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Janna Thompson

Janna Thompson
Janna Thompson is a professor of philosophy at La Trobe University. She is the author of Taking Responsibility for the Past: Reparation and Historical Injustice (2002) and Intergenerational Justice: Rights and Responsibilities in an Intergenerational Polity (2009). She has also written articles on environmental philosophy, aesthetics, feminism, and global justice.

Janna Thompson reviews 'Hume: An intellectual biography' by James A. Harris

October 2016, no. 385 26 September 2016
David Hume earned his place in the philosophical pantheon mostly because of the uncompromising empiricism of his early work A Treatise of Human Nature (1738). He looked into his mind and found no such thing as the will or an agent that directs it. He found nothing in the world to explain causal connection and concluded that predicting the future depends on an inclination of mind. Sympathy and util ... (read more)

Janna Thompson reviews 'Actual Consciousness' by Ted Honderich

April 2015, no. 370 27 March 2015
Our perceptual world is rich in colour and sound. We think and imagine. We experience repugnance and longing. Meanwhile, in our brains neurons are firing and chemical reactions are taking place. Conscious experience and brain events are obviously related. Reputable Australian philosophers insist that they are one and the same. But how can events with such different qualities fit together? ... (read more)

Janna Thompson reviews 'European Aesthetics: A critical introduction from Kant to Derrida' by Robert L. Wicks

May 2013, no. 351 28 April 2013
It is possible to imagine a culture that treats art merely as decoration, but to inheritors of the European tradition this idea of art’s function is demeaning. We expect great art to express or reflect the spiritual and philosophical preoccupations of our cultural heritage. No system-building philosopher in modern European history would have failed to incorporate an aesthetic theory into his the ... (read more)
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