Author: Brian Coman
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On the Forms and Ends of Rivers: An Aristotelian Analysis in Words and Images
Text by Brian Coman, photographs by Harry Oldmeadow Of all the forms we encounter in the natural world, rivers and small streams are surely amongst the most attractive. It is, I think, because they present to us as active and not passive forms. We admire flowers and trees and mountain ranges, but the flowing stream… Read more
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The Owl of Minerva
(Written in 2017) I take my title from a famous line given in G.W. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: ‘The owl of Minerva takes its flight only with the coming of the dusk”. Hegel proposed that the philosopher or historian (Minerva’s wise owl) can only come to understand a particular era of human history once that… Read more
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HOW DID WE DO? The Rise and Rise of Ethics by Consensus
The rise of the consumer survey means judgement by consensus and replaces an older system of ‘virtue ethics’. Read more
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John le Carré, George Smiley and the Spy Novel
George Smiley is John LeCarre’s ultimate anti-hero.⁸ Read more
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Mencken on Machen on Liberalism
The American journalist and commentator H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) was commonly referred to as “the sage of Baltimore”. Even today, his biting one-liners are still widely quoted. He is perhaps best remembered for his witty coverage of the “Scopes Monkey Trial” and for his spirited opposition to Prohibition. A committed atheist, Mencken was no friend of… Read more
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Prufrock and the Mermaids
An explanation of the last few lines of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. Read more
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Antoni Gaudi and the Gothic – a Pictorial Essay
A short piece with pictures and text outlining the methodology used by Antoni Gaudi in designing his Sagrada Familia Read more
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Lord Gifford, Nietzsche and the Perennial Philosophy
An account of Alasdair MacIntyre’s Gifford Lectures where he juxtaposes three rival versions of moral/ethical enquiry. One is the standard Enlightenment model, another is Nietzsche’s model and the third is the traditional model based on Aristotle. Read more
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Action and the Moral Order
A brief account of the main arguments in Alasdair MacIntyre’s ‘After Virtue’, with some references to other competing ideas Read more
