Desired Essays

The following is a list of topics we are seeking submissions on. This list is incomplete and not exhaustive, and 1000-Word Philosophy welcomes submissions on a wide variety of topics.

Please email the editors with further suggested topics. We are especially interested in essays on topics frequently addressed in introductory courses, as well as topics that are difficult to cover in introductory courses because the relevant literature is difficult for beginning students. We especially welcome material addressing under-represented philosophical traditions, including global philosophy, philosophy of race, LGBTQIA issues, and more, as well as submissions on all topics by women and members of other underrepresented populations.

We are open to the possibility of multiple essays on the same topic, since there are always many useful ways of addressing any philosophical issue.

For more information, see the submissions page. 

Due to the popularity of the essay on Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” essay, we are interested in essays that explain these well-known philosophical quotes and claims (and we are welcome to more suggestions along these lines):

• “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living”: Socrates on the Value of Philosophy
• “Man is the Measure of All Things”: The Relativism of Protagoras
• “From Each According to His Ability, To Each According to His Needs”: Karl Marx on the Principles of Socialism
• “The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number” J.S. Mill’s Utilitarianism
• “Existence Precedes Essence”: Sartre’s Existentialism
• Arendt on “The Banality of Evil”

Essay Categories:

• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
  • The Paradox of Tragedy
  • The Paradox of Fiction
  • Ethicism about Art
  • Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy
  • Plato’s Criticism of Poetry
  • Nietzsche on the Birth of Tragedy
  • The Death of the Author
• Buddhist Philosophy
  • 1000-Word Philosophy welcomes essays on a variety of topics in Buddhist Philosophy, as well as Non-Western Philosophy in general.
• Chinese Philosophy
  • 1000-Word Philosophy welcomes essays on a variety of topics in Chinese Philosophy, as well as Non-Western Philosophy in general.
• Ethics
  • Metaethics
    • Non-Cognitivism 
    • Metaethical Naturalism
    • Metaethical Nonnaturalism
    • The Open Question Argument
    • Ethical Intuitionism
  • Ethical Theory
    • Rights
    • The Concept of Welfare
    • Objective List Theories of Welfare
    • Discussion of Various Moral Virtues and Vices
    • Perfectionism
    • Hedonism
    • Desire Satisfactionism
    • The Experience Machine
    • The Separateness of Persons
    • Moral Particularism
    • Ross on Prima Facie Duties
    • Natural Law Theories of Ethics
    • Hobbes’s Reply to the Fool
    • The Doctrine of Double Effect
    • Kant on Universalizability
    • Kant on Moral Worth
    • Kant on the Duty Not To Lie
    • Kierkegaard on the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical
    • Aristotle’s Function Argument
    • Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean
    • Aristotle on Eudaimonia
    • Nietzsche’s Genealogical Approach to Ethics
    • Adam Smith’s Sentimentalism
    • Care Ethics
    • Sartre on Bad Faith
    • Moral Perception
    • The Golden Rule
    • Doing and Allowing
    • Meaning In Life
    • The Absurd
    • Theories of Moral Status
    • Duties To the Dead
    • Posthumous Harm
    • Ethicism about Art
    • Religious Ethics, compared to Philosophical Ethics
    • Moral Knowledge
    • Persons, or What Persons Are
  • Moral Issues
    • Immigration and national borders
    • Racial Profiling
    • Capitalism
    • Drugs
    • Poverty, Absolute Poverty
    • The Trolley Problem
    • Why Be Moral?
    • Thomson’s Defense of Abortion
    • Marquis’s “Future Like Our’s” Argument Against Abortion
    • Embryo Experimentation
    • Torture
    • Vegetarianism
    • Animal Research
    • Public Health Ethics
    • Genital Mutilation
    • Ethics and Policing
    • Issues in Environmental Ethics 
    • Causal Impotence Challenges / Collective Responsibility 
    • Anti-Natalism 
    • Obligations to Future Persons
    • See more ethics-related categories below
  • Sexual Ethics
    • Homosexuality
    • Monogamy & Polyamory
    • Marriage
    • Love
    • Consent
    • Sexual Objectification
  • Epistemology
    • Theories of Epistemic Justification
    • Epistemologies of Ignorance
    • Naturalized Epistemology
    • Internalism and Externalism
    • Rationalism and Empiricism
    • Evidentialism
    • Direct and Indirect Realism
    • Kant on Synthetic A Priori Knowledge
    • Virtue Epistemology
    • Discussion of Various Epistemic Virtues and Vices
    • The Problem of Other Minds
    • Pragmatic Encroachment
    • Pyrrhonian Skepticism
    • Reflective Equilibrium
    • Standpoint Theory
  • Historical Philosophy
    • Ancient Philosophy
      • The Origins of Western Philosophy
      • Zeno’s Paradoxes
      • Socratic Irony
      • Aporia in the Platonic Dialogues
      • Plato on Immortality
      • Plato on Utopia
      • Plato’s Noble Lie
      • Plato’s Criticism of Poetry
      • Aristotle on the Four Causes
      • Aristotle’s Teleology
      • Aristotle’s Method: Saving the Appearances
      • Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy
      • Aristotle’s Function Argument
      • Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean
      • Aristotle on Eudaimonia
      • The Epicurean Conception of Pleasure
      • Stoic Ethics
      • Pyrrhonian Skepticism
      • The Cynics
      • The Cyrenaic School
      • Ancient Atomism
      • Plotinus on The One
    • Medieval Philosophy
      • Augustine on Original Sin
      • Aquinas’s Five Ways
      • Aquinas on Natural Law
    • Early Modern Philosophy
      • Machiavelli on Virtù
      • Hobbes’s Reply to the Fool
      • Locke on Education
      • Locke on Property
      • Locke on the State of Nature
      • Locke on the Origin of Ideas
      • Hume on Causation
      • Hume’s Fork
      • Hume’s Critique of Social Contract Theory
      • Rousseau on Education
      • Rousseau on the General Will
      • Leibniz on Monads
      • Leibniz’s Law
      • Pragmatic Arguments for Religious Belief
      • Spinoza’s Pantheism
      • Kant on Synthetic A Priori Knowledge
      • Kant on Universalizability
      • Kant on Moral Worth
      • Kant on the Duty Not To Lie
      • Kant’s Views on Race
      • Reid on Common Sense
      • Adam Smith’s Sentimentalism
    • 19th and 20th Century Philosophy
      • Montesquieu on the Separation of Powers
      • Burke on Social Change
      • Hegel on Recognition
      • Kierkegaard on the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical
      • Marx on Base and Superstructure
      • Mill’s Harm Principle
      • Mill’s Arguments in Favor of Free Speech
      • Mill’s Arguments against Paternalism
      • Nietzsche on the Birth of Tragedy
      • Nietzsche’s Genealogical Approach to Ethics
      • E.B. DuBois’s Concept of Double-Consciousness
      • The DuBois-Washington Debate
      • William James’s “The Will to Believe”
      • Dewey on Education
      • Wittgenstein’s Beetle in a Box
      • Russell’s Theory of Descriptions
      • Sartre on Bad Faith
      • Heidegger’s Concept of Dasein
      • G.E. Moore
  • Logic and Reasoning
    • Arguments.
    • Fallacies
      • Begging the Question
      • Equivocation
      • Slippery Slopes
    • Arguments from Analogy
    • The Principle of Charity
    • Parsimony
    • Definitions; Conceptual Analysis; Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
    • Implicit Premises
    • Counterexamples
  • Metaphilosophy
    • Conceptual Analysis
    • Reflective Equilibrium
    • Ordinary Language Philosophy
    • Pragmatist Approaches to Philosophical Problems
    • Wisdom
  • Metaphysics
    • Hard Determinism
    • Compatiblist Theories of Free Will
    • Libertarian or Indeterministic Theories of Free Will
    • Collective Responsibility 
    • Causation
    • Material Constitution 
    • Identity 
    • Time
    • Persons, or What Persons Are
    • Essences, or what an Essence Is
    • Primary and Secondary Qualities
    • Form and Matter
    • Modal Realism
    • Plato on Immortality
    • Aristotle’s Teleology
  • Phenomenology and Existentialism
    • The Meaning of Life
    • Hegel on the Master and Slave Dialectic
    • Nietzsche’s Genealogical Approach to Ethics
    • Heidegger’s Concept of Dasein
    • Heidegger and Technology
    • Postmodernism
    • Postructuralism
    • Sartre on Bad Faith
    • Hermeneutics
    • Deconstruction
    • Derrida on Differance
    • Phenomenological Approaches to Race and Gender
  • Philosophy of Education
    • The Aims of Education
    • Rousseau on Education
    • Locke on Education
    • Dewey on Education
    • Ethics and Educational Systems
  • Philosophy of Mind and Language
    • Topics in Philosophy of Mind
      • Physicalism
      • The Qualia Argument Against Physicalism
      • Property Dualism
      • Consciousness
      • Embodied Cognition
      • Zombies
      • The Problem of Other Minds
    • Topics in the Philosophy of Language
      • Sense and Reference
      • Wittgenstein’s Beetle in a Box
      • Theories of Names
      • Indeterminacy of Translation
      • The Verificationist Theory of Meaning
      • Russell’s Theory of Descriptions
      • Speech Acts
      • Gricean Implicature
      • The Distinction between Semantics and Pragmatics
      • Generics
      • Problems of Religious Language
      • Non-Cognitivism about Morality
      • Ordinary Language Philosophy
      • Hermeneutics
  • Philosophy of Race
    • Issues, topics and figures in African-American philosophy, Native-American philosophy, Asian-American philosophy, and other underrepresented philosophical traditions.  
    • Theories of Racism
    • Implicit Bias
    • Affirmative Action
    • White Privilege 
    • The Black Lives Matter movement
    • The Schelling Model of Segregation
    • Integration
    • Color Blindness
    • The Distinction between Race and Ethnicity
    • Racial Profiling
    • Stereotype Threat
    • E.B. DuBois’s Concept of Double-Consciousness
    • The DuBois-Washington Debate
    • Phenomenological Approaches to Race and Gender
    • Intersectionality
    • racial discrimination
    • racial stereotypes
    • racial solidarity or racial pride
    • racialized sexual/romantic preferences
    • implicit bias
    • slavery
    • racially-oriented hate speech and hate crimes
    • mass incarceration
    • policing
    • racial jokes
    • transracialism
    • honoring racist founders and symbols
    • protest
    • self-respect
    • microaggressions
    • cultural appropriation
    • whiteness & white privilege
    • Social Darwinism
    • passing & traveling
    • redlining 
    • racial health disparities
  • Philosophy of Religion
    • Augustine on Original Sin
    • Aquinas’s Five Ways
    • Faith (and Reason)
    • The Relationship Between Science and Religion
    • Properly Basic Belief in God
    • William James’s “The Will to Believe”
    • The Problem of Religious Language
    • Free Will and God’s Foreknowledge
    • Skeptical Theism
    • Spinoza’s Pantheism
    • Petitionary Prayer
    • Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism
    • Arguments from Religious Experience
    • Philosophical Issues in Non-Western, Non-Monotheistic Religions
  • Philosophy of Science
    • Scientific Realism
    • The Demarcation Problem
    • Scientism
    • The Value-Ladenness of Science
    • Underdetermination of Scientific Theory
    • The Deductive-Nomological Model of Scientific Explanation
    • The Relationship Between Science and Religion
  • Philosophy of Sex and Gender
    • The Sex-Gender Distinction
    • Essentialism
    • Social Construction
    • The Waves of Feminism
    • Care Ethics
    • The Problem of Speaking for Others
    • Phenomenological Approaches to Race and Gender
    • Sexism
    • Privilege
    • Misogyny
    • Standpoint Theory
    • Testimonial Injustice
    • Intersectionality
    • Marxist and Socialist Feminism
    • Pornography
    • Friedan on “The Problem that Has No Name”
    • Rich on Compulsory Heterosexuality
    • Postcolonial Feminism
    • Ecofeminism
  • Social and Political Philosophy
    • Philosophy of Law
      • The Duty to Obey the Law / Just and Unjust Laws
      • Civil Disobedience
      • The Hart-Devlin Debate
      • Legal Realism
      • Defining Hate Speech
      • Constitutional Originalism
      • Living Constitutionalism
      • Natural Law Theory
      • Positivism
    • Theories of Justice
      • The Difference Principle
      • Rawls on Public Reason
      • Robert Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain Argument for Libertarianism
      • Liberalism and Communitarianism
      • Equality of Opportunity
      • Global Justice
    • History of Political Philosophy
      • Plato on Utopia
      • Machiavelli on Virtu
      • Locke on Property
      • Locke on the State of Nature
      • Hobbes’s Reply to the Fool
      • Rousseau on the State of Nature
      • Rousseau on the General Will
      • Montesquieu on the Separation of Powers
      • Hume’s Critique of Social Contract Theory
      • Burke on Social Change
      • Hegel on Recognition
      • Marx’s Theory of History
      • Mill’s Harm Principle
      • Mill’s Arguments in Favor of Free Speech
      • Mill’s Arguments against Paternalism
    • Miscellaneous topics
      • Anarchism
      • Left-Libertarianism
      • Integration
      • Positive and Negative Liberty
      • Luck Egalitarianism
      • Political Legitimacy
      • Patriotism
      • Civil Disobedience
      • Ideology
      • Universal Basic Income
      • Democratic Socialism
      • Natural Rights
      • Racial Profiling
      • Paternalism
      • Libertarian Paternalism
      • The Public Goods Problem
      • Self-Ownership
      • Redistributive Taxation
      • Marxist and Socialist Feminism
      • Feminist Debates about Pornography
      • Exploitation
      • Hayek on Markets and Information
      • The Tragedy of the Commons
      • Collective Action Problems
      • The Limits of Markets
      • Gun Control
      • Anarchism
      • The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory
      • Foucault on the Panopticon
      • Protest
      • National Borders
      • Healthcare Policy
      • Policing Policy / Police Ethics 

Updated: 5/9/2021