Philosophical Quarterly launch 2012 Prize Essay Competition

The Philosophical Quarterly invites submissions for its 2012 international prize essay competition, the topic of which is ‘Philosophy and the Expressive Arts’.

The author of the winning entry will receive £1500. The closing date for submissions is 1st November 2012.

Download Submission Guidelines

From Plato on, philosophy has had an uneasy relationship with expressive arts such as narrative, poetry, drama, music, painting, and now film. If philosophy today can learn from science, can it learn from the arts as well– or even instead? If so, what can it learn?

Does expressive art access truths, particularly ethical truths, that cannot be expressed any other way? If it does, what can ethicists and other philosophers say about these truths? If it does not, what differentiates expressive from merely decorative art?

Some philosophers insist with Wittgenstein that “whatever can be said at all can be said clearly”. In that case, are artistic uses of language such as metaphor and imagery just “colour”, as Frege called it – just ways of dressing up thoughts that philosophers, by contrast, should consider in their plainest possible form?

 

 

The Future of Philosophy: By Tim Mulgan

The following opinion piece is one of a series of five being released this week and next to celebrate World Philosophy Day and to publicise the upcoming workshop entitled Editor’s Cut – A view of philosophical research from journal editors. the workshop will take place at the University of London on Friday 13th of January 2012.

The Future of Philosophy
By Tim Mulgan
Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy, University of St Andrews
Editor of The Philosophical Quarterly

In 1689, John Locke published two treatises on government. Locke’s Second Treatise is a staple of introductory political philosophy courses, pored over by generations of scholars and undergraduates. His First Treatise is barely read today. This differential treatment reflects neither the importance Locke himself attached to the two treatises, nor the comparative cogency of Locke’s arguments, but rather the contemporary relevance of his themes. Locke’s First Treatise attacks Robert Filmer’s defence of the divine right of kings. As events outside philosophy have rendered absolute monarchy irrelevant, so Filmer’s arguments – and thus Locke’s demolition of them – have faded from the philosophical canon.

To illustrate the role of historical contingencies here, consider the fact

The Philosophical Quarterly: From past to present

The first issue of The Philosophical Quarterly was published in October 1950. In the sixty years since, the PQ has established itself as one of the world’s leading general philosophy journals. The journal continues to publish across the full spectrum of academic philosophy, and welcomes original research in all areas of philosophy and its history.

The editorial board have recently compiled this virtual issue to produce a representative sample of the last sixty years. Limiting themselves to two articles for each decade, they sought to give readers a taste of the variety of topics discussed in the journal, and the range of philosophical approaches taken to those issues. As the team find every week, when deciding which articles to publish today, the final choice was not easy. Many wonderful articles missed out. They could, of course, have included more, but wanted the virtual issue to be as close as possible to a real issue. The PQ hope  that their selection will whet your appetites – encouraging you to search back through the PQ archive and discover hidden riches for yourselves.

The virtual issue opens with the editor’s introduction from the first issue, and with a brief piece by Malcolm Knox.

The Virtual Issue

Front Matter
Volume 1: Issue 1, 1950

A Passage in Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’
T. M. Knox
Volume 1: Issue 1, 1950

Feelings
Gilbert Ryle
Volume 1: Issue 3, 1951

Direct Perception
Norman Malcolm
Volume 3: Issue 13, 1953

Aristotle on the Good: A Formal Sketch
Bernard Williams
Volume 12: Issue 49, 1962

Plato’s “Third Man” Argument (PARM. 132A1-B2): Text and Logic
Gregory Vlastos
Volume 19: Issue 77, 1969

The ideas of Power and Substance in Locke’s Philosophy
Michael R. Ayers
Volume 25: Issue 98, 1975

Common Knowledge
Jane Heal
Volume 28: Issue 111, 1978

Epiphenomenal Qualia
Frank Jackson
Volume 32: Issue 127, 1982

What does a concept script do?
Cora Diamond
Volume 34: Issue 136, 1984

A Furry Tile About Mental Representation
Deborah Brown
Volume 36: Issue 185, 1996

Finkish Dispositions
David Lewis
Volume 47: Issue 187, 1997

How to Reid Moore
John Greco
Volume 52: Issue 209, 2002

Kant’s second thoughts on race
Pauline Kleingeld
Volume 57: Issue 229, 2007

The Philosophical Quarterly launch prize essay competition

The Philosophical Quarterly invites submissions for its 2011 international prize essay competition, the topic of which is ‘Hume after 300 Years’.

2011 marks the tercentenary of the birth of David Hume. Entries are invited on all aspects of Hume’s philosophy. Particularly welcome will be essays on relatively neglected parts of Hume’s corpus: for example, his theory of space and time; his typology of the passions; the Treatise account of political obligation; the first (1741-42) volumes of Essays, Moral and Political; the second Enquiry; the Four Dissertations.

Essays should not be longer than 8,000 words, and should be typed in double spacing.

Electronic submission is preferred and contributions may be sent as email attachments to pq@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Most formats are acceptable, but PDF is preferred. Alternatively, non-electronic submissions may be sent to the address below.

Three copies of each essay are required and these will not be returned. All entries will be regarded as submissions for publication in The Philosophical Quarterly, and both winning and non-winning entries judged to be of sufficient quality will be published.

The closing date for submissions is 1st November 2011.

All submissions should be headed ‘The Emotions’ Prize Essay Competition (with the author’s name and address given in a covering letter, but NOT in the essay itself) and sent to:

The Journal Manager
The Philosophical Quarterly
University of St Andrews
KY16 9AR
Scotland,
UK