Thinking Hard and Slow

Since 1925, the Royal Institute of Philosophy has been on a mission to help those interested in and perplexed by the problems of modern life to ask the right questions. Following in that tradition, we bring you Thinking Hard and Slow, a show that asks for your full attention with the promise of rich lectures and discussions...

The Contemplative Practices of Philosophy

Philosophers enjoy telling stories. Sometimes the stories are very short, but they can be long and detailed as well, for example in the form of utopian narratives by More, Cavendish and others. Why do philosophers invent such stories, and what do they want to accomplish with them? Helen de Cruz argues that existing accounts of thought experiments cannot easily explain the range and variety of thought experiments...

Self-described ‘hippie eco-philosopher’ Joanna Burch-Brown takes us on a deep dive into the philosophy of green finance and a step closer to addressing climate change, by way of a lively tale of philosophy going banking. Joining the discussion is Sean Edwards, chairman of the International Trade and Forfaiting Association Annual Conference. 

Joanna Burch-Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Bristol...

Plato has been one of the most important philosophers in the West and is now read all over the world. He has undergone a lot of research in academia, but Noburu Notomi suspects that modern readers have missed some essential factors in analyzing Plato’s texts and thoughts...

In classical South Asian philosophy, as in common sense, most thought that the first-person pronoun “I” stands for the self, something that persists through time, undergoes conscious thoughts and experiences, and exercises control over actions. The Buddhists accepted the “no-self” thesis: they denied that such a self is substantially real. This gave rise to a puzzle for these Buddhists...

Aesthetic theories in the Western tradition, like most philosophical theories, do not set out to have only local application, as they try to articulate generally relevant and illuminating theoretical concepts and values...

We live in an age of anger and shameless disregard for what is true and good. What can we learn from other cultures about better ways to do anger and shame? How can we develop better norms for being angry at the right things, in the right way, at the right times? How can we inculcate norms for proper shame at callous disregard for what is true and good? Flanagan argues that attention to how other cultures do anger and shame provides tools to enlarge our moral imagination...

A Moral Obligation

Some of our emotions are bad – unpleasant to experience, reflective of dissatisfactions or even heartbreak – but nonetheless quite important to express and, more basically, to feel. Grief is like this, for example. So, too, is disappointment. Amy Olberding explores how our current social practices may fail to support expressions of disappointment and thus suppress our ability to feel it well...