Peter Stone reveals the deep and varied passions of the analytic philosopher. Philosophy today is intimately associated with the life of the mind – with intellect, thought, and reason. Because of this, it is often thought to be opposed to emotion, feeling, spirit – to passion. It is thought to be a bloodless occupation, practiced …
Francis Akpata explains how Schiller saw art as a path to utopia. The Athenian soldier and statesman Themistocles (523-458 BC) once said, “I cannot fiddle but I can build a great state out of a little city.” How do we build, better than a great state, a beautiful society? When one hears the term ‘beautiful …
Trevor Pateman makes the case for the prosecution. Sara Baume’s A Line Made By Walking (2017) is an impressive piece of recent autobiographical fiction. In it, the narrator repeatedly sets herself the task of identifying a work of art – usually a work of conceptual art – which relates to whatever topic she’s currently thinking …
Tim Weldon detects links between Sherlock Holmes and Blaise Pascal in the operation of intuition. How did the most famous fictional detective in history triumph over evil in over fifty celebrated cases? To what – or to whom – might we attribute his success? Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle self-admittedly modelled Holmes’ manner and …
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Carol Nicholson looks at philosophical themes in The Name Of The Rose. (WARNING: CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS.) Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose (1980) was an international bestseller that sold fifty million copies “which puts it in the league of Harry Potter, and ahead of Gone with the Wind, Roget’s Thesaurus, and To Kill …
Justin Kaushall considers Adorno’s argument that radical art radically changes consciousness. At a time when populist movements are on the march throughout the world, why should we pay attention to art? Isn’t it self-indulgent to concern oneself with art, music, or literature when the foundations of society and of the international order are being shaken? …
Atika Qasim questions her own, and others’, motives for taking photos. This picture was taken in the summer of 2010. My family had decided to head over to the northern mountains of Pakistan to spend our vacations. The boy in the picture sits next to the Kunhar River in the small town of Balakot, a …
Greg Stone offers a contractual definition of art, among other artful ideas. Every painter, gallery viewer, or philosopher probably has his or her own definition of art. Yet so-called ‘hard cases’ abound, which stretch our concept of art. Does it include ‘driftwood art’ plucked from a beach and put on display? Or environmental art, such …
Jessica Logue conducts an investigation into their relationship. For a number of years I have been interested in the question, ‘Does a life’s work make up for a life?’ Initially, what I had in mind is the idea that there’s a line between one’s public and personal life, that those two lives can be separated, …
Peter Benson watches this ‘art movement’ with raised eyebrows. Conceptual art is art where the artistic aspect is considered to reside in the concept alone, not in any of its sensory qualities (if it has any). For many years now conceptual art has formed the dominant strand of contemporary art – at least according to …