The Philosopher

In the opening essay, Elvira Basevich considers what it means to be an agent, especially under non-ideal conditions; Joel Michael Reynolds asks why we still judge the worth of a person, and even entire groups, based on their bodies; Nima Bassiri explores the consequences of the fact that the brain has become the truth of the self; Minna Salami asks what theories of desire would look like if women were makers, rather than bearers, of meaning; John Danaher offers an account of the combination of hype and fear surrounding the idea of human enhancement; Carrie Jenkins critiques the way that (a certain kind of) romantic love comes to define what a good life looks like; Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed considers whether madness is a pure deficit or whether it can have value; Francey Russell asks whether accounts of self-knowledge can illuminate both our self-opacity and our inescapable, essential self-consciousness; Kris Sealey shows how the racialization central to modernity orients otherness in terms of what is human and what is humanity’s “other”; Finn Mackay reviews the history of queer activism and queer theory, while situating this history in the context of our current fraught political situation; Kristina Lepold traces a line of thinking from Hegel to Axel Honneth that considers recognition to be necessary for the experience of true freedom; and, Kieran Setiya tries to reconcile the idea that philosophers aspire to knowledge with the idea that their temperaments determine what they think. Finally, Samira Abbassy’s wonderful paintings draw on her personal experiences of migration and dislocation, using the canvas as a mirror of inclusion, a place to contextualize herself and establish her identity.