Problems and ideas

Follow how philosophical problems change across historical settings and contemporary discussions.

• Emptiness in Buddhist philosophy

  An overview of emptiness as a challenge to reifying persons and things, beginning with two Indian Buddhist approaches and linking into their distinct arguments and purposes.

  Guiding question: What does it mean to say that persons or things are empty, and what philosophical work is that claim meant to do?

  Current scope: The current thread compares one argument associated with Nāgārjuna and one associated with Vasubandhu, then identifies live disputes about interpreting their projects.

• Free will

  An overview of changing accounts of human freedom and responsibility under fate, grace, natural causation, and moral law, with links into the arguments behind them.

  Guiding question: What would it take for human beings to act freely and be responsible for what they do?

  Current scope: The current historical sequence samples Stoic argument and practice, Augustine, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant, followed by a dated view of selected contemporary debates.

• Justice and political order

  A philosophy-first journey from early-modern social contract arguments to twentieth-century disputes over rights, distribution, property, equality, tradition, and legitimate authority.

  Guiding question: What makes coercive institutions and distributions legitimate, and what does justice demand beyond formal consent?

  Current scope: The sequence concentrates on Hobbes and Rousseau as early-modern contract theorists, Ambedkar's test of constitutional equality, and selected twentieth-century liberal, libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian arguments.