News

News: May/June 2006

Peter Strawson dies • 14th Philosophy Olympics • Pope endorses erotic love • Philosophy President not Philosopher King — News reports by Sue Roberts in London and John Ruddy in New York

President Lenk

The German philosopher Hans Lenk was recently elected to the prestigious post of President of the International Institute of Philosophy. Lenk, who won a gold medal for rowing at the 1960 Rome Olympics, is now a philosophy professor at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. There will be an article by President Lenk in the next issue.

Voltaire Still Stirring Up Trouble

Late last year, as an international crisis brewed over Danish cartoons, Muslims raised a furore in the sleepy Alpine town of Saint-Genis-Pouilly over Voltaire’s play ‘Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet.’ The 18th Century philosophe and satirist uses the founder of Islam to parody various forms of religious overzealousness and intolerance.

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