Beards Need Not Apply
The overlooked female contemporaries of Aristotle and Cicero
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Objectively Illuminating
A new collection of Bernard Williams’s essays and reviews serves as a reminder of the academic’s restless intelligence
Unreliable Lives of the Saints
Two new lives of St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas fail to straightforwardly present the legacies of these two hugely influential figures
Is the Brain the Key to Understanding Religion?
The neuroscience of human nature now treats mind and body as a single integrated entity
At Home with the Letwins’ Salon
Bill and Shirley Letwin kept open house for open minds from Chicago to Cambridge and Hampstead
Hitler’s Superman
Martin Heidegger's apparent denazification after the — with the help of Jewish lover Hannah Arendt — requires further examination
The Philosopher and His Scholar
Noel Malcolm's magisterial new edition of Hobbes's Leviathan is a fine example of why, in the 21st century, scholarship still matters
The Few Who Rule The Many
Alan Ryan’s colossal new history of political thought is an ambitious but engaging piece of scholarship
A Bee in his Bonnet
Richard Dawkins cannot grasp the distinction between knowledge and wisdom. This puts him at war not only with religion, but the entire tradition of Western philosophy
Taking a Liberty
The financial crisis has produced a new wave of young libertarians but these radicals champion freedom over and above virtue
Adam Smith: The Morality of the Invisible Hand
The Wealth of Nations should not be seen as separate from Smith's moral philosophy — it itself is a profoundly moral text
Self-Appointed Messiahs of the Nanny State
A new breed of libertarian paternalists who claim to know what's best for us are nudging us down the road to serfdom