The Shrink & The Sage: Is there a right way to grieve?

Until the 19th century, some communities in India believed that a widow ought to throw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. The fact that sati, as this practice is called, was normal at the time did not make it right. Likewise, nothing follows about the rightness of any way to grieve simply because it is the norm. This is easily understood, but it is remarkable how difficult it can be to shake a conviction which is rooted in nothing more than the fact that this is how it is and has always been.

Latest column in this weekend's FT Magazine

On Rawls

If you were to ask an academic philosopher which of their colleagues from the past 50 years will still be read in a century’s time, the answer is likely to be John Rawls (1921-2002).

Short piece supplementing main interview on John Rawls in this weekend's FT(see bottom of page)

On time

The idea that, if the laws of physics don't mention it, it isn't real is also totally unjustified. To a physicist, biological organisms are ultimately as much collections of atoms as chairs and tables. Some would go so far as to say that, in principle at least, biology is reducible to physics. But does that mean that zebras aren't real? Any physicist who insists on this can't see the wood for the carbon.

Short piece on time in the January edition of The Times's Eureka Science magazine, Only available online through the Murdoch pay wall.

Monarchists are from Mars, republicans are from Venus

If you want proof that there is not one universe but a multitude of parallel worlds, you don't need any quantum physics: just read the Letters pages of our national newspapers...

Article in today's Independent

The Shrink & The Sage: Are we responsible for our actions?

Responsibility is one area in life where philosophy and psychology leave us with the message: do not trust your feelings. You carry responsibility for whatever is within your control, whether you feel its weight or not.

Latest FT Weekend Magazine column

Review: A Short History of Western Thought

To condense the history of western thought to around 50,000 words is the literary equivalent of trying to reproduce the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on the inside of a matchbox. So it is to writer and film-maker Stephen Trombley's tremendous credit that his intellectual miniaturisation, while inevitably losing almost all the detail, leaves very little out and renders most of the original characters and scenes distinctive and recognisable.

Review in today's Observer

The Shrink & The Sage: Is blood thicker than water?

Take simmering tensions about duties and obligations, add the same old disagreements about how family members should treat each other and you may get fraught, heated arguments. I am, of course, describing a typical row between moral philosophers who cannot agree on whether or not familial blood needs ethics to thin it...

Latest FT Weekend Magazine column

Shades of green

If Scruton makes a mistake it is, ironically, that he is not conservative enough. As he has written before, conservatism is not a philosophy but a disposition, and one of the things it is disposed to do is be mistrustful of comprehensive world views that attempt to provide all the answers. Conservatism has to apply that insight to itself and accept that the environment is a large, messy problem that requires a large mess of solutions, big and small, conservative and radical. Scruton is right to make the links between conservatism and conservation and to stress the role attachment to place can play in environmental protection. But this battle is too big, international and unprecedented for Burke’s “little platoons” to fight it alone.

Review of Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet by Roger Scruton in the FT Weekend (31 Dec/1 Jan)

Is generosity a luxury we can't afford?

The last time we were supposed to have had a "me generation" it was in the Eighties boom, not a bust. "I'm alright Jack" has turned into "I'm not alright, Jack, so don't expect me to help you". Poor Jack gets fobbed off whatever happens.

Comment piece in today's Independent

The Shrink & The Sage: Identity traps

It is because labels of identity can only refer to what we have in common with others that they can never capture our uniqueness. Our multiple identities are like an incomplete list of ingredients which fails to specify how much of each to use or even how they should be combined.

Latest FT Weekend Magazine column

The Shrink & The Sage: High standards

Striving for the impossible will drive you mad unless you remember that it is indeed impossible. Kid yourself you can really do it and you are condemning yourself to a life of dissatisfaction. The problem with most perfectionists is not that they strive to be perfect, it’s that they believe they can be.

Latest FT Weekend Magazine column (26/27 November)

The Shrink & The Sage: Character

I wonder if the reader who sent in this question [Is character destiny?] realised just how richly ambiguous her three little words are? First of all, is the suggestion that character is fixed, or that the course of future events is fixed by character? These are two different things: we might possess set characters yet be free to choose between different, open futures; or we may be free to shape our own characters, but in doing so determine our course through life.

Latest FT Weekend Magazine column

The Shrink & The Sage: Work

When Epicurus wrote “Any philosopher’s argument which does not therapeutically treat human suffering is worthless”, he showed that even the very wise sometimes say foolish things. The purpose of all serious intellectual inquiry is surely to enable us to see things more truthfully, whether that soothes or disturbs us.

Latest FT Weekend magazine column.

Review - The Bodhisattva's Brain

Buddhism seems well placed to capitalise on pent-up demand in the spiritual market. It appears to promise all the goodness of religion without the harmful supernatural additives. Even better, scientists in white coats are increasingly being wheeled out to show that it is clinically proven to increase happiness, improve attention and reduce stress. Add a charismatic CEO in the form of the Dalai Lama and you have a brand set not so much to conquer the world as win it over with loving kindness. But is Buddhism really as amenable to the modern mind as it is claimed?

Review of two books on Buddhism in yesterday's Observer

Review - Humanity 2.0

What does it mean to be human? To have the capacity to ask the question, perhaps. However smart a chimp might be, none has had the audacity to leave its troop and ponder what it means to be Pan troglodytes.

Review of Steve Fuller's Humanity 2.0 in the FT Weekend (22/23 October)

The Shrink & The Sage: Work

There is nothing valuable in work per se. Indeed, Bertrand Russell went so far as to claim that “immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous”. If we work more than we need to, we deprive ourselves of the time and opportunity for learning, self-development, relationships and many other things that make for a better world.

Latest column in the FT Weekend magazine (22/23 October)

The Shrink & The Sage: Suffering

There are very few things, if any, which are unambiguously good or bad in the long run. That’s because a whole life is not a simple aggregate of its parts, but a blend. To take a culinary analogy: vinegar by itself is sour and unpleasant but, combined with the right other ingredients, it can lift a dish to new heights.

Latest column in the FT Weekend Magazine (15/16 October)

How Steve Jobs changed capitalism

Capitalism looks different because of what Jobs's company achieved. His company challenges both lazy market orthodoxies and idealistic anti-capitalist critiques. In general terms it is true that all these challenges have found voice and expression in our culture elsewhere. But with Jobs they were given a clearer, louder expression, backed up by the incontrovertible evidence his life and company produced.

Article in todays' Guardian (G2)

The Shrink & The Sage: Pride

All forms of pride involve a kind of pleasure we get when we make a positive appraisal of something whose qualities reflect on us. How then, can it be that we often derive our pride from the merit of others, even when our own contributions are minimal or non-existent?

Latest column in FT Weekend magazine (1/2 October)

The Shrink & The Sage: Life Partners

In a sense, all wonderful lives do involve a life partner. It’s just that it could be a pursuit that fulfils us, not a person who makes us happy.

Column in FT Weekend magazine (23/24 September)