In this conversation, we talk with the philosopher and recent author of Against Identity: The Wisdom of Escaping the Self (Allen Lane, 2025), Alexander Douglas. We explore the increasingly technocratic sterility of the modern world since and it’s effects on contemporary philosophy, his cross-cultural reading of Zhuangzi, Spinoza, and Girard on the nature of identity in his most recent book; the historical narrowing of the field and its resistance to postcolonial reflection; and why real philosophical greatness comes not from meeting standards, but defying them, as well as much more. 

Douglas now teaches the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics at the University of St Andrews.  He has grown increasingly interested in combining ideas from Western and East Asian philosophy. He loves music, literature, history, and engineering.

In this conversation, we explore: the strengths of philosophy as a cosmopolitan and generalist project in developing human understanding, and the dangers of specialisation; the problem of linguistic injustice, in which mainstream academic philosophy is centralised in the English-speaking world and, as a consequence, disproportionately favours native-English speakers; what philosophy needs to bridge old divides and stay alive in a ‘post-analytic’ era; Filippo’s manifesto aimed at addressing linguistic injustice, and his initial co-founding of the first ‘Minorities & Philosophy’ chapters in the UK; as well as speculation on the future direction of philosophy.

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Enjoy this interview excerpt from Issue No.3 of our journal in celebration of International Women’s Day, where we talk with the authors of Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life about: the history of analytic philosophy and it’s recent historicization; the role and contributions of their book’s subjects, the Wartime Quartet, in challenging conventional historical narratives; the significance of the humanities in contemporary philosophical discourse; the importance of methodological pluralism; as well as how their on-going projects have helped to combat the under-representation of women in the canon, curriculum and practice of philosophy.

To view the full interview and more, you can order a copy of Issue No.3 of our Interdisciplinary Philosophy Journal from our online shop, or one of our many international stockists. 

In this interview we spoke to Crispin Sartwell about what he terms the 'Personal Turn' of philosophy, his experience studying under Richard Rorty, and the Analytic/Continental divide, the future of the philosophical academies with the in-coming Trump term for the USA, and much more. Crispin Sartwell is an American academic, philosopher, and journalist who was a faculty member of the philosophy department at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania until he retired in 2023.