Offerings, Plans, Reflections

Our First Substack Newsletter

Welcome to our new Substack newsletter. We are very keen to promote a more interactive relationship between the editorial team at The Philosopher and the members of our mailing list. The Substack format allows for comments to be made at the bottom of each email, as well as much greater flexibility in terms of what we can add to our emails. You can expect updates on all that we are doing, news from the philosophy world, reflections from our editorial team, and much more. For now, the format will be: 1) an overview of what we are offering at the moment, 2) future plans, and 3) some reflections from one of our editorial team. Here goes!

Offerings

We have just uploaded a new essay from our New Basics series. Briana Toole is a hugely exciting young epistemologist based in California. She has written an essay that offers an accessible but critical overview of what we mean when we talk about objectivity. What does the ideal of objectivity hide in its striving for a view from nowhere? You can read the essay here.  

Our new series of “digital dialogues” starts on Monday 16th January. Here is the poster for it:

As you can see, a theme running through many of the events is the classic philosophical one of how to live a life. OK, we agree that it seems a bit intense to have events on failure, grief, oppression, lack of meaning, and so on in the midst of a cold dark winter compounded by a global political and economic meltdown, but we tried to balance out these more somber themes with events on dignity, beauty, and wonder. You can sign up for the first six events on our website.

And yes it is our 100th anniversary this year! Here is our cententary logo:

Our owl looks like they are having a great time, really enjoying all the attention etc!

We will be doing lots to celebrate in the year ahead, but for now you can indulge in some centenary-themed merch if you fancy. If you think we should have anything else available, just let us know in the comments at the bottom.

Plans

The first print issue of the year is shaping up well. It will be called “Where is Philosophy Going?” and will feature contributions from the kinds of philosophers who can actually say something interesting on this rather speculative topic. More on this shortly…

One of our most exciting new projects for the year will be a series of groups/classes that will be launching in the spring. For now, the page on our website does not have much on it as we will be discussing the specific groups in our editorial meeting later this month. Speaking of editorial meeting, our editorial team for 2023 is pretty awesome!

Finally, Agenda will be publishing a collection of transcripts from the events series, print issue, and podcast (mainly the first) in the spring. Overview can be found here. Much more on this to follow.

Reflections

From our editor, Anthony Morgan:

2022 was a tough year for me, as I sense it was for pretty much everyone. The Philosopher was struggling on a number of fronts and it required an enormous amount of work to get it back to being financially and structurally sustainable. Combined with the stresses of leaving the UK and relocating to the US (admittedly to start a new life with my wife, Joanna!), I was pretty much wiped out by the end of the year.

Going forward, running The Philosopher is going to require much more discipline. There is always the risk that it will draw me into workaholic habits, thinking obsessively and ruminating about it even when I am “off the clock”, and generally leave me stressed and emotionally unavailable for friends and family. As you can imagine, there have been a few new year’s resolutions flying around in the Morgan household and I am pleased to say that one week in things are going well!

More generally, I feel like there has been a new lease of life at The Philosopher. The incredible generosity of our supporters ensured that we did not collapse financially last year when this was a very real possibility (full list of donors can be found here) and the editorial team is going to be meeting more regularly this year to ensure that we are managing our affairs in a way that will be more sustainable and enjoyable for everyone involved.

In short, I want The Philosopher to be a source of enjoyment and flourishing for everyone involved in running it. And I hope that this can ripple out to infuse everything that we do.

What are your aspirations and hopes for the year ahead? Please let me know in the comments section below.

With gratitude for your support and excitement for the year ahead,

Anthony Morgan

Editor