The Nobel laureate argues that we have reached a time in which there is no culture The intellectuals, the supine media, the political class have abandoned substance and discrimination and with treacherous enthusiasm adopted the idea of the image as truth. The liberal revolution of the 1960s, especially the events of 1968 in France, and… Read More ‘Notes on the Death of Culture’ by Mario Vargas Llosa
A timely guide to the Greek philosopher – and rival to the Stoics – who saw freedom from anxiety as the ultimate goal Julian Baggini Epicurus’s distinctive feature is his insistence that pleasure is the source of all happiness and is the only truly good thing. Hence the modern use of “epicurean” to mean gourmand.… Read More Living for Pleasure by Emily Austin: an Epicurean guide to happiness
Work and leisure, deemed opposite, are both caught up in the contemporary socio-economic pressure to be productive; time off, forced into servicing respite or distraction, is a commodified entity. Could a universal right to ‘otium’, the ancient concept of time, free from worldly concerns, create the opportunity to work on oneself through oneself? Jean-Miguel Pire… Read More Taking the time to exist
Her debut album Parakou was released in 1990, but it took her hit song Agolo for her to burst into global reckoning and galvanise the world’s dance floors in 1994. In the Yoruba language “agolo” refers to the metaphysical significance of time, a cyclical phenomenon conjoining life with death – life being a gift that must be cherished and… Read More Angelique Kidjo: the diva from Benin carries with her a fierce history
Gandhiji has been killed by his own people for whose redemption he lived. This second crucifixion in the history of the world has been enacted on a Friday – the same day Jesus was done to death one thousand nine hundred and fifteen years ago Father forgive us These lines in white on a black… Read More The Lady Vanishes
First posted October 21, 2011 The law of chaos is the law of ideas,Of improvisations and seasons of belief. Ideas are men. The mass of meaning andThe mass of men are one. Chaos is not The mass of meaning. It is three or fourIdeas or, say, five men or, possibly six. In the end, these… Read More Wallace Stevens and the ‘Academy of fine ideas’
First posted December 15, 2017 The highest ideals of Locke, Hume and Kant were first proposed more than a century earlier by an Ethiopian in a cave The ideals of the Enlightenment are the basis of our democracies and universities in the 21st century: belief in reason, science, skepticism, secularism, and equality. In fact, no… Read More Dag Herbjørnsrud – The African Enlightenment
A tribute to Richard Bernstein, 1932-2022 “All academic thinking, whether right, left or middle, is conservative in the extreme,” Arendt had written to him. “Nobody wants to hear what he hasn’t heard before.” Recalling these words, Bernstein leaned toward his laptop camera, growing bigger on our screens. We must all fight off this tendency to… Read More A philosophy professor’s final class
Extracts from Pascal Bruckner: On August 21, 1670, Jacques Bossuet, the bishop of Meaux and official preacher to the court of Louis XIV, pronounced the eulogy for Princess Henrietta of England before the Prince of Condé. The Duchess of Orléans had died at 26 after drinking a glass of chicory that may have been poisoned.… Read More Condemned to Joy: the cult of happiness is a mirthless enterprise
First posted June 05, 2013 ‘All through the ages, the different religions, which have been given to man for his spiritual development with the sole idea of unity, have gradually become a kind of community or nationality. Many people who belong to a Church accept its dogmas, claim a certain name for their religion, and… Read More Hazrat Inayat Khan on Religious Unity and Uniformity
After the truth-shower 