EGGHEAD CHOICE – Crack open for a hard boiled think

There is currently an epidemic of ‘affluenza’ throughout the world – an obsessive, envious, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses – that has resulted in huge increases in depression and anxiety among millions. Over a nine-month period, bestselling author Oliver James (http://www.selfishcapitalist.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_James_(psychologist)) travelled around the world to try and find out why. The author discovered how, despite very different cultures […]

Here is a fact that may or may not make you choke on your cornflakes, especially if you’ve bought them from ASDA (owned by Walmart). At the time of writing the Walton family, owners of Walmart, have a combined wealth greater than that of the total of the 40% poorest of Americans !!!!!!. You may

What makes Shakespeare the greatest dramatist/poet, period? This masterpiece of literary criticism and elucidation will tell you what. It is, in itself, a marvellous achievement and a distillation of a lifetime of thinking. The finest tragedies written in English were all composed in the first decade of the seventeenth century, and it is generally accepted that the

The words ‘history’ and ‘past’ are often used inter-changeably. There is, though, a proper technical distinction. The past is everything that has receded into time. It is complete and irrecoverable (setting aside for the moment any speculation about time travel). History is what is written about the past. It is an interpretation of the past.

There used to be a widely held view in Western Europe that we were the ‘civilised’ peoples and that less advanced peoples were savages. It was all very much Dr Livingstone taking the light of the Gospel and truth out to darkest Africa. Well, they certainly got the Gospel and we got the land. This view pertained

David E. Cooper, Professor of Philosopy at Durham, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E_Cooper) has put together this volume of writings about the theory of beauty. Possibly on the esoteric side, nevertheless whole academic careers have been devoted to it. Authors represented are Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Hume, Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Bell, Dewey, Heidegger and Collingwood. Hume and Schopenhauer are

It’s a contentious matter as to which of Shakespeare’s plays is the greatest. Some say ‘King Lear’, others say ‘Hamlet’. For my money ‘Measure for Measure’ is right up there, but ‘The Tempest’ is the greatest play. It was the last to be written and seems to encapsulate the Bard’s best wisdom. Here, for example, is

Anthony Kenny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Kenny) has produced a monumental work for the general reader on the history of Western philosophy. Not many heroic attempts on this scale have been made since that of Bertrand Russell in 1945 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Western_Philosophy) and (http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Western-Philosophy-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415325056/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387469626&sr=8-1&keywords=russell+history+of+western+philosophy) Kenny’s work was originally published in 4 parts as follows: Kenny, A. (2004) Ancient Philosophy: A New

David Hume’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/) Treatise on Human Nature (1739) and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) are amongst the most widely studied texts in philosophy. They deserve to be. Hume was the most profound thinker ever to write in English. A recent informal poll of contemporary leading philosophers on the philosophybites website(http://philosophybites.com/2012/11/whos-your-favourite-philosopher.html) brought out Hume as massively influential.