Back Issues
Issue 35
March/April 2002
EDITORIAL
Heretics!
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
KNOWLEDGE, MEANING & HERESY
Taming the Skeptical Dragon
Toni Vogel Carey on a misunderstanding between her Aunt Polly and René Descartes.
Pluralism: The Many Maps Model
Mary Midgley says that branches of knowledge are like maps - each answers a different set of questions so they can't necessarily all be 'reduced' to physics.
The Meaning of Life
Daniel Hill argues that without God, life would be meaningless.
Why Spinoza?
Richard Mason on a thinker who stood at the intersection of many histories and traditions.
The Blasphemy of Saint Augustine
James Hale argues that the Holy Spirit is feminine and that the Trinity is a mirror of the nuclear human family.
Cutting God in Half
Nicholas Maxwell on the urgent need to dissect the Deity.
OTHER ARTICLES
The Uses and Abuses of Philosophical Biographies
Tim Madigan on the Lives of the Great Saints (not!).
Cherchez la Femme?
Not in France's Fortress Philosophy, says Jacqueline Swartz.
Can Philosophy Rescue the Art World?
When you cut up a work of art, do you destroy it or create lots of smaller works of art? Michael Philips investigates.
Religious Guidance
Radio personality Dr Laura Schlessinger is a chat show phenomenon, dispensing advice to the thousands of callers and millions of regular listeners to her show. She recently ran into controversy for her outspoken Biblically-based criticisms of homosexuality. The following open letter to Dr Laura appeared on the internet...
INTERVIEW
Simon Blackburn
After a decade teaching philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Simon Blackburn recently returned to Britain, to a professorship at Cambridge University. Filiz Peach caught up with him in London to ask him about his ideas and his priorities.
COLUMNS
Dear Socrates
Our celebrity columnist answers readers' questions.
Moral Moments: Pons Asinorum
by Joel Marks
OBITUARIES
Robert Nozick (1938-2002)
by Anja Steinbauer
R. M. Hare (1919-2002)
by Piers Benn
LETTERS
Opinions on the Conversion of Lewis, Heaven and Earth, Virtuous Thoughts, Darwinian Politics, and more...
BOOKS
When the brilliant, tragic Simone Weil died in 1943, she was only 34, but her ideas still inspire. Martin Andic ponders a new biography by Francine du Plessix Gray.
FILMS
What dark secrets can vampires reveal to us about German Romanticism? Behind the rows of screaming teenagers sits Scott O'Reilly, with a bag of popcorn and the collected works of Friedrich Schelling.
SHORT STORY
Kant's Day Off
A short story about the Sage of Königsberg by Heather Reyes.