CS Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law, by Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J Watson, Cambridge University Press, 2016 Continue reading “Would CS Lewis vote for Donald Trump?”
Articles
Ultimate Questions, by Bryan Magee, Princeton University Press, 2016
An essay written ahead of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Continue reading “The flimsy, fantasy politics of the Yes campaign”
Western wailing about ‘fascistic’ Modi reveals a contempt for Indian democracy. Continue reading “India: the end of Congress, not the end of the world”
An essay written ahead of the 2014 Indian general election. Continue reading “India’s election: the world’s largest question mark”
The Politics of Culture, by Munira Mirza
By promoting diversity through culture, UK policymakers have ignored precisely what makes art so valuable: its universality.
Continue reading “UK cultural policy: using art to divide us”
Equality, Freedom and Religion, by Roger Trigg
A new book attempts to ground a defence of religious freedom in cognitive science, but in doing so it reveals a lack of faith in freedom itself.
Continue reading “Religious belief is more than an evolutionary affliction”
The Bible Now, by Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Sam Harris on the science of good and evil, Intelligence Squared, London, 11 April 2011
American philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris, author of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, is on a mission to break down the longstanding philosophical distinction between facts and values. Continue reading “Love your enemies… but don’t let them eat you”
Western observers with no particular knowledge of Indian politics and society tend to assume the renaming of Indian cities in the 1990s was simply a belated anti-colonialist gesture. Some might even wrongly assume as I once did that ‘Mumbai’ had been an established Indian city before its takeover and mispronunciation by the British. Gyan Prakash’s book is meant as a challenge to more sophisticated misunderstandings than these, but it is equally valuable as an introduction to many of the issues facing modern India, through the story (or rather stories) of its most glamorous city. Continue reading “Yeh hai Bambai meri jaan!”