotle’s insights into the shortcomings of conservative thought
Daniel Kranzelbinder
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Cities
Sick city
My dad grew up in Robert Moses’s New York City. His story is a testament to how urban planning shapes countless lives
Katie Mulkowsky
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History of ideas
Whither philosophy?
The discipline today finds itself precariously balanced between incomprehensible specialisation and cheap self-help
Siobhan Lyons
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Space exploration
The final ethical frontier
Earthbound exploration was plagued with colonialism, exploitation and extraction. Can we hope to make space any different?
Philip Ball
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Thinkers and theories
The great, forgotten Wolff
Written for laymen, read by women and kings, Christian Wolff’s mathematical method made him a key Enlightenment philosopher
Michael Walschots
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Political philosophy
In the interests of all
How Eugene V Debs turned American republicanism against the chiefs of capitalism – and became a true crusader for freedom
Tom O’Shea