A propos my comments on Judge Kavanagh and how a gentleman could have replied to the sexual allegations, I fear drop-dead insensitivity seems to have spread from small, powerful groups of badly brought-up human beings to other parts of the population. Yesterday, I received a phone call asking me to spend 15 minutes on a …
Dear Editor: Brian Dougall’s article ‘Epicureanism: The Hobo Test’ in Issue 98 is more a caricature than accurately characterizing Epicurus and his philosophy. Dougall concludes that anyone trying to live a pain-free, pleasurable existence would end up a hobo, the implication being such an ambition is not realistic or even possible in today’s world. However, …
Continue reading ‘Ave Epicurus ( a short run-down on Epicureanism)’ »
Dubitator, a blog reader, has politely drawn my attention to an error in my posting on September 13th about the Emperor Aurelius. He is right. Aurelius was a famous Stoic, not an Epicurean. (One maybe shouldn’t resume posting so quickly after a hospital operation!) In any case the words of Aurelius are wise, regardless of …
“Injustice is a kind of blasphemy. Nature designed rational beings for each other’s sake: to help, not harm, one another, as they deserve. To lie is to blaspheme, too. Because “nature” means the nature of what is. And that which is and that which is the case are closely linked, so that nature is synonymous …
The first in a three-part series on the sorry state of British education. Hope you enjoy these multi-part blogs. I started secondary school in 2008. Then, British secondary education was in a terrible mess; the Labour Education Secretary Ed Balls was presiding over a period of serious grade inflation. GCSEs, the qualification achieved by British …
Continue reading ‘The sorry state of British education, part 1, GCSEs’ »
