To publish in these burgeoning years as young students is the act of self-becoming, our departure from the unarticulated planet we sail alone on, carved into existence from nothing. The Agora is the window to this intimate departure, a chance to observe the various questions life begs of us. In these pages we see the struggle with the fleetingness of beauty, with the seeming illegitimacy of a human in an inhuman world, with the birth of a passion for philosophy akin to breathing. We write in the Agora, because otherwise these honest tears are left for the solitary pints, for the cafés and desks, in those seldom philosophical discussions with friends. However, these deep reflections, from which we forge our identity, ought to be brought from neglect into the spotlight! Here, in these pages, is the legitimisation and appreciation of the tender, self-becoming heart, of the philosopher-poet within us all.

The Agora is the freedom of the tender heart to naïvely express its tremors and aches. The Agora hopes to encourage such honesty in our own lives and in society, to achieve the Athenian, though deeply flawed, connection between the frank public and society as a means of self-determination, to reject the crushing momentum of a society which moves without a push. The paper encourages everyone to let the follies of life ridicule them, and to communalise our agonising freedom, as Sartre would say. Youth is asphyxiated by its naïvité, as ‘life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards,’ and in response the Agora hopes to form an exciting free exchange of ideas, perspectives, and wisdom, unhindered by formality, and accelerate our understandings of the good life.