Our Issue numbering system – 001, 002, and soon, 003 – is both a stylistic and optimistic choice. Stylistic because, well, it looks cool (and we are all secretly looking forward to Issue 007). Optimistic because it implies that SideQuests’ publications have the potential to enter the triple-digits. Thankfully, our optimism does not seem to be totally naïve, as SideQuests has been met with much enthusiasm and support. For this, we are grateful.
SideQuests’ two aims remain: 1. To provide philosophers, academic and non-academic, an opportunity to, at least briefly, engage with ideas which they find interesting, important, relevant, but which they might not otherwise have the time to explore. 2. To make philosophy accessible to a wider audience, to show that philosophising need not be confined to our (let’s admit, probably dusty) Philosophy Department offices and corridors. These two aims mean that Issue 001, published in January 2026, includes an exciting blend of topics, ideas, and approaches. These ranged from (but are not limited to) a (hopeful) critique of hopecore, reflections on Taoism and tarot, an exploration of the relation between change and the self, and a piece that suggests that maybe the world of Frank Herbert’s Dune is not totally removed from our own increasingly AI-dependent world.
It is unsurprising that a quarter of the articles submitted to Issue 002 also explore what the rise of AI means for us, as human beings. Chantelle Gray, in Fabulating Futures in the Digital Condition, problematises the encroachment of the digital – AI, the algorithm, and its ilk – on every aspect of our lives, and the implications of this encroachment for the production of knowledge. Ragnar van der Merwe’s piece, ‘A Problem for Metaphysical Dualists in the Future of AI Debate’, poses the thesis that the distinction between complex and complicated systems (human beings falling into the first, AI falling into the latter) might not be as simple or as distinct as we would perhaps like them to be. Asheel Singh argues that in the age of the Machine, the outsider, who questions, doubts, and poses alternatives, must be eliminated – cancelled. Singh’s call to “be the untimely outsider” speaks to many of the pieces in this issue. One such questioner is Jenna Wilkinson, who, in ‘Aesthetics and AI: Synthetic Mimesis and the Question of Artistic Nudity’, considers AI’s inclusion in art and the question of whether AI-generated content can ever actually be art.
If the interest in AI in this issue is unsurprising, and also important, timely, and very relevant, the interest in art is maybe more surprising but no less important, timely, and relevant. For if AI makes us question what makes us human, turning to our capacity to create art is a good place to start. Pieces exploring art, in various forms, through various approaches and asking various questions, make up just less than half the articles of this Issue. Wilkinson reaches the conclusion that it is human beings’ vulnerability that makes art, art – something AI can never capture, only, as she puts it, reflect. In William Shaer’s piece, ‘Before You Look, You Are Told What You See’, he argues that we are no longer able to approach art without the mediation of an accompanying essay explaining its meaning. Shaer argues that if art is not dead, our increasing incapacity to think and experience it for ourselves, without mediation, is certainly not allowing it to live. As a visual artist herself, Odette Graskie’s ‘The Work of Looking’ speaks to what the viewer loses when they approach a work of art through the mediation of being told what to perceive – they lose the sense of wonder that comes with the work of really looking at a work of art. David Mann also explores the idea that art, in this case creative writing in particular, involves work, and a willingness to engage with the world and collaborate with others, and that it is our curiosity that keeps us human. Daniel Rathbone explores something refreshingly human, the ‘Thomasson’, or ‘hyperart’, useless objects in the built environment that are nevertheless maintained by ordinary people, for no purpose, and that are discovered by other ordinary people. Rathbone’s exploration of hyperart, which I would argue no AI could ever comprehend (insofar as AI’s can ‘comprehend’ anything) speaks to other authors’ questions around what makes art human, and what we are losing in our contemporary relation to art – unmediated experience, vulnerability, wonder, and curiosity in a collaborative world.
But Issue 002 is not just about art and AI. Werner Smith kicks off the issue with an article that encapsulates SideQuests’ aim of making philosophy accessible and showing that philosophy is to be found everywhere. In ‘What Time Is It? Philosophy Time!’, Smith argues that the world of the television show Adventure Time presents fertile ground for philosophical reflection and thought experimentation. Tamia Sadé Moodley also argues that a popular television show is calling for philosophical, specifically phenomenological analysis, albeit this is a show fairly far removed from the animated, post-apocalyptic science fiction world of Adventure Time. In ‘Flirt, Fumble, Repeat: The Phenomenology of Love Island’, Moodley analyses the reality show Love Island as a (bikini-clad) mirror of reality. As Smith and Moodley show us, we cannot really escape philosophy. We find it even in those television shows that feel completely removed from reality.
Of course, philosophy is also to be found in the most mundane aspects of our reality. Cara Brits’ ‘Eat, Sense, Remember, Repeat: What Makes Comfort Food so Comforting?’ explores the profound sense of comfort we find in food, the sensory impact of our favourite foods, and the nostalgic memories food evokes. Brits highlights the affective role of food in our everyday lives, something we often take for granted. Gisela Diedericks also cracks open the mundane by exploring the implications behind someone’s cracking an ‘Instagram’, as opposed to genuine, smile. In ‘An Instagram Smile: Exploring The Being and Ethics of a Cyber Presence’, she explores social media and self esteem, arguing that we need an ethics to guide our being-online. When going online is something as central to our day as eating (regrettably, the two often coincide), how we exist online and how this impacts us are questions that warrant asking.
The final article in this issue is Ruth Anderwald’s ‘The Ground We Are Walking’. Written amidst the chaos, confusion, tension, fear, and violence in Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, and the world at large, as well as growing Islamophobia and antisemitism alike, Anderwald argues that our understanding of the world today, and all that is happening in it, cannot be considered in a historical vacuum. In particular, she considers the historical root of Austria’s “neurotic” relationship to Israel, and how discriminatory practices in a little European city over a century ago contributed, in complex, intricate ways, to realities gripping our contemporary world and upturning, and ending, lives today.
The last piece in this issue is a book review, written by Cate Otto, of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Otto encapsulates many of the concerns that float in the background, or sit right at the foreground, of this issue: what happens when human beings stop thinking, yield to endless distraction, and cease to see. In an issue preoccupied with what it means to be human, from the mundanities of the human lived experience to the joys of human creativity, questions around what it means not to be human and about how we are losing, or at least at risk of losing, and what makes us human, are inevitable.
The contributors to this second issue of SideQuests each, in their own way, embody Singh’s “spirit of philosophy”, as embodied by the questioning outsider, to “seek out perspectives far and wide and make up our own minds”. To embrace the willingness to question, explore, wonder, be creative and curious; to think, to look, and if not make up one’s mind about things, to at least be willing to refuse to have one’s mind made up for them: that is the call at the core of Issue 002.
By Kayleigh Timmer
Kayleigh Timmer is currently completing a PhD at Stellenbosch University. Her areas of interest include feminist philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, Critical Theory, and the philosophy of emotions. Her current areas of research include existential analyses of femininity, complicity, and bad faith; the affective experience of gender-based violence; and the relationship between social media and subversive socio-political praxis.