Reading seems like a simple, uncomplicated activity that most of us enjoy without thinking too much about it - but how simple is it really? Literary theorists have been arguing for decades over what it is to read, what it is to interpret a text, what it is for something to be a text. This week we're catching up on some of the recent debates.
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Love, compassion and gloom: the contradictions of Arthur Schopenhauer
It's been said that the work of the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer should come with a health warning, so stark and pessimistic was his outlook on life. And the man was no less confronting than the philosophy: he could be rude, intemperate and misanthropic. But a new biography of Schopenhauer shows him to have been a more complex and even endearing figure than his reputation might suggest.
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Poverty and punishment
The 2023 Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme exposed a system that unfairly (and illegally) subjected vulnerable people to stress and trauma - but was it deliberately punitive? And to what extent does our welfare system reflect negative public attitudes toward people living in poverty?
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Knowledge, culture and parenting apps
There's an app for everything these days, including parenting and childrearing - but at what cost? Women in the Global South are increasingly using parenting apps, whose Western developers say their advice is scientific and reliable. But that modern, scientific advice is edging out older, traditional childrearing wisdom and causing intergenerational tension.
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The contradictions of democracy
Democracy is a powerful force for progress, but it's also vulnerable and beset by its own internal contradictions. Plato thought that democracy was a bad idea, as it gave unmerited power to the ignorant and the malevolent. Looking around the world today, can we confidently say he was wrong?
The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
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