Socrates
Ignorance, madness or folly – what exactly constitutes stupidity?
In a picturesque ramble through world civilisation, Stuart Jeffries proposes some answers
‘The worst echo chamber is your own mind’: the unconventional life of philosopher Agnes Callard
Agnes Callard is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and she lives with her current husband and…
Finding your other half in ancient Athens
According to Aristophanes, human beings were two-bodied before Zeus split them – which is why we spend our lives perpetually searching for our missing partner
The many Jesus-like figures of the ancient world
Early Christianity positively welcomed comparisons between Jesus and Socrates, Asclepius, Emperor Vespasian and Apollonius of Tyana, according to Catherine Nixey
All work and no play is dulling our senses
Ancient Greek philosophers reckoned that life was all about free time, but 16th-century puritanism dealt a blow to the old festive culture from which we’ve never fully recovered
From Anaximander to Zeno
Adam Nicolson thinks so. But his liveliest stories are about Pythagoras, who lived in a hole in the ground, and Thales, who fell into a well while studying the night sky
Tony’s looney tunes
Harry Hill’s latest musical traces Tony Blair’s bizarre career from student pacifist to war-mongering plaything of the United States. With…
Too clever by half
Organs of the press are filled with opinion pages. The sublime confidence about Covid with which commentators advance these opinions,…
Let’s choose our politicians by random selection
Athens Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to…
War on Mount Olympus
It is a curious fact that the modern Hebrew for ‘atheist’, Tim Whitmarsh notes in passing, is apikoros. The word…
Be your own boss
There is much talk today of the enthusiasm with which young entrepreneurs are setting up businesses. One reason why this…
Socrates and Galen on the Great British Bake Off
As the national girth expands by the second, Auntie, never backward about lecturing us on the topic, continues to glory…
Time out of mind
There can hardly be two novelists less alike than Sebastian Faulks and Will Self, in style and in content. Faulks…
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…
Socrates and Charlie Hebdo
What would the ancients have made of Charlie Hebdo? The First Amendment tolerates the expression of opinions, however offensive, but…
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…
Pleasure and purpose
So here comes another book about how to be happy, written by Professor Dolan, an ‘internationally renowned expert’ at the…
Socrates on Maria Miller
Our former culture secretary, Maria Miller, is still apparently baffled at the fuss created by her fighting to the last…
Doctor in a toga
In the first draft of the screenplay for the film Gladiator, the character to be played by Russell Crowe (‘father…
Socrates on TV debates
Lord Hennessy has been arguing that, as a result of TV debates between party leaders prior to elections, ‘the plausible…
