Undercurrent Philosophy was created to provide an outlet for philosophical writing by current and former students on current affairs, current philosophy and general philosophical reflection.
All contributions come from current and former philosophy students and students of other disciplines with an interest in philosophical analysis.
We provide an opportunity for students of philosophy to write publicly engaged philosophical work as frequently as they wish – an opportunity we believe is important but underdeveloped for students familiar with and well-versed in the skills philosophy teaches.
There are, of course, an increasing number of places doing fantastic work in spreading philosophy to wider audiences. This site is simply meant as an addition to this effort from current and former students of philosophy, in particular.
We hope that the site aids exploration of what Bharath Vallabha has called the ‘hard problem’ of public philosophy:
“The easy problem is how to motivate academic philosophers to engage with the public. This is not a simple problem, since reorienting resources and energies is never that straight-forward. But it is not conceptually difficult. The hard problem is how even motivated academic philosophers can succeed at engaging with the public. This concerns the difficult issue of what ideal forms of public philosophy can look like.”
We believe allowing students from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives to engage in public philosophy as early as possible is a promising way of addressing this hard problem.
If you’d like to keep up to date on our activities and publications feel free to join our mailing list below: