Philosopher's Zone

The question of identity, and whether each of us is best understood as an individual or a member of a collective, has vexed philosophers for centuries. This week we're getting into it with a thinker who's also a leading light in the teaching of philosophy in schools.

Of course, education has a point - but establishing exactly what that point is, can be a surprisingly difficult task. Do we educate children in order to foster autonomy and independent thinking, or to teach respect for certain norms, values and hierarchies? Is education about creative thinking and developing curiosity about the world, or is it about getting ready for the job market? Plenty of tension to explore this week, in a panel discussion on the aims of education.

Living and writing through the years before, during and after the Second World War, French author and philosopher Albert Camus witnessed the rise of fascism and its terrible endgame in German National Socialism. Today, amid fears of a neo-fascist resurgence in the USA, his work well is worth revisiting.

For decades, primatologists believed that primate societies were structured around aggressive alpha males - until a remarkable push from feminist scientists in the 1960s and 70s changed the narrative. So why does the "dominant alpha male" story persist in human culture?

We tend to think of time as a universal experience, something that carries us all along in the same direction at the same pace. So it might seem strange to think of time in terms of 'temporalities', different concepts and experiences of time that reflect different cultural values. In Australia, Indigenous temporalities are deeply interwoven with notions of justice, sovereignty and care for country - but these temporalities exist in tension with settler-colonial notions of time.