Kimon Lycos was born in 1933, a Greek, in the then cosmopolitan city of Alexandria. His family migrated to Sydney in 1951. Kim studied under John Anderson at the University of Sydney, then in Oxford where Gilbert Ryle and John Austin were the leading figures, and G.E.L. Owen his teacher and mentor in Ancient Greek philosophy.

After teaching at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and the University of New South Wales he moved to the Australian National University in 1965 where he spent most of his working life, before moving to the University of Melbourne in 1988. For more details of Kim’s life see John Fennell’s Introduction.

Kim’s intellectual life moved the minds and hearts of many; for him the intellectual was not confined to the theoretical, it embraced whatever we humans are capable of thinking, feeling and doing.

Kim wrote papers and presented talks – many more than he published – always with an eye to intervention in the politics, ethics and thinking of the day. He did so not to put forward a different theory but to challenge ways of thinking and to open up more creative and deeper ways of thinking. Many of these essays still challenge our ways of thinking about our situation despite their orientation to specific events in the past or particular theoretical orientation.

After Kim’s untimely death in 1995 John Fennell and I agreed to put together a collection of his essays on the web, unencumbered by the demands of publishing houses and available to all – just I think as Kim might have wished.

To appreciate how Kim’s thought relates to contemporary debates in philosophy I recommend John’s Introduction.

For a full list of Kim’s publications see the bibliography.

Further essays will be put on this site.