(Wikimedia Commons, 2026) Literacy emerged in Sumeria roughly 5500 years ago, but the emergence of philosophy in ancient Greece roughly 2500 years ago seems to have been closely bound up with the emergence of the first alphabetic writing-&-reading system there in the 8th century BCE (Rayner et al., 2012: ch. 2). Certainly, in the 6th … [continue reading]

(Kyiv Mohyla Academy, 2023) In “What Good is Philosophy? My Answer.,” inspired by the title of an international conference in 2023, Robert Hanna attempts to provide an answer to the conference’s titular question himself. Now, like most philosophical questions, the question, “what good is philosophy?” is in fact a complex question that should be decomposed … [continue reading]

Kant Futurized (Quintessential Mind, 2023) The future of philosophy and the future of humankind-in-the-world are intimately related, not only (i) in the obvious sense that all philosophers are “human, all-too-human” animals—i.e., members of the biological species Homo sapiens, and also finite, fallible, and thoroughly normative imperfect in every other way too—hence the natural fate of … [continue reading]

“Girl with a Book,” by Alexander Deineka  (1934) In “Caveat Lector: From Wittgenstein to The Philosophy of Reading,” Robert Hanna explores, against the grain of Analytic philosophy’s general avoidance of the fact or phenomenon of reading, and starting out with Wittgenstein’s compact sub-investigation in Philosophical Investigations into “the part the word [‘reading’] plays in our … [continue reading]

“Girl with a Book,” by Alexander Deineka  (1934) In “The Philosophy of Reading as First Philosophy,” Robert Hanna argues as follows: You, the reader of this very sentence, are consciously reading this very sentence from left to right here and now. Dear Reader, please now read the first sentence of this essay again, this time … [continue reading]

(Lewandowsky et al., 2012: p. 122) On the whole, philosophical correspondence and philosophical conversation alike are often interesting and productive, and sometimes profoundly significant. Indeed, sometimes philosophical correspondence and philosophical conversation are mind-changing or life-changing, and even—in accordance with Marx’s famous dictum that thus far philosophers have only ever interpreted the world in different ways, … [continue reading]

According to Robert Hanna in his essay “What Can Kantian Philosophy Do for Humanity? From Leonard Nelson to Phildialogues,” broadly Kantian philosophy—by which Hanna means philosophy inspired by Kant’s work, but neither dogmatically restricted to Kant’s own texts nor in any way committed to Kant’s own philosophical errors or personal prejudices—is profoundly relevant to the … [continue reading]

(Guardian, 2025) In his essay, “Why Mainstream Contemporary Professional Academic Philosophy Could Be Done By Chatbots,” Robert Hanna argues that if formal methods really are central to contemporary philosophy, then mainstream contemporary professional academic philosophy could be done by the most sophisticated chatbots—say, by ChatGPT-5, or whatever. In order to prove this, he reproduces an … [continue reading]

“The Death of Socrates By Means of The American Philosophical Association,” by Q (2013), after “The Death of Socrates,” by Jacques-Louis David (1787) In his essay, “Six Studies in The Decline and Fall of Professional Academic Philosophy, And A Real and Relevant Alternative,” Robert Hanna argues that academics in general, and academic philosophers in particular, … [continue reading]

In “The New Conflict of the Faculties: Kant, Radical Enlightenment, The Hyper-State, and How to Philosophize During a Pandemic,” Robert Hanna applies a Kant-inspired interpretation of enlightenment as radical enlightenment to the enterprise of philosophy within the context of our contemporary world-situation, and try to answer this very hard question: “As radically enlightened Kantian philosophers … [continue reading]