This is the best short introduction to Humanism I’ve read. Part of the ‘Thinking in Action’ series from Routledge, it is systematic, clear and cool headed. People often ask me ‘What is Humanism?’ The short answer is ‘An ethical life without superstition’ Richard Norman (Professor of Philosophy at Kent, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Norman) covers all the main points […]
On Humanism by Richard Norman Read More »
Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Protagoras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras) declares in the dialogue of the same name by Plato that ‘Man is the Measure of all Things’. If there is an objective reality ‘out there’ how can we know it except through our human point of view? David E. Cooper, (Professor of Philosophy at Durham, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Cooper) takes up this challenge.
The Measure of Things by David E. Cooper Read More »
MANY people have argued that humans are naturally cooperative. Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, the Dalai Lama, Russian zoologist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin, neurobiologist James Rilling and psychologist Dacher Keltner, among many others have all made the case that our animal nature is characterised as much by kindness and collaboration as it is by
The Age of Empathy Read More »
Physics and Cosmology are moving forward with unprecedented speed. It’s therefore difficult to recommend any one volume which can summarize our latest understanding of the Universe. This is as good as any, published in 2007. Gribbin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gribbin) attempts the complete sweep of the Universe from its beginning at the Big Bang to its possible ends,
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Donald E. Brown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_E._Brown) offered this thesis in 1991. His own summary of human universals is that they “comprise those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche for which there are no known exception.” We are all tiresomely familiar with the banal falsity that ‘everything is relative’. In the field of anthropology at least, Brown
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In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the melancholy Jaques declares: “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players.” This is a celebrated use of metaphor, a figure of speech in which one thing is used to describe another. As one of the central structural elements in human thought it is the habit,
Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Read More »
George Steiner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Steiner) has enjoyed a spectacular academic career, teaching in many prestigious institutions and writing voluminously. He is a comparative literary critic and polymath. This is an anthology of his writings between 1978-1996. Topics covered are the Hebrew Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, tragedy, Simone Weil, Saint-Simone, Peguy, Husserl, dreams, Kafka, Kierkegaard, tautology, the two suppers
No Passion Spent by George Steiner Read More »
Born in 1933 in Stockport, Cheshire, Bakewell made it to Newnham College Cambridge where she enjoyed glittering times with Jonathan Miller, Michael Frayn and Peter Hall. Thereupon she threw herself into the swinging sixties in London and has become a celebrated TV presenter. She is perhaps best remembered for presenting the serious documentay programme ‘The
The Centre of the Bed Read More »
What can one say about A.C. Bradley’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._C._Bradley) Shakespearean Tragedy? This is a masterpiece of literary criticism that has enriched and influenced generations of students and lovers of Shakespeare since its publication in 1904. There is a beautiful lyrical poise and scholarly self-assurance in the work which makes one go back to read again (I
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