Who cares?

Reivew of Boris Groys, Philosophy of Care
Boris Groys, Philosophy of Care (London and New York: Verso, 2022). 106pp., £9.99 hb., 978 1 83976 492 9 Boris Groys’ Philosophy of Care is comprised of twelve short, pithy sections that plot an abbreviated history of mainly Western philosophy from ancient to modern times. Also included are two diversions into Russian intellectual thought, Groys […]

Sunstruck

Reivew of Oxana Timofeeva, Solar Politics
Oxana Timofeeva, Solar Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022). 140pp., £9.99 pb., 978 1 50954 965 8 Since Antiquity, the sun has been tied up with earthly and divine authority. The solar god Sūrya, a Hindu deity, was worshipped in sun temples across India. In the fourth century, under Roman Emperor Julian’s rule, the ancient Helios, […]
Design of woman looking towards the sun with hands clasped

God’s away

Reivew of Willem Styfhals, No Spiritual Investment in the World
Willem Styfhals, No Spiritual Investment in the World: Gnosticism and Postwar German Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 2019). 306pp., £112.00 hb., £32.00 pb., 978 1 50173 099 3 hb., 978 1 50173 100 6 pb. Willem Styfhals’ new book offers a conceptual history of Gnosticism within a deceptively narrow discursive field. Though Gnosticism re-emerged and become […]
Lift on the end of a bridge

56 Reviews

Geoffrey Scarre, ed., Children, Parents and Politics Carolyn Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class in Britain: Margaret McMillan, 1860-1931 David Archard Alison Assiter, Pornography, Feminism and the lndividual Jean Grimshaw Otto Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking Jonathan Rée David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, Simon Schaffer, eds., The Uses of Experiment Jonathan Powers Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret […]

A’ Level Philosophy; The Church Is In Danger

LETTERS ‘A’ LEVEL PHILOSOPHY Dear RP, Steve Brigley (RP 35) was pessimistic about the ‘A’ level Philosophy syllabus proposed by the AEB. His main concern was its failure to provide opportunities for the development of students’ own ideas and arguments, suggesting that the syllabus was likely to reproduce the elitism and obscurity which graces the […]

Women, Humanity and Nature

Women, Humanity and Nature Val Plum wood There is now a growing awareness that the Western philosophical tradition which has identified, on the one hand, maleness with the sphere of rationality, and on the other hand, femaleness with the sphere of nature, has provided one of the main intellectual bases for the domination of women […]

46 Reviews

REVIEWS Whitehead Revisited A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World. London: Free Associated Books, 1985. £4.95 pb. Free Association Books have brought out a new edition of Science and the ~odern !orld, first published m 1926. It is some years since it was last available in the UK. The initiative for this facsimile reprint was […]

The Question ‘Why Do I Do Philosophy?’

The Question ‘Why Do I Do Philosophy?’ James Grant Someone recently suggested to me – not entirely unkindly – that I should try and write something to the title ‘Why do I do Philosophy?’ My first assumption was that the question was in effect ambiguous, and could be answered in two quite different ways. In […]

Proletarian Philosophy: A Version of Pastoral?

Proletarian Philosophy: A Version of Pastoral? Jonathan Ree I write in and about an embarrassment: how should I, a philosophy teacher, respond to people who are also committed to philosophy, but cut off from official philosophical institutions? It was partly to focus my attention on this problem that I revisited a much-respected acquaintance a few […]

Strange Days for Philosophers

COMMENT Strange Days for Philosophers Geoffrey Thomas Philosophers appear to have an unquiet certainty that something is happening to their subject. What I don’t think is happening is the “end” of philosophy. Rather there is a confusion of two things which are very easily detachable. As a distinctive activity philosophy is ineliminable at a certain […]

More on Market Socialism; A Level Philosophy: A Reply to Roche

Comment Soris Frankel More on Market Socia.lism I In Radical Philosophy 39 Alec Nove rejected my argument concerning the historical obsolescence of market soclallsm. Nove particularly emphasised that my lack of an alternative model was no substitute for his own ‘feasible soclallsm’ model. While I plead guilty to lacking an elaborate blueprint of the future […]

Masculinity in Philosophy

Masculinity in Philosophy Russell Keat 1. Feminism and philosophy One important concern of contemporary feminism has been to identify and challenge (what might roughly be called) the ‘sexism’ of various academic disciplines; and this kind of critical work is now increasingly evident in the case of philosophy. For example Susan Okin, in Women in Western […]

French Socialism and Philosophy Since May 1981

NEWS French Socialism and Philosophy Since May 1981 Has the new French Socialist Government made any moves to alter the position of philosophy in French education where (in spite of a diminution of the proportion of philosophy in the syllabus in the mid-seventies) philosophy still retains a role in school education not entirely unlike that […]

Philosophy in China

Philosophy in China What Can We Learn From It ? Jonathan Ree China and Chinoiserie I went on a three-week general tour of China in November 1975. I know very well that this does not make me an expert on China; nevertheless many of the rumours about China that circulate in the West derive from […]

The Social Function of Philosophy

THE SOOAL FUD[TIOD OF PHIOSOPHY When the words physics, chemistry, medicine, or history are mentioned in a conversation, the participants usually have something very definite in mind. Should any difference of opinion arise, we could consult an encyclopaedia or accepted textbook or turn to one or more outstanding specialists in the field in question. The […]

Is Philosophy Really Necessary?

new world. Tradition and faith were two of the most powerful bulwarks of the old regine. and the philosophical attackes constituted an immediate historical action. Today. however. it is not a matter of eliminating a creed. for in the totalitarian states. where the noisiest appeal is made to heroism and a lofty Weltanschauung, neither faith […]

Philosophy and the Third World

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• PHILOSOPHY liD TIB TIIRD WORLD ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• O.1.Ladimeji When dominant and subordinate groups exist in close relation to each other, the dominant group which usually has control of the centres of intellectual orientation will set about constructing a world-view in which the subordinate group has its submission ontologically determined, and will begin systematically indoctrinating members […]

The Experience of Teaching Philosophy to Adults

THE EXPERIENCE OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY TOADULTS Noel Parker Even in the least partisan formulation of its objectives, Radical Philosophy believes in a philosophy ‘relevant to people’s wider lives and interests’. Though many of us may find or hope to find guidance for radical political or social activity in the philosophy we study, the fact remains […]

Symposium: What is Radical Philosophy?

WHAT IS RADI[AL PHILOSOPHV? BEGINNING FROM COMMITMENT Peter Binns [Reprinted with permission from Times Higher Educational Supplement. 5th May, ]972] The recent conference of radical philosophers in London attracted hundreds of dissident intellectuals. Yet it became apparent that there was no single clearly defined direction in which the philosophers wanted to move as a whole. […]

Philosophy in the Academy

PHILOSOPHY mTHE A[ADRY J.m.[ahen The following polemic began life as a reaction to the frustrations of various discussions with professional philosophers of issues that are central to the radical transformation of social relationships from alienated and oppressive ones to free, equal-socialist-social relations. It is addressed primarily to people in or near to the movement, and […]

Professional Philosophers

People who don’t know anything about philosophy courses are likely to be astonished and dismayed by their effects. The main thing they will notice is that the philosophy student acquires a very mannered way of speaking and a knack of shrugging off serious ideas with half frivolous complaints about the words in which they are […]