Category: Articles & Essays

How ‘Human Becoming’ Joins East and West

Articles & Essays

There is good sense in Roger Ames’s suggestion that we would be better to talk in terms of human becoming rather than human being. If we are like books that are still being written or plays in mid-performance, then clearly we are still in the process of becoming who we are. But this is not the kind of becoming that ends in being, like the building of a house which ends with a complete construction. Rather, our only being is becoming: when the becoming ends, we end, too. A performance is thus a better metaphor for the human narrative than a novel.

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“Returning” relics is never simple

Articles & Essays

The refusal to give up stolen artefacts seems even stranger when you consider that there is one set of objects that everyone agrees should be returned: anything seized by the Third Reich. In 2009, parliament passed the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act, which forms the basis of the Indian plaintiffs’ case. It seems there is one law for Nazi loot and another – or rather none at all – for the colonial variety.

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Review: A Good Life by Mark Rowlands

Articles & Essays

One of the problems raised in the book is Mill’s now famous question about whether it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. We might equally well ask if an imperfect example of something daringly original is superior to a perfect example of something more mundane. How you answer that will determine whether you prefer the honourably flawed A Good Life or the more routine competence of less ambitious philosophers.

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Philanthropy or dirty self-promotion?

Articles & Essays

Universities and other bodies that stand for values worth defending diminish their prestige if they effectively sell off parts of themselves to the highest bidder. Of course you cannot stop philanthropists gaining in stature because of their gifts. But there is a difference between bathing in a reflected glory that shines without cost and being deliberately singled out in a floodlight, which is what the granting of naming rights does.

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Should children take term time holidays?

Articles & Essays

Something has changed and that appears to be an increased desire to choose what is best for ourselves with scant regard for what is best for the wider community as a whole. And this seems equally true of too many left-leaning middle class parents who join the chorus decrying selfish individualism and advocating collective solidarity, even while taking off on their mid-term holiday.

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