Andy Owen explains what Aristotle was tolkien about. “Without friends no one would want to live, even if they had all other worldly things.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII In my early twenties a close friend committed suicide. He was a beautiful soul and I will always question myself as to what, as his friend, …
Ray Boisvert tells us about Camus’ essential ambivalence towards the world. If ever there were a poster child for French meritocracy, it would be Albert Camus. He was not yet two when his father was killed in World War I, and he was raised by his mother and grandmother in a tiny apartment with neither …
Ray Cavanaugh gives us a brief introduction to the life of Albert Camus. November 2013 marks the centennial of the birth of Albert Camus. A native of French Algeria, Camus became an influential wartime journalist before embarking on a creative writing career. He would become a titan of French literature and a leading voice of …
Patrick Cannon articulates an alternative anarchism. I would like to present for your consideration two interesting and peculiar versions of anarchism, as articulated by the German-Israeli existentialist and social thinker Martin Buber (1878-1965) and the reclusive Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Buber is a fascinating representative of Jewish left-wing thought, while Tolstoy a famous Christian …
Martin Buber & Leo Tolstoy: Two Examples of Spiritual Anarchism Read More »
Stephen Faison cross-examines the idea of a social contract. According to classic social contract theory, originally elaborated by Thomas Hobbes in the Seventeenth Century, human beings begin politically unorganised, in what is called a state of nature, and society is created by people either explicitly or tacitly establishing a contract whereby they agree to live …
Frank S. Robinson takes issue with Julian Jaynes’ argument about the self. Richard Dawkins called Julian Jaynes’s 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind “either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius” (The God Delusion, 2006). I first encountered its theories discussed in an article in an ancient …
Katie Javanaud asks whether there is a contradiction at the heart of Buddhism. Two of the most fundamental doctrines of Buddhism are firstly that the self is illusory, and secondly that we can achieve liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth to reach a state of peace called Nirvana. From the perspective of Western …
Is The Buddhist ‘No-Self’ Doctrine Compatible With Pursuing Nirvana? Read More »
Willie Thompson tries to see Sartre through the eyes of the person who knew him best. In Erica Jong’s best-selling novel of the seventies, Fear of Flying, two characters amuse themselves by telling a third that they’re Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, their acquaintance being vaguely conscious that these are names he ought to …
Benedict O’Donohoe introduces our Sartre centenary issue. The 21st June 2005 was an auspicious date – the summer solstice, the tipping point of Gemini into Cancer, and the centenary of the birth of Jean-Paul Sartre. And on 15th April 1980 – just 25 years ago – Sartre died. These two dates are worthy of note …
John Goff wonders what the real cost of privacy is in the modern world. In recent years, worries about privacy have increased markedly. Many people have become aware that they are the objects of an increasingly intensive, and not necessarily benign, process of commercial and political information gathering. Concerns about the surveillance of our movements …