Plato’s Republic and More’s Utopia

March 5, 2018
Although The Republic was known to scholars during the Middle Ages, the period known as the Renaissance was characterised by a rediscovery and revival (hence the term ‘renaissance’ or ‘rebirth’) of classical antiquity and its model of humanity, based on intelligence,...

Adorno on Plato’s Concept of Beauty

February 7, 2018
In one of his lectures delivered in the winter of 1958–59, recently reissued by Polity Press, the German thinker Theodor Adorno, one of the Founding Fathers of the Frankfurt School, discusses Plato’s theory of beauty in his dialogue Phaedrus. With his lifelong...

The Best Philosophy Books of 2017 (Part 1)

January 26, 2018
Interviewed for the website fivebooks.com, the popular philosopher Nigel Warburton, author of A Little History of Philosophy and Philosophy: The Basics, recommends five books which, in their variety, constitute excellent guides to five different ways of approaching...

Humanist Thoughts for the Festive Season

December 22, 2017
The festive season is traditionally a time dedicated to the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and the Christian message of love and peace between all men and all nations. This period of self-collected meditation may also become an opportunity for reflecting on...

Oligarchy and Democracy (Part 2)

December 18, 2017
Plato regards the descent of political regimes into tyranny as a gradual process in which each type of government is transformed into an even more unjust or imperfect state. The oligarchic man is the son of the timarchic man who has lost his reputation and fortune ‘in...