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IN PRAISE OF RAY TALLIS
A reporter from the US Chronicle of Higher Education contacted me to see if I was willing to be interviewed about Ray Tallis. Apparently the Chronicle is running a big spread about Tallis to mark the...
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THE MYTHS OF CHRISTIAN EUROPE
I wrote some notes a few months back on Pandaemonium on Rethinking the idea of ‘Christian Europe‘. I reworked that post into an essay, which has now been published in the latest issue of New Humanist....
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ALL ANIMALS HAVE AN EVOLUTIONARY PAST. ONLY HUMANS MAKE HISTORY
It has long been known that different groups of chimpanzees have different cultural habits. Now, new research has revealed the degree of behaviour plasticity among orangutans, plasticity that gives...
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ON EVIL
I took part yesterday in a fascinating debate about evil at the Battle of Ideas with Mark Vernon (who has blogged about it), David Jones and Simon Baron Cohen. Here (slightly expanded) are my...
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A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 10]: SPINOZA’S ETHICS
In the series of extracts I’m running from my still-being-written book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 11, which explores the ethical claims of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza....
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A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 11]: HUME, IS AND OUGHT
In the series of extracts that I am running from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 12, ‘Passion, Duty and Consequence’. Chapter 11 explored some of the...
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A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 12]: HEGEL AND ROUSSEAU, FREEDOM AND HISTORY
In the series of extracts that I am running from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 13, which looks at the moral ideas of Hegel, Rousseau and Marx, and at...
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A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 14]: SARTRE AND THE ANGUISH OF FREEDOM
In the series of extracts from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 15, which looks at existentialism, and primarily the work of Søren Kierkegaard and...
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FROM THE VAULTS: DISSECTING JOHN GRAY’S ANATOMY
As I am away this week, I am republishing some old material that has not previously appeared on Pandaemonium. This is a review of Gray’s Anatomy, a selection of writing from the philosopher John Gray,...
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DESCARTES’ GHOST
In completing my book on the history of moral thought I had to reduce the original manuscript by some 30,000 words to get it to a reasonable size. Much of what has been lost is better off left on the...
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THE ENLIGHTENMENT – AND WHY IT STILL MATTERS
‘If I knew something useful to me, and harmful to my family, I would reject it from my mind’, the French Enlightenment philosophe Montesquieu famously wrote. ‘If I knew something useful to my family...
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FROM THE VAULTS: STONE AGE POLITICS
I am away for the next few weeks, but rather than abandon Pandaemonium, I thought I would again raid the vaults, as it were, for old material that I have not published here. So, for the next few weeks,...
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FROM THE VAULTS: SO YOU THINK YOU ARE HUMAN?
As I am away for the next few weeks, I am raiding the vaults, as it were, for old material not published here before, mainly on the theme of human nature. This is a review of Felipe Fernández Armesto’s...
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FROM THE VAULTS: THE MYTH OF MARS AND VENUS
Continuing, while I am away, my series of old essays and reviews on the theme of human nature, this is a review of Deborah Cameron’s The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do men and women really speak different...
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FROM THE VAULTS: ON FREEDOM AND FREE WILL
As I am away for the next few weeks, I am raiding the vaults, as it were, for old material not published here before, mainly on the theme of human nature. This is a review of Daniel Dennett’s Freedom...
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FROM THE VAULTS: BLANK SLATES AND STRAW DOGS
Continuing my series of old essays and talks about human nature that I have not previously published on Pandaemonium, this is a review of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate and John Gray’s Straw Dogs. It...
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FROM THE VAULTS: THE NATURE OF SEX
As I am away for a few weeks, I am raiding the archives for old material not published here before, mainly on the theme of human nature. ‘The Nature of Sex’ was the title of the second of three talks...
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HUMAN RIGHTS AND ANIMAL RIGHTS
The Nonhuman Rights Project, an organization founded by Massachusetts lawyer and animal rights activist Steven Wise, has this week filed a series of lawsuits in New York demanding that chimpanzees be...
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HOW HUMAN IS CULTURE?
As a coda to my exchange of letters with Peter Singer on ape rights, here is an edited (and slightly extended) transcript of a talk I gave at ‘Do You Humans Own Culture?‘, a discussion on apes, humans...
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THE UNRAVELLING OF MORALITY
My book The Quest for a Moral Compass is published this week. There has already been an early review in the Tablet from the former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who compared the book to Bertrand...
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