226 - TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER - Or How To Burst A Bubble
Read More“It’s always worth paying attention when you get your insular little bubbles popped. “
225. NIGHT TERRORS - On the Possibility of Impossible Hauntings
Read More“But seeing no good evidence is not a total dismissal of the possibility. Perhaps “paranormal” occurrences have a natural explanation, but that explanation still goes beyond our current understanding of the nature of reality? “
- October Half Term 2025 -
As always, we’re off for half term. If you want some PU though, to see out the end of October, may I suggest our excellent piece from 2024 on The Traitors and Epistemology (for those of you currently watching Celebrity Traitors): https://www.philosophyunleashed.com/theblog/174-the-traitors-and-epistemology-why-were-all-floundering-in-the-dark-about-knowledge
We’ll be back in November!
224. LIP SERVICE - On the Difficulty of Transforming What is Entrenched
Read More“As Audre Lorde so famously put it: “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Yet schools, as reproducers of the dominant culture of any given society by design, are the very definition of “the master’s house” and it is they which are giving students their useless tools. “
IRONY
After last week’s post asking if continuing this project was worthwhile, I appreciate today’s lack of a new post looks like a definitive answer in the negative. It isn’t. It merely symbolises the incompetence of my internet service provider, who have left me offline for nearly a week. There will be a new post when normal service resumes at home. And if you’re thinking about using EE for your broadband — don’t!
223. WORTHWHILE - A Query Into How I Use my Time
A question in need of your answers…
Read More222. JUSTIFYING FREEDOM - On Assuming Rights We Might Not Have
Read More"Freedom is not as self-evident as these young people seem to think it is, and an appeal to individual freedom is not the knock-down killer argument they seem to think that it is. In a world where are freedoms are routinely curtailed, often for very good collective reasons, the argument that X can’t be allowed because it will take away some freedom or another is simply insufficient."
221. FROM DESPAIR TO WHERE? - Has Philosophy Failed Us?
Read More“The comfort of thinking it can’t happen here is the surest sign that it is already near. Right on your doorstep, right on your street. Amazing how well we can walk in our sleep”
220. HELLO HUMANS - A Teacher Writes on Their Inclusive Classroom
Read More“the bell rang and I could not think of a response in the thirty seconds I had to dismiss the class so left the question unanswered. I have been thinking about a response ever since so I have decided to write this.“
219. CULTURAL COLLAPSE - What Happens When We Lose All Context?
Read More“We are adrift and discombobulated. Deeply so. “
218. FLAGS - Against Lamppost Patriotism
“Once we did have a symbol of the country that used to make me proud:
hotels welcoming those seeking asylum from persecution with open arms.
Now the hotels are being shut down by angry mobs
and all we have in their place are cheap flags tied from lampposts
wilting damply in the rain. “
Read More- SUMMER BREAK 2025 -
As always, Philosophy Unleashed is now on hiatus for the summer. We’ll be back in September with more new philosophy every week during term-time, 6am on a Monday morning. For the next few months, however, there’s always the archive to enjoy!
217. I WAS WRONG: Rejecting Settling For a Better Tone of Oppression
Read More“Watching the Starmer government continue the same performative cruelty as their Tory predecessors for the last twelve months, I have to admit that all my anarchist and other radical critics were right and I was wrong: the tone of our oppression has not changed under Labour. “
Association of Philosophy Teachers Annual Conference 2025: REPORT
Read More“The third annual conference of the Association of Philosophy Teachers (APT) took place on a beautiful June day at the equally beautiful St Dominic’s Sixth Form College in Harrow last Friday…“
216. HAS WORLD WAR III STARTED? - On Defining Conflict
Read More“My students, raised on Remembrance Sundays and Lest We Forgets, are therefore asking me “do you think there’s going to be another world war?”
And I want to assure them that there won’t be, but my initial gut response is to ask instead how sure they are that we’re not already having one?“
215. IT’S OK TO END THINGS - On Saying No Under Capitalism
Read More““I’d prefer not to” - the catchphrase of Melville’s scrivener, Bartleby, is a slogan of privilege. And yet it shouldn’t be. “It’s ok to end things”. And yet for many under capitalism, ending some things are impossible.”
214. I'M GOING FOR A WALK - Connecting and Disconnecting from Nature
Read More“We take these walks through nature, I think, on some deep level, to remind ourselves that the majority of our lives are illusions. That nothing is permanent and eventually the march of nature will stomp right through our assured lies that we are someone separate from it; somehow protected. We check in with the world as it really is, to both maintain the illusion for little while longer once we get home, and to ready ourselves for what is inevitable: when the illusion necessarily ends.“
- MAY HALF TERM 2025 -
Holiday time. Back after a short break. See you next week!
213. IS GOOD CONTEXTUAL WHEN IT COMES TO ART? - Aesthetics and Geography
Read More“This conclusion doesn’t intend to demean our ideas of what we find good or bad in art. Rather it intends to expand our definition. Recognise that the thing we have written off before might only be written off because it was the wrong time or place to receive it. That everything can be given a second chance, or a third, or even a fourth if you are open to seeing what it is that others seem to appreciate but which you cannot, yet, seem to access.“
212. A WASTE OF TIME? - How Ought We Spend Our Days?
Read More“the older I get, the more I am coming to realise that everything we do could be perceived as both a potential waste of time, or as precisely what time is there for: to fill it. The assumption that there is an objective “ought” about what we should do with our days is the mistake. “