Crack open for a hard boiled think
From the advent of Fauvism to the development of Dada, the early part of the twentieth century saw a series of avant-garde movements in European literature, music, and painting, which fundamentally re-examined the languages of the arts. The strength of Early Modernism by Christopher Butler is its treatment of the great movements of this period in […]
Early Modernism by Christopher Butler Read More »
Today’s digital communication and social media make the cultivation of anger and resentment an easy hobby. The Internet is bursting with people full of rage, and also anxiously scanning the world for signs of their own ‘ego status’. In this book, derived from her 2014 Locke Lectures at Oxford University, Martha Nussbaum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Nussbaum) argues that
Anger and Forgiveness by Martha Nussbaum Read More »
Christopher Hitchens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens) died at the age of 62 on 15th December 2011. The cause of death was pneumonia brought on by esophageal cancer. He had been highly productive writer, polemicist and debater. He had also been a heavy smoker and drinker. This book includes the six elegant pieces he wrote for Vanity Fair chronicling his illness
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens Read More »
The Enlightenment (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/) has been battered, abused, misrepresented and accused of leading to all sorts of horrors like the worst excesses of the French Revolution and Nazism. The vilification has been going on since its earliest appearance in Europe in the 1600s. This is mostly because it had deeply unsettling implications for established world views,
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker Read More »
The entire digital world in which we’re steeped, not to mention the power of technology and all modern convenience is all based on numbers. I Bernard Cohen’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._Bernard_Cohen) book here shows how this relation to our world only developed gradually. The author begins with the scientific revolution of the 17th century, which formulated the laws
The Triumph of Numbers by Bernard Cohen Read More »
Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris here offer detailed research on the place of religion in modern societies across the world. They point to a seemingly confusing picture. First, during the last century people in industrial societies have grown more secular. Second, ‘The world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever
Sacred and Secular by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris Read More »
Is it just luck that some people find purpose and fulfilment while others do not? Jonathan Haidt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt) compares philosophical, religious, and theoretical texts with recent scientific insights to find out. He draws on psychology’s ‘attachment theory’, sociological research, and recent developments in the neuroscience of emotion. Haidt uses this research to illuminate ancient and more
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt Read More »
Moral philosophers don’t often get prizes for the lucidity of their writing. Many have a deplorable writing style. Difficulty in comprehension does not equal profundity of meaning, however. Every now and again a philosophy book comes along that shows the lie, and stands out for its clarity, directness, and accessibility. Mortal Questions by Thomas Nagel
Mortal Questions by Thomas Nagel Read More »
Anyone who has the highest admiration for David Hume, as I do, will welcome this book. Hume is the profoundest and most stylish philosopher ever to have written in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as ‘the Great Infidel’. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy, and is now
The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis Rasmussen Read More »
