What about a little smile?

June 19, 2012
“Smile and others will smile back. Smile to show how transparent, how candid you are. Smile if you have nothing to say. Most of all, do not hide the fact you have nothing to say nor your total indifference to others. Let this emptiness, this profound indifference...

Rousseau’s Emile, an educational treatise for the 21st century?

May 31, 2012
Born three hundred years ago, this year, Rousseau remains one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment if only for the variety of his literary output. Rousseau’s political works are probably the most studied among academics and students. But what of...

Plato’s dialogues or the lost art of Socratic conversation

April 17, 2012
If, as A.N Whitehead proclaimed, ‘the European philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’, we may equally claim that the latter was to, a great extent, responsible for ‘terminating’ a richly rewarding intellectual practice enjoyed by Sophist...

Angel or Beast? An age old dilemma

March 29, 2012
The philosophical question ‘what is a human being?’ opens the door to a myriad of possible interpretations of human nature as our common human condition is perceived and experienced through a rich and diverse array of cultural perspectives. For those of us who also...

Have you heard of Baggini?

February 1, 2012
If you have, DO let me know! Among the many books on philosophical themes published last year, Julian Baggini’s opus is an excellent study which is likely to prove a most useful complement to existing resources on the teaching of the Core theme. You may think ‘Oh no!...