Philosophy
Big questions, muddled answers
Human Frontiers is an entertaining, zippy read but it feels one layer down from its ostensible subject: big ideas
Lessons from life
How the facts of Hannah Arendt’s life read like fiction
History hasn’t ended
Francis Fukuyama got it very wrong
A step change in sports policy
The UK Sports Councils’ new guidance on trans inclusion is a breath of fresh air
Bestiality is worse than eating meat
Tom Chivers is wrong about having sex with animals
The wisdom of the old traditions
The Unbroken Thread is an engaging and entertaining read — but it feels like a project that’s only just beginning
Riffing on the poetic tradition
William Poulos says that in his wisdom and readability, Llewelyn Morgan serves his subject well
Michel Foucault: the prophet of pederasty
Daniel Johnson says the fact that Foucault scholars now overlook his advocacy for sex with boys shows the great libertine failed to overturn Judaeo-Christian morality
The pleasure of hating
Debates over what constitutes ‘hate speech’ reintroduce dangerous concepts of sin and morality into our common law
Inscrutable Wagner
Roger Scruton’s appreciation of Richard Wagner will remain an important and inexhaustible part of his legacy
Maligning the missionaries
Should the Church of England regret the promotion of Christianity?
Pseudoscience exacerbates the burden of disease
Victims of ME deserve better than dopey Dragons and ear seeds
Hatred and mental illness are not mutually exclusive
Violent men being mentally ill need not make broader societal phenomena irrelevant
Netherworld
The Dutch golden age could be anything but for the painters
Who are universities for?
Research is important — but serving the needs and desires of students matters more
The Midas touch
The kind of skill that makes the breath catch in thousands of throats at once
The building that inspired Orwell
Was there an appetite at the time for monumental buildings, equivalent to those in Moscow?
An array of civilised music
Walter Kaufmann: 3rd piano concerto, 3rd symphony &c. (CPO)
Saltburn and the significance of sound
Why has Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” caught the world’s attention again?
The BBC should remember what it’s for
A public broadcaster should exist for truthful journalism, not fashionable pieties
Google has a history problem
As much as we might wish that history had been different, virtue cannot grow from the soil of falsehood
