Philosophy
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…
What the new nationalism means
This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. For most of the past 200 years, the left, whether…
A toast to Roger Scruton
In clubs and other admirable locations throughout the civilised world, glasses have been raised and toasts proposed. But this was…
‘A perfect knight’: Remembering Roger Scruton
Daniel Hannan Roger Scruton changed the course of my life. He addressed my school’s philosophy society when I was 16,…
It’s a dull world in which children don’t challenge their parents
On the Shoulders of Giants consists of 12 essays that the late Umberto Eco gave as lectures at the annual…
God save us from Søren Kierkegaard
Surely God, if He existed, would find a major source of entertainment down the ages in the activities of theologians,…
Searching for God in the twilight on the Aegean Sea
My friend Jonathan Gaisman recently gave rise to a profound philosophical question concerning wine. Jonathan is formidably clever. He has…
The young Descartes: I fought, therefore I thought
Descartes is most generally known these days for being the guy who was sure he existed because he was thinking.…
Six wintry days in Saratoga Springs: Upstate by James Wood reviewed
Alan Querry, the central figure in James Wood’s second novel, is someone who, in his own words, doesn’t ‘think about…
Jessie Greengrass’s Sight is unashamedly philosophical
The precarious stasis of late pregnancy offers the narrator of Jessie Greengrass’s exceptional first novel a space — albeit an…
Help over the hump
Losing our way in life’s trackless forest, whither should we turn for solace and advice? Wisdom used to be the…
How Aristotle would hire civil servants
The civil service is to be allowed to find out what job applicants’ ‘socio-economic background’ is. What abject drivel is…
How Seneca got to sleep
As if we did not have enough to cause us sleepless nights, the Royal Society for Public Health has demanded…
Iris Murdoch’s letters just go on and on — as she herself was the first to admit
Iris Murdoch’s emotionally hectic novels have been enjoying a comeback lately, with an excellent Radio 4 dramatisation of The Sea,…
Socrates and Galen on the Great British Bake Off
As the national girth expands by the second, Auntie, never backward about lecturing us on the topic, continues to glory…
Does Labour need a new name? Let’s ask Plato
In order to make a sensible choice of new leader, the Labour party is trying to work out what its…
