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 […]
The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz Read More »
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
Shakespeare’s Language by Frank Kermode Read More »
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.
The Philosophy of History by Mark Day Read More »
A classic of religious philosophy, The Idea of the Holy (1917) by Rudolph Otto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Otto) has been revered by generations of lay readers as well as divinity students. In the work, Otto introduces the concept of the ‘numinous’ which he defines as a ‘non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the
The Idea of the Holy by Rudolph Otto Read More »
When William James (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_james) went to the University of Edinburgh in 1901 to deliver a series of lectures on ‘natural religion’, he defined religion as ‘the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine’. Considering religion,
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James Read More »
Ever popular Nora Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Roberts) has a new offering. The summary is as follows. With indifferent parents, Iona Sheehan grew up craving devotion and acceptance. From her maternal grandmother, she learned where to find both: a land of lush forests, dazzling lakes, and centuries-old legends. County Mayo, Ireland. Where her ancestors’ blood and magic have flowed
Why do we often have a fascination for the grisly facts of warfare? Is it because our behaviour in war reveals something about the truth of human nature? We find elements of the highest courage, heroism, self-sacrifice and utter brutality, cruelty, sadism, destructiveness. The outline of these features seem to stand out so much more
Victorian poet Arthur Hugh Clough (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Hugh_Clough) trod that ever- so-delicate path between faith and doubt that 20th century philosopher Anthony Kenny came to do himself. Both also had a connection with Liverpool and Balliol College. Kenny has immersed himself in the mind of Clough in order to deliver this ‘life’. He regards Clough’s religious verse as the finest
Arthur Hugh Clough Read More »
Cosmologists tell us that the Universe is 13.75 billion years old (roughly!). It’s not that I’m disinclined to believe this. What is staggering is the ingenuity that it must have taken to work this out. John Gribbin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gribbin) and (http://www.johngribbinbooks.com/) tells the story in this most useful book. In the 19th century astronomers, geologists and evolutionists first
