June 2025

Rick Lewis reviews Raymond Tallis’s latest book. At this magazine we have a golden rule that we never publish a book review written by someone who is a friend of the author. Nor do we ever print book reviews if they are written by the publishers of those books. (Such reviews are called ‘press releases’). These […]

Philip Badger questions Robert Sapolsky’s determinism. Robert Sapolsky is that rare thing in modern academia, a true polymath. This is evidenced by his multiple and simultaneously held professorships, which range from Anthropology to Neurology, as well as his willingness to stick his nose into what philosophers often consider to be their business. In this case, that

We search for freedom this issue, as Kevin Currie points out the many varieties of liberalism. “That’s because you’re a liberal!” my self-identified ‘progressive’ colleague said to me with slight contempt. We were talking about the importance of the right to conscience even when it means the right to hold noxious – maybe racist or sexist –

Artur Szutta explores inner space with James Tartaglia. There are books that captivate us: when we read them, hours pass like minutes. We immerse ourselves in them completely, and after reading them we’re different people. This is often the case with great literature, or even a good crime novel; but can it also happen when reading

Lucy Weir thinks about climate ethics with Robin Attfield. Robin Attfield, an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University and a key figure in environmental ethics, begins The Ethics of the Climate Crisis (2024) by laying out in clear, quantitative detail why the climate, pollution, and biodiversity crises require our urgent attention. As he says,

Rachel R. Rosner responds to new concepts of exile. Since Hamas’s heinous attack on Israel on October 7th 2023 – what some are calling ‘Israel’s 9/11’ – the world has seen a frenzy of claims for and against Israel’s right to exist and the justness of its military response. As the months have gone by,

Grant Bartley replies philosophically to a scientific history of everything. This book tells the story of humanity in the most epic terms. It’s the saga of how we got here, from the start of the universe until now. Specifically, The Universal History of Us (2024), which in the States is called The Science of Why

T.W.J. Moxham reads Slavoj Žižek’s little book of Hegelian horrors. In order to change humanity’s fate, to avoid catastrophe, we must perceive the future differently, redefining its trajectory; only if we make a radical change within ourselves can this be achieved. This is the premise of Too Late To Awaken, the latest work by the

Christopher John Searle recommends a study of which moves are allowed in logical arguments. Gillian Russell is Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. In her new book Barriers to Entailment: Hume’s Law and Other Limits on Logical Consequence, she ventures into the intricate terrain of obstacles to logical entailment, particularly focusing on Hume’s

David McKay enjoys Stuart Jeffries’ lively take on postmodernism. Another book on post modernism? Isn’t that yesterday’s news? Or maybe last decade’s? Surely postmodernism has been analysed virtually to death; and hasn’t contemporary thought moved on, anyway? To some degree that may be true: the label ‘postmodern’ is perhaps not attached to ideas and practices