Pacifying Our Cyberworld (1)

March 6, 2017

At a time when freedom of speech and particularly freedom to criticise is being threatened by a pervasive climate of suspicion and rejection of the liberal press in western democracies, a much respected British journalist, Timothy Garton Ash proposes ‘Ten Principles...

Parrhesia and the post-truth age

January 30, 2017

After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is ‘post-truth’ – and adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to...

Aldous Huxley’s warning against a ‘Brave New World’

January 11, 2017

The prescient English writer and philosopher, Aldous Huxley, was through the 1930’s, a keen critical observer of the rise of political extremism, coupled with the irresistible progress of modern technology. Self-exiled in California, in 1938, for health and political...

Iris Murdoch and the irresistible attraction of the Good

December 2, 2016

The writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) was fascinated by the intimate connection between ‘truth’, ‘beauty’ and ‘good’ in Plato’s dialogues. In the late Timaeus dialogue, written after The Republic, Plato introduces a divine figure, the ‘demiurge’,...

Popular Sovereignty and Representative Democracy

November 21, 2016

Was Plato right after all when he remarked in ‘The Republic’ that the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavey rises out of the most extreme form of liberty.? For students of this political classic, contemporary events have never been so meaningful as Western...

Introspection and Action Part 2

October 17, 2016

The death of Jean-Paul Sartre in 1980 coincided with the end of a certain introspective philosophy, mainly preoccupied with the citizen’s historical place and moral obligations in a secular, industrialised Western society. Succeeding generations continued to see...