The Hammond Society of graduate philosophy students at Johns Hopkins is sponsoring an essay contest with the following prompt:

What is a Good Life?
When asked, ‘What do you want from life?’, or ‘What is a good life?’, many respond with the age-old slogan, ‘All that really matters is that you’re happy’. Does this slogan capture all that is relevant to a good life?
Imagine that in the future, scientists and engineers develop an ‘experience machine’. People can program into the machine whatever experiences they want to undergo, and hook themselves up to this machine …

By Shane Steinert-Threlkeld
One part of Obama’s victory speech that stood out was his comparison of the USA to an evolving being. Through exercising our democratic ability to change our government, we are helping render our union more perfect. When one analyzes the philosophical foundations upon which his belief system rest, it appears that Obama believes in the same brand of minimalism for which most natural rights philosophers argue. We explore this implication and ask questions about our nation and moral relativism.

Due to unforeseen circumstances with our email server crashing, all submissions sent from November 6 to November 18 to Prometheus were only recently accessible by our staff. Because of this, the Prometheus staff has agreed to push back the publication’s date of our third issue: “Implications of the 2008 Election on Political Philosophy.” We send our deepest apologies for the delayed response. We will keep you informed and have the third issue of Prometheus up as soon as possible.

The third issue of Prometheus’ Online Journal will be our first themed issue. We are looking for short papers discussing “The Implications of the 2008 Election on Political Philosophy”. If you are like us, there is a lot you want to say about this historic moment; here is an outlet for your thoughts. Whether it be extrapolating from something in Obama’s acceptance speech to the vote on Proposition 8 to McCain’s defeat, we want to investigate the implications that this November 4 has on political philosophy.
Please submit your papers by November 16.

We have thrown this flier (view post for clickable link) together explaining what Prometheus is and asking for paper submissions. Realize that because this is a national journal, we need to spread the word outside of JHU. So please e-mail this file to all your undergraduate friends around the world and show them this website as a testament to all the hard work we’ve put in.

On behalf of the staff, we would like to welcome you to the launch of Prometheus, Hopkins Undergraduate Philosophy Journal. Since its inception in 2004, Prometheus has slowly evolved to encompass and reflect the diverse philosophical interests of Hopkins undergraduates. The purpose of this journal is to promote philosophic discourse by offering students an opportunity to engage in open discussion, participate in the production and publication of an academic philosophy journal, and to establish a community of aspiring philosophers.

There is this preconceived notion that philosophy has very little intrinsic worth, especially in the twenty-first century. Many people have a hard time comprehending the significance of a study they believe has long been replaced by psychology and the natural sciences. Many people are intrigued then when I tell them I am a philosophy major at Johns Hopkins.

So I’m often asked two questions. What is philosophy? Why is it important?