Top Highlights

• The high-minded philosophers didn’t think much of that. They came up with three alternatives. First, the Stoics. Everything is programmed to turn out the way it does. You can’t change it; just learn to fit in. Alternatively, the Epicureans. Everything is random. You can’t do anything about it. Make yourself as comfortable as you can. Then the Plato...
• As the historian Tom Holland has argued in his recent book Dominion, much of what we take for granted in social attitudes now was Christian innovation. The ancient pagans didn’t do it like that. Medicine cost money. So did education. And the poor were poor (so people assumed) because they were lazy or unlucky. It wasn’t society’s job to look after ...
• The COVID-19 crisis has, in fact, done to the whole world what Hurricane Katrina did in 2005 for New Orleans: in its devastating impact, it shows that the political and social timbers have already been rotting away.
• opportunity! Now that everybody is thinking about death rather than wondering which cupcake to buy, perhaps there will be a massive turning to God.
• on. The book of Job rattles the cages of our easy-going piety. It reminds us that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth – more pains and puzzles in heaven and earth – than are dreamed of in our philosophy. Even our ‘Christian’ philosophy.