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Joe HumphreysThe Irish Times |
Moralising about procreation used to be the Catholic Church’s thing. But nowadays it is the preserve of anti-immigrant fearmongers and...
Absence of proof is not proof of absence, theologians like to say. What applies to the existence of God also pertains to historical fact. We know...
No offence to Fine Gael’s new leader but Simon Harris: The Movie is unlikely to be made. Ryan Gosling’s phone will never ring with the offer to...
Overwhelmed by the world’s problems? You’re not alone. There is so much structural injustice – inequality, exploitation and prejudice – it’s...
A few years ago a satirical online site was created to churn out formulaic expressions of Irish cynicism. It was called “Random TheJournal.ie...
How do you feel about the death of Alexei Navalny? Sad? Of course. Shame? “Definitely. He puts us to shame,” replies Irish-American academic...
Nostalgia is big business. The Netflix series One Day has underlined that point, jumping to the top of TV streaming charts in the past month. The...
A famous thought experiment in philosophy is “the trolley problem”. Imagine you saw a tram about to crash into five people and you could save...
As dystopian images of the future go, it doesn’t get much better than a bloke interacting with a virtual reality headset while driving a bulletproof...
Petrol stations will be abuzz this week with romantics procuring flowers, chocolates and saucy greeting cards after filling up the tank. Whatever this...
You know it’s referendum season because a familiar cry goes up from certain two-legged animals. Like the mating call of the cuckoo, which signals...
You know it’s referendum season because a familiar cry goes up from certain two-legged animals. Like the mating call of the cuckoo, which signals...
Giving advice is a delicate balancing act. It’s a thin line between sharing useful information and being plain annoying. I should know, having been...
First the re-branders came for Lansdowne Road, then they came for Páirc Uí Chaoimh. What next? AAA Funeral Homes Croak It Park? Is nothing sacred,...
The resignation earlier this month of Claudine Gay as Harvard University’s first black president was welcomed with glee by conservatives in the...
January is a big month for the self-help industry, a business valued at €40 billion by Forbes a couple of years ago and now said to be a multiple of...
New Year’s resolutions can be hard work. Join a gym? Change jobs? Travel the world? It is exhausting just thinking of the options. To make matters...
An Irish philosopher and cage fighter has an important message for young men. No, it’s not Conor McGregor, though The Notorious might fancy himself...
It is ironic that a law designed to combat hate speech has attracted so much vitriol. The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate...
It has become a scientific orthodoxy that we live in a pointless universe. Whatever about the prospect of flourishing during our time on Earth, once...
Belief has waned in a lot of things in recent years: Christianity, table manners, the Republic of Ireland’s men’s football team. But one type of...
Philosophers have for ages studied “the good life” with the assumption that it’s something we’re still striving towards; that for individuals...
Some philosophers are quite snooty about journalism. Frederick Nietzsche complained that “the journalist, servant of the present moment, has taken...
When Molly Martens and her father Thomas were arriving in court a fortnight ago for sentencing for the manslaughter of Jason Corbett (39), the body of...
I thought my life was pretty good until I watched the Netflix series about footballer David Beckham. Then I realised I’m a total failure. If you...
The barbaric terror attack by Hamas on October 7th caused deep trauma, fear and anger within Israel. What do we know about the impact of that level of...
Capitalism has brought us some good things but it also has a habit of making us act against our moral principles and pitting us against one another....
It may come as a surprise to you that one of the most popular courses at an Irish university this year is on bullshit. More precisely, the course is...
Growing up in Ireland typically meant exposure to a “no notions” form of positive psychology: “Quit your moaning”, “Think of the starving...
Have you ever found yourself expressing a point of view and suddenly wondering: “Where did I get this opinion from?” In that flicker of...
Twenty years ago, philosopher Andreas Matthias identified what was then a new ethical question: who is responsible if artificial intelligence (AI)...
Plans hatched by Silicon Valley tech gurus to become immortal attract much mirth. But beyond the enormous egos of cryogenic capitalists is a death...
I will forever associate the Serenity Prayer with Sinéad O’Connor. I’d never heard of it before 1990 when she used those words to open her second...