Philosophy
We have lost an unforgettable teacher and one of the greatest living critics
Tanner, the critic RICHARD BRATBY Michael Tanner (1935-2024), who died earlier this month, had such a vital mind and stood…
Flaubert, snow, poverty, rhythm … the random musings of Anne Carson
It is thrillingly difficult to keep one’s balance in Carson’s topsy-turvy world as she meditates on a wide range of subjects in poetry, pictures and prose
Is writing now changing the world for the worse?
Humanity’s great civilising accomplishment may have slipped the leash. Computer programs and surveillance also involve ‘writing’, potentially making us decreasingly human
The problem with westerners seeking oriental enlightenment
Those chasing after blissful satori never seem interested in the people who actually live in Asia. They want to float in higher spheres
Why were masters of the occult respected but witches burnt?
Anthony Grafton discusses five celebrated scholars, beginning with Dr Faustus, who separated ‘good’ magic from ‘bad’ in their studies of alchemy, astrology and conjuration
The invisible boundaries of everyday life
Maxim Samson investigates cultural or imaginary demarcations around the world, including the International Date Line, America’s Bible Belt and the Jewish eruvim
Too many tales of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle
Contemplating ‘hedgehog philosophy’ with Sarah Sands, Rowan Williams, Greta Thunberg and other luminaries would test anyone’s patience after 150 pages
What should we make of the esoteric philosophy Traditionalism?
Depending on one’s perspective, it is either a dangerous way of thinking or one that the decadent West would do well to study, says Mark Sedgwick
Can the ancient Greeks really offer us ‘life lessons’ today?
Adam Nicolson thinks so. But his liveliest stories are about Pythagoras, who lived in a hole in the ground, and Thales, who fell into a well while studying the night sky
The philosophical puzzles of the British Socrates
After vital work for British intelligence during the second world war, why did J.L. Austin devote the rest of his life to considering literally asinine questions?
In search of the peripatetic philosopher Theophrastus
Publishers lately seem to have got the idea that otherwise uncommercial subjects might be rendered sexy if presented with a…
What exactly do we mean by the mind?
Given the ingenuity of machine-makers, said Descartes in the 17th century, machines might well be constructed that exactly resemble humans.…
The amazing grace of Bruce Lee’s fight scenes
Early on in Enter the Dragon our hero, the acrobatic Kung Fu fighter Bruce Lee, tells a young pupil to…
Life’s great dilemma: Either/Or, by Elif Batuman, reviewed
In this delightful sequel to her semi-autobiographical novel The Idiot (2017), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Elif…
Know your left from your right: the brain’s divided hemispheres
The dust jacket of The Matter With Things quotes a large statement from an Oxford professor: ‘This is one of…
The great disrupter: how William of Occam overturned medieval thought
Astonishing where an idea can lead you. You start with something that 800 years hence will sound like it’s being…
Foucault was shielded from scandal by French reverence for intellectuals
Consider the hare and the hyena. The hare, Clement of Alexandria told readers of his 2nd-century sexual self-help manual Paedagogus,…
The life cycle of the limpet teaches universal truths
Adam Nicolson is one of our finest writers of non-fiction. He has range — from place and history to literature…
Waiting for Gödel is over: the reclusive genius emerges from the shadows
The 20th-century Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel did his level best to live in the world as his philosophical hero Gottfried…
The insidious attacks on scientific truth
What is truth? You can speak of moral truths and aesthetic truths but I’m not concerned with those here, important…
Four German-speaking philosophers in search of a theme
How do you write a group biography of people who never actually formed a group? Such is the challenge Wolfram…
Macron is preparing for intellectual battle against Islamism
Muslim thinkers offer a remedy to fundamentalism
How time vanishes: the more we study it, the more protean it seems
Some books elucidate their subject, mapping and sharpening its boundaries. The Clock Mirage, by the mathematician Joseph Mazur, is not…
We all need to be let alone —not just Greta Garbo
‘You’re never alone with a Strand,’ went the misbegotten advertisement for a new cigarette in 1959. What the copywriter didn’t…
Let’s leave philosophers to puzzle over the reality of numbers
The reality (or lack thereof) of numbers is the kind of problem some philosophers consider overwhelmingly important, but it’s of…
