Aristotle

Aristotle’s advice for young protestors

18 May 2024 9:00 am

In his Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle (384-322 bc) sets about identifying the various headings under which you can be persuasive…

Were the Greeks right about justice?

13 April 2024 9:00 am

The Sentencing Council, consisting of various legal authorities, has told judges and magistrates to consider, when sentencing the young, their…

Are we finally beginning to understand gravity?

13 April 2024 9:00 am

Claudia de Rham explores the true nature of this fundamental force as she struggles against received wisdom to get a new theory of ‘massive gravity’ recognised

All work and no play is dulling our senses

2 March 2024 9:00 am

Ancient Greek philosophers reckoned that life was all about free time, but 16th-century puritanism dealt a blow to the old festive culture from which we’ve never fully recovered

The balance of power between humans and machines

18 November 2023 9:00 am

Robert Skidelsky dismisses the possibility of our annihilation by a superintelligent computer system, since ‘science tells us that we cannot create such a being’. But does it?

High life

29 July 2023 9:00 am

Circular arguments

1 July 2023 9:00 am

Aristotle had long proved that the Earth was spherical, and even the illiterate masses of early medieval Europe were aware of the fact, says James Hannam

Liz Truss and the art of rhetoric

22 October 2022 9:00 am

Liz Truss was spot-on in arguing that the only way in which a state can flourish is by combining low…

In search of the peripatetic philosopher Theophrastus

20 August 2022 9:00 am

Publishers lately seem to have got the idea that otherwise uncommercial subjects might be rendered sexy if presented with a…

Does Putin pass Aristotle’s tyrant test?

5 March 2022 9:00 am

Is Putin a tyrant? Aristotle (384-322 bc) might well have thought so. Seeing the turannos as a deviant type of…

America is a nation divided

11 December 2021 9:00 am

New York Imagine a European country today in which a newspaper in its most populous city launches a mendacious project…

After a lifetime in nightclubs, now I party at home

4 December 2021 9:00 am

New York   It’s party time in the Bagel, and it’s about time, too. Good restaurants and elegant nightclubs are…

The great disrupter: how William of Occam overturned medieval thought

28 August 2021 9:00 am

Astonishing where an idea can lead you. You start with something that 800 years hence will sound like it’s being…

The myth of American freedom

6 February 2021 9:00 am

Gstaad Imagine a beautiful, sexy woman, an Ava Gardner or a Lily James, with a wart on the end of…

Aristotle would have seen Trump’s behaviour as entirely normal

21 November 2020 9:00 am

Donald Trump may be a narcissist, but since he is not mentally ill in the technical sense, he is not…

The ancients would have thought Boris was deluded

7 February 2020 10:00 pm

The gloom that envelopes the Labour party stands in strong contrast to the confidence and hope that the Prime Minister…

How to deal with Brexit anger, according to the ancients

7 September 2019 9:00 am

Sir Philip Pullman, tweeting that thoughts of hanging the PM came to mind after the decision to prorogue parliament, later…

Do animals really have feelings? Plutarch thought so

2 December 2017 9:00 am

Whatever the government decides about post-EU regulations on animal sentience, the Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch (died c. ad 120)…

Romans, racism and Sadiq Khan

14 May 2016 9:00 am

‘Racism’ refers to the belief in racially determined inferiority, most often recognised in body-type, about which, by definition, nothing can…

Did criticism kill John Keats? Sketch by Joseph Severn of the poet in his last illness

Aphorisms and the arts: from Aristotle to Oscar Wilde

19 March 2016 9:00 am

The author of this jam-packed treasure trove has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000 and…

Ancient and Modern: The mercenaries of IS and ancient Greece

16 January 2016 9:00 am

Last week we read that Isis was crumbling, but still a force to be reckoned with. That is true, but…

Science was invented in 1572

16 January 2016 9:00 am

There was no science before 1572, the year that Tycho Brahe saw a new star in the night sky above…

The question Christianity fails to answer: ‘Who is my neighbour?’

12 December 2015 9:00 am

‘Fine old Christmas,’ wrote George Eliot, ‘with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in…

How ancient Athens handled immigrants

7 November 2015 9:00 am

Among all the arguments about how many non-EU immigrants we should let in, campaigners are proposing a scheme for private…

Aristotle wouldn't have rated Jeremy Corbyn’s fan club

1 August 2015 9:00 am

Jeremy Corbyn says he is very excited about his campaign to become Labour leader because lots of young people are…