Category: Authors
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Uses of Philosophy
Critical and Postcritical Interventions in the Philosophical Canon Introduction This paper encourages academic philosophers in the Netherlands[1] to consider three questions: What do we study and teach? How do we study and teach? And why do we study and teach? The answer to the first question is no longer self-evident. For the past few decades,…
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The Communist and Their Rolex
Imagine for a moment that you are a communist. One evening you arrive at one of your local communist organisation’s meetings, eager to quote Marx back and forth with your comrades until the sun rises. But then you see something that makes your heart sink; from underneath the cuff of a neatly ironed Brooks Brothers…
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Virtual Presence and Descartes’ Last Stand
Are we fully ‘present’ in a virtual world when we are playing in VR? Or does a VR headset finally turn us into the detached spectators Descartes always said we were? According to Hubert Dreyfus, the epistemological concerns that were largely abandoned by philosophers in the twentieth century, have become very relevant again in the…
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The Expiration Date of Human Rights: Rights of the Living and the Dead
Introduction Mexico has been dealing with a forensic crisis for years. The crisis, which allegedly began in 2006 at the beginning of the war against drug trafficking, continues to worsen every year. More than 111,000 persons were registered missing in October 2023 in the interior ministry’s database, not including the many persons who went missing…
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The Earth as Human Condition: Against Negative Worldbuilding in the Anthropocene
In this essay, we will use two thinkers that are not normally associated with debates surrounding the Anthropocene: Hannah Arendt and Achille Mbembe. Even though both of them are predominantly political thinkers, we think their ideas are a good avenue to explore when thinking about the Anthropocene. We aim to do three things within this…
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Dress to Impress: Communicating Knowledge and Power Through Fashion
If he had not worn that borrowed blazer from Princeton University, Dickie Greenleaf would not be dead. In the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Thomas Ripley fakes having attended Princeton to be accepted into the high society of New York. As part of his ruse, he flies out to Italy to visit Dickie Greenleaf,…
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The (Un)freedom of Dutch Housing
In the Netherlands, there is a housing crisis. This fact has been so unanimously agreed upon that it even became one of the main spearpoints in the 2023 Dutch elections under the moniker of ‘bestaanszekerheid’, or security of living (NOS 2023). The main problems that make up this crisis are the scarcity of available housing…
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Into the Mirror World
Naomi Klein’s new book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World (2023), begins with Klein sharing an incident on social media where she was mistaken for Naomi Wolf, a feminist thinker who shifted her views to becoming a conspiracy theorist and engaging with very right-wing thinkers and public figures. This all took place around when…
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An Interview with Herman Westerink on Hopes, Freud and Dreams
Herman Westerink is Associate and Endowed Professor of Metaphysics and Philosophical Anthropology at Radboud University. A significant portion of his research is dedicated to Freudian psychoanalysis, alongside his studies in the philosophy of religion. Following his participation in a public lecture at Radboud Reflects, titled ‘What Are Dreams Made Of’, we decided to interview Herman…
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Animal Citizenship in Gene Drive Ethics
An Evaluative Application of Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Citizenship Framework to Human Intervention and Management of Non-Humans in Gene Drive Engineering Introduction Increasing interest in methods of conserving non-human animals has emerged in light of the ever-growing Red List of Endangered Species. The Red List appraises each species on a series of standards in its scientific…