The most recent issue the journal Philosophy has arrived. This is the first issue of the the journal to be produced under the auspices of its new editors Prof. Maria Alvarez and Prof. Bill Brewer accompanied by their associate editors Sarah Fine, Sacha Golob, James Stazicker, and Raphael Woolf. Along with the introduction of a new blind peer-review process, the editors have also written a thoughtful editorial introduction deserving of attention.
The founders, who included the philosophers Samuel Alexander, Bertrand Russell and Sydney Hooper (the first editor), were animated by a conviction that the philosophical quest ‘begets a certain spirit of impartiality in judging all things’. That our culture is in sore need of such fair-mindedness hardly needs saying. In almost every quarter, kinds of thinking that seek truth and produce deeper and truer understanding are under threat from greed for power, fanaticism, ruthless pursuit of profit, and sheer carelessness. These beget mistrust, indifference, even hopelessness at the very time when we most need their opposites, faced as we are with some urgent problems and challenges. We need to understand better how to live well in ourselves, with each other, and with the other creatures with whom we share our endangered planet. While philosophy on its own cannot remedy all these ills, it can help. Its methods – its underlying purposes – make it a powerful tool against mendacity, narrow-mindedness and bunk.
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Philosophy is the journal of The Royal Institute of Philosophy.
