From time to time, not very often, it looks as though the world has given philosophy a job to do. Now is such a moment. At last, a big abstract noun – truth – is at the heart of a cultural crisis and philosophers can be called in to sort it out. Send them back…
ReadI’m not convinced we live in a post-truth world. But truth is certainly in some kind of trouble, challenged on many fronts. Surprisingly, the sources of several of those challenges are good things…
ReadIt was just a small practical change to help keep people moving. Transport for London painted some green lanes on the King’s Cross Victoria line platform to keep space clear for passengers to alight without having to face a wall of commuters just as eager to get on. But not since Mars of Slough removed the little cardboard tray from its Bounty bars has so much outrage been caused by so little…
ReadThe Infidel and The Professor is a lean, easy to digest read while being rich with interesting detail. It is anchored by weighty scholarship but not burdened by its excessive demonstration. Pick it up and you might find yourself agreeing with Hume that “reading and sauntering and lownging and dozing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.”
ReadThere is no religion-shaped space that needs to be filled. Rather, there are many spaces which religions have managed to occupy. The need for meaning, for example, is not religious, but it is a need religions attempt to fulfil. The same is true of the needs for values, community, the marking of life-stages.
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