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Dec 13, 2024 | 
nautil.us | Helen De Cruz
Join ADVERTISEMENT Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. or Join now . Philosophy How friendship with long-dead thinkers can help us live better. Sign up for the free Nautilus newsletter: To do philosophy, you don’t need expensive labs or equipment. You don’t need a huge team. You can do it all by yourself. The downside is that philosophers are often lonely. Reading in solitude while wrestling with your own thoughts is difficult.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
helendecruz.substack.com | Helen De Cruz |Kate Manne |Paul Bloom
I have never loved, let alone, liked my body. The broader culture tells us that it is great to love your body (as we can see Dove commercials and body acceptance movements).
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Aug 1, 2024 | 
churchlifejournal.nd.edu | Helen De Cruz
Philosophy Is Born in WonderPhilosophers like to see themselves as dispassionate critical thinkers. Yet, they can and do get carried away, becoming intensely focused to the point of obsession on a philosophical idea or work. Take Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), who at the age of twenty-six happened to pick up René Descartes’s posthumously published Traité de l’homme (Treatise on Man, an account of human physiology) in a Paris bookstall.
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Jul 1, 2024 | 
literaryreview.co.uk | Helen De Cruz
Ioften do things that other people tell me are ‘awesome’, tremendously quotidian achievements like handing over the right change or having my booking reference to hand. Clearly, the bar has been lowered since the days when only something on the scale of miracles and grand cathedrals could be awe-inspiring. It therefore seems like a good moment to remind ourselves of the true meanings of awe and its related emotion wonder, and to seek to understand better why they matter.
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May 16, 2024 | 
onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Helen De Cruz
This is a commentary on Neil Van Leeuwen's Religion as make-believe focusing on the normative aspects of this book. According to Van Leeuwen, religious credences are not factual beliefs, and they are held to different standards of rationality than factual beliefs. Hence, religious believers are able to track and represent those states of affairs that govern their practical lives while also holding views that deviate significantly from it, such as divine omnipotence.
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May 15, 2024 | 
helendecruz.substack.com | Helen De Cruz
The moment the Effective Altruist perceived me, he came forward with his eyes fixed on a book which he held in his hand, and accosted me thus: “Would you not be infinitely obliged to any one who should open to you the gates of paradise? Would you not give millions of gold to have a key by which you might gain admittance whenever you thought proper?
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May 7, 2024 | 
philosopherscocoon.typepad.com | Helen De Cruz
In February, before I finally made time to see my primary care provider, I was working very intensely, being totally overwhelmed. I'd been in this state of overwhelm since late 2021 when we were out of the height of the pandemic and our temporary grace and acknowledgment that things are tough and that we are all overworked went away. So we went to business as usual, never mind we were all traumatized (I don't use this word lightly) by the pandemic. Outputs must be outputted, after all.
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May 5, 2024 | 
helendecruz.substack.com | Helen De Cruz
I don't like talking to other patients. There was a woman the other day in the waiting room (same cancer, but not as advanced, so her outlook is statistically better than mine). We began to talk, and she said, possibly in an attempt to cheer us up, “We just got to stay positive. If you think positively, you'll beat it.” I don't like the implicature that if you don't survive, it was by lack of positive thinking or willpower.
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Apr 14, 2024 | 
press.princeton.edu | Helen De Cruz
Humans love magic. Discord servers, YouTube channels, and Instawitches show that magic is more popular than ever. We enjoy performances where skilled magicians make lemons or elephants appear and disappear before our eyes. Not many academic philosophers discuss magic, however, five centuries ago, prominent Renaissance philosophers, such as Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), and Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), wrote extensive treatises on the topic.
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Mar 16, 2024 | 
philosopherscocoon.typepad.com | Helen De Cruz
Chiara Ambrosio begins her book review of Milena Ivanova and Steven French's edited volume The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding (2022) as follows:
Edited collections are acts of resistance. We are told that they weigh less in research assessments and that book chapters are not as valuable as articles and monographs, and yet we stubbornly hold on to this enduring academic format for some of our most important publications.
