Shorter Pieces

The illustrations are from various sources. The drawings were made by Wilfried Bausch, Heidelberg, and originally published in Inner Necessity and Self-Realization – Thinking about How to Live.

John Rawls and the Difference Principle



John Rawls (1921–2002) was born and brought up in Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a lawyer and his mother a chapter president of the League of Women Voters. He entered Princeton University at the outbreak of the Second World War and, on completing his degree, joined the US army and...

How the Colour Green Affects Our Mood


Psychologists have known for quite some time now that being in nature is good for improving our mood and general sense of wellbeing, writes the award-winning journalist and author, Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian Weekend. He has specialized in making the results of psychological research...

Kant's Philosophical Achievement



Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is the philosopher of the European Enlightenment and, with Plato and Aristotle, one of the three greatest Western philosophers of all time. He was born and brought up in Königsberg in East Prussia, now Kaliningrad in Russia. His father was a saddler and his...

Wanting to say one more thing


Stephen Grosz has condensed his experience of some 25 years as a psychoanalyst into this compelling and insightful book, “The Examined Life – How We Lose and Find Ourselves”. It consists of 31 short chapters, most of them about a particular patient with a particular problem, which touches on...

Dignity and the German Constitution

In his new book, “Dignity – Its History and Meaning” the political theorist, Michael Rosen, has examined the concept of dignity from a historical perspective and has given careful consideration to the case for giving dignity a central place in morality. He identifies four different ways of...

The Benefits of Bacteria


We have been killing bacteria which make us sick, but what if they have also been keeping us alive? This is the question raised in an article in the New Yorker (October, 2012) entitled “Germs are Us” by Michael Specter, a respected journalist who writes mainly on science and global public...

Are we all just automatons?


– with no moral responsibility?

One of the oldest and most difficult philosophical questions is: do we have free will, or at least some degree of free will, or are all our actions predetermined? Science has begun, in the last few years, to throw some light on this apparently...

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