Plato
Voting for heroes
To judge from elections, the purpose of politics is to win power by promising to make people better off. Plato,…
Greeks vs Greens
The Green party’s manifesto appears to make saving the planet only a small element in its otherwise painfully unoriginal agenda.…
Here comes everything
You can’t accuse John Gray of dodging the big questions, or indeed the big answers. His new book The Soul…
High life
The secret of eternal youth, according to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, is arrested development, and the penny dropped last week. The…
Time trials
The European philosophical tradition, Alfred North Whitehead claimed, consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. If you really want…
Nicky Morgan vs Socrates
After the Philae space-lab’s triumph, one can see why Education Secretary Nicky Morgan should have hymned the ‘Stem’ subjects (science, technology, engineering…
Plato at the Jobcentre
Labour is up in arms because many of the new jobs currently being created are among the self-employed. This seems…
Socrates on Maria Miller
Our former culture secretary, Maria Miller, is still apparently baffled at the fuss created by her fighting to the last…
Rory Stewart’s big idea
In last week’s Spectator, Rory Stewart, MP for Penrith, was reported to be proposing that we should create in Britain…
It’s gay men who contribute most to society
A gay friend phones over the New Year break. A lovely chap (let us call him Richard) and long retired,…
Socrates on TV debates
Lord Hennessy has been arguing that, as a result of TV debates between party leaders prior to elections, ‘the plausible…
