Philosophy is born of discomfort. Whether it is the need to account for the tragedies of circumstance, the incongruities between our assumptions about the world and what experience and science reveal, or the shock of being exposed to hitherto unimagined conceptual alternatives, philosophy arises in those contexts in which serious questions emerge about the adequacy of our most cherished beliefs.

Philosophy is driven by the unsettling awareness that we are not beings who act exclusively on instinct but are instead able to choose from among a variety of ways of thinking about ourselves, the world in which we find ourselves, and our relations with others. Read more...