Arts Matters
On Reading Oneself
April 28, 2013
Now that my hair is getting more grey by the day, and it’s long since I was classified as an early-career academic, I have almost 25 years of written research behind me. I recently started tidying my office and have found all sorts of old writings lying around, neglected and mostly unpublished. Some were hand-written …
Do Nothing
March 17, 2013
A few weeks ago I had an early morning flight to take. Due to poor forward planning, I was alone on board with no internet, no book or magazine and little charge on my laptop. In a restless world, such a situation seems almost a punishment to bear. What worse a torture can one inflict …
The Book
February 22, 2013
It lowers the heart rate. It stimulates your mind. It broadens horizons. Is there anything as lovely in life as reading a book, treating oneself to a few hours of escape? A book can be a window on a different world, perhaps a world of ideas. It can be a book of fantastic stories describing …
Soft or Hard?
January 20, 2013
We sometimes speak of the hard sciences, meaning physics, chemistry, mathematics and anything for which there are clear, determinate answers to be found. The hard/soft distinction can be found even in the arts. In philosophy we often distinguish between the hard end, of logic, metaphysics and epistemology, and the softer end of ethics, aesthetics and …
Nothing Really Matters
November 4, 2012
Anyone can see that absence figures just as much in our lives as presence. A deceased loved one causes the greatest sorrow. You see that they are no longer there, in their regular place, doing their regular things. A hole is left in someone’s life. Other absences impact on us. One might be saddened by …
Immortality
October 5, 2012
I have just returned from a conference on the metaphysics of relations at which were some of the finest contemporary philosophical minds. I was struck by frequent references to the likes of Aristotle, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Descartes and such. Aristotle died 2,300 years ago. We have had a long time to improve on his thinking, …
Quantities and Qualities
September 30, 2012
At a recent philosophy conference in Porto the organizers treated the delegates to a tour of some famous port wine cellars. We were shown the vintage wine collection, of which the company was very proud. Perhaps not realising we were philosophers, the tour guide asked if we had any questions. I’ve never understood what defined a wine as vintage …
Riefenstahl’s Olympia
July 5, 2012
Can art be beautiful even though it’s wrong or would its wrongness destroy its beauty? This rather abstract question of contemporary aesthetics is made concrete in the example of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s work. Riefenstahl was revolutionary, pioneering in the 1930s a number of cinematographic innovations. She used unusual angles on her subjects; she distorted the …
Literature, Philosophy and Existentialism
June 17, 2012
I have a difficult relationship with novels. I sometimes wonder what’s the point of a fictional story. And should I really spend frivolous time on novels when I haven’t yet even read the complete works of Aristotle, where surely more truth is to be found? Dickens is my favourite author but I always feel a …
The Discovery of Free Will
June 14, 2012
Humanity has a great history of exploration and discovery. Great landmarks of civilization include Columbus discovering the Americas and Amundsen reaching the South Pole ahead of Scott. We can also think of Faraday explaining electricity for the first time, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and the discovery of penicillin. Some of our top …
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