Dear authors and readers,
The history of philosophy is also a history of forms. Plato did not write treatises, but dialogues whose content still connects with our questions. Aristotle pursued systematic inquiry, while Sappho of Lesbos wrote poetry to address the mystical and existential. From St. Augustine’s confessions and Ibn Ṭufayl’s allegories to Descartes’ meditations, philosophy never had a single voice. It was argued, narrated, performed, confessed, confided...
We do not see this variety as decoration around "real" ideas. We see it as how ideas live. Change the shape, and you will change what can be said, who can say it, and who will read you. Being Journal is an open platform for philosophical work in any form: essays, dialogues, letters, fiction, aphorisms, poems... or experiments we have not imagined yet! What matters is that the style belongs to the idea, and that the idea is worth thinking about.
When Francis Bacon and Machiavelli shaped political imagination, they did so through utopian fiction and strategic handbooks. Erasmian humor and Pascal’s fragments showed that depth does not require rigidity. Locke chose the letter format to defend tolerance, while Voltaire and Kierkegaard found in literature their vessel for irony and critique.
In the modern era, Simone de Beauvoir understood the novel as a philosophical laboratory for exploring human existence. Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus expressed their existentialism through novels and plays. Nietzsche did not just dismantle systems through aphorisms, but constructed worlds filled with metaphors and symbols. Wittgenstein turned to everyday language to leave behind pseudo-propositions and metaphysical abstractions. Heidegger placed so much importance on language that he considered it the home of being. Philosophy also thrives in the cracks of daily life, finding expression in everyday forms. We see it in the urgency of correspondence, such as Rosa Luxemburg’s letters from prison, where theoretical problems met human connection.
Freedom of form is not freedom from rigour. A good dialogue needs good arguments and better answers; a good aphorism, precision and wit; a good story, an idea that could not have been told otherwise. We welcome humour, which has always been one of philosophy's sharpest tools, and we welcome criticism, including of our own perspectives!
Being Journal will host a plural publication featuring the dialogue playing on repeat in someone’s mind, the fragment that refuses to become an article, the humour-filled critique that will make us all laugh, the letter never sent but written to a friend with different ideas or to a philosopher from another century...
Philosophy's diversity of forms is not a problem to be solved; it is philosophy's pulse. Let's enjoy this music!
All the best,