Zeno and the philosophical conundrum of pure reasoning
It was the pre-Socratic thinker Parmenides who first mooted the idea (as far as we know) in a document, only fragments of which survive in…
Philosophy
Three views on privacy in the digital age, part 1: the value of the self
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the…
Has the postmodern revolution gone full circle?
Happily, the inconsistency and incoherence of the postmodernist perspective is increasingly being challenged by a new generation of thinkers from across the political spectrum. For example Ken Wilber in his Trump and a Post-Truth World notes how postmodernism has played itself out and in attempting to create a new basis for determining truth has ultimately undermined it.
The Just Society: Equality or Freedom?
In A Theory of Justice John Rawls conducted a famous thought experiment. He asked, if we were to imagine, behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, being…
Lexicon for the Moral Maze
Do you find yourself confused or bewildered by what passes for moral debate in the social milieu these days? Asking yourself why so many people…
Respect, rights and freedoms in an era of identity activism
The British actor Ben Kingsley, probably most famous for his eponymous role in the film Ghandi, has, since being knighted in the 2001 honours list,…
The Unintended Consequences of Law
It is a fact little known that the origins of the title of John Steinbeck’s famous novel “Of Mice and Men” was an ode “To…
The coming struggle: individualism versus the bureaucratic state
Introduction Modernity has been characterised not only by the great benefits brought by the increase in scientific knowledge and the technologies that have flowed…
Who Will Mind the Minders?
We often, particularly around this time each year, pride ourselves here in the UK on our having given birth to modern democracy in the context…
Legality and Morality: Can Man Serve Two Masters?
It is often suggested that obedience to the law is a virtue and by implication that respect for the law is a requirement of morality….