Articles published in May 2022
Addiction explained: from the dopamine reward system and prediction error neurons to the brain disease model controversy, Rat Park, the opioid crisis, genetic heritability, and evidence-based treatments including medication-assisted therapy.
Rhetoric is the art of effective communication and persuasion. Explore Aristotle's three modes, the five canons, figures of speech, political rhetoric, and the field's modern revival from Perelman to digital meme culture.
A thorough guide to phenomenology: Husserl's founding insights, Heidegger's transformation of the method, Merleau-Ponty's embodied cognition, Sartre's existential phenomenology, and phenomenology's influence on cognitive science and AI debates.
Nihilism holds that life has no inherent meaning, moral truths don't exist, or knowledge is impossible. From Nietzsche's diagnosis to existentialist responses, learn what nihilism really means.
Logic is the study of valid reasoning — the principles by which conclusions follow from premises. From Aristotle's syllogistic and Stoic propositional logic through Frege's predicate calculus, Russell's paradox, and Godel's incompleteness theorems, this guide traces logic's history and its profound implications for mathematics, philosophy, and artificial intelligence.
A thorough guide to just war theory: from Cicero and Augustine through Aquinas and Grotius to Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars, humanitarian intervention, drone warfare, nuclear deterrence, and the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
Ethics is the branch of philosophy examining what makes actions right or wrong. Explore consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, moral psychology, and applied ethics in depth.
An in-depth exploration of the rule of law: Dicey's classic formulation, thin versus thick conceptions, Magna Carta, habeas corpus, judicial independence, economic development, and contemporary backsliding in Hungary, Poland, and Turkey.
A complete guide to microeconomics: consumer and producer theory, market structures, externalities, information asymmetry, public goods, and key research from Coase to Kahneman to Claudia Goldin.
Labor economics studies how wages are determined, why workers get paid what they do, and how labor markets function. Explore human capital theory, the gender pay gap, minimum wage research, union decline, and the effects of automation.
Fiscal policy is how governments use taxation and spending to manage the economy. Learn about Keynesian multipliers, austerity debates, automatic stabilizers, and why fiscal decisions are so contested.
A complete guide to antitrust law: from Standard Oil and the Sherman Act through the Chicago School debate, big tech cases, the EU Digital Markets Act, and the neo-Brandeisian revival.