New Philosopher May 2018

“An hour of play reveals more than a year of conversation.”Anonymous At its best, play provides a spark in life, releasing us from the burden of playing ourselves. At its worst, play becomes a game to win at all costs: think Lance Armstrong’s doping or the Australian cricket team’s ball tampering. For better or for worse, play reveals us – to ourselves and to others. Canadian philosopher Bernard Suits, in his playful book Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, in which a Socratic grasshopper seeks to prove the value of play, wrote that a game is “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles”. But why would we set unnecessary obstacles to overcome? Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute of Play, argues that we do so because play is “the vital…

newphilosopher.com is an online portal for exploring philosophical ideas on ways to live a more fulfilling life. Read the articles, join in discussions, watch free online documentaries, and plan a trip to the next festival near you. Get a life! “Life,” the American journalist and author Elbert Hubbard once quipped, “is just one damned thing after another.” newphilosopher.com/articles/get-a-life/ 13 questions: Ricky Gervais Q: What is your demon? A: Laziness. And fear of failure. Luckily, they usually cancel each other out, but it’s a constant war. newphilosopher.com/articles/13-questions-ricky-gervais/ New Philosopher online store Visit our online store for previous issues of New Philosopher magazine, subscriptions, and other gift ideas. www.newphilosopher.com How to live (like a Stoic) Does life have meaning? What is a life worth living? How can we best deal with…

Simon Critchley Simon Critchley is Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is the moderator of The Stone, an opinion series in The New York Times, and he has written for The Guardian, The LA Review of Books, and The New York Review of Books. He is the author of 29 books, including What We Think About When We Think About Football, Suicide, How to Stop Living and Start Worrying, and The Book of Dead Philosophers. Tiffany Jenkins Tiffany Jenkins is an author, academic, and broadcaster. Her books include Keeping Their Marbles and Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections, and she has written for The Observer, The Financial Times, The Scotsman, and The Spectator. She is an Honorary Fellow at the University of…

“We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.”– William S. Burroughs In the 15 years from 1996 to 2010 there were seven different winners of the Tour de France, with US cyclist Lance Armstrong ‘winning’ seven in a row from 1999-2005. By 2012, it was clear that all bar one of the champions, Carlos Sastre, who won the 2008 race, had either failed drug tests or had admitted to doping. Alongside his 2008 Tour de France title, Sastre now holds the dubious honour of being the only ‘winner’ between 1999 and 2010 not to have been stripped of a title. According to an investigation conducted by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), during…

It’s now one of the most iconic photos in Olympic history. Two American sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, first and third respectively in the 200m final, stand on the podium, as the US national anthem plays, each with heads bowed and a black-gloved fist raised in the air (see page 79). All three medal winners, including Australian Peter Norman, are wearing the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge. Despite now being celebrated as a significant political protest, at the time the ‘Black Power’ or ‘Human Rights’ salute was met with severe criticism. The three athletes were booed off the podium, and the US team was forced to expel Smith and Carlos from the Games. Norman, too, faced criticism at home, for which he posthumously received an apology from the…

Xenophanes “For neither if there were a good boxer among the people, nor if there were a pentathlete or wrestler, nor again if there were someone swift of foot – which is most honoured of all men’s deed of strength – would for this reason a city be better governed.” Richard Hofstadter “Intellectual life has a certain spontaneous character and inner determination. It has also a peculiar poise of its own, which I believe is established by a balance between two basic qualities in the intellectual’s attitude toward ideas – qualities that may be designated as playfulness and piety.”…