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• The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley

  Simon May comes face to face with mortality

• The Roads to Modernity: the British, French and American Enlightenments by Gertrude Himmelfarb

  Stephen Howe asks why Gordon Brown is endorsing Neocon history

• Thinkers: Face to face

  Heidegger’s former disciple Emmanuel Levinas, a victim of Nazism, pioneered a humanism for the 21st century argues Roger Davidson

• Writing on the wall

  Henri Lefebvre, the theoretician of the Paris uprising of 1968, saw that society’s most profound truths were etched on everyday life, discovers Daniel Miller

• Thinker: Simone de Beauvoir

  The feminist icon was dedicated to freedom for all humanity, says Toril Moi

• Happy birthday humanism

  For two centuries one word has symbolised the battle against extremism, says Bill Cooke

• Spongers

  Why shouldn’t people have to earn the right to be housed? Julian Baggini gets back to basics

• Craft works: Laurie Taylor interviews Richard Sennett

  Richard Sennett tells Laurie Taylor why he believes in patience, practicality and a job well done

• Tea and empathy

  The human imagination, says Martin Rowson, allows us to make the world in the image of ourselves

• Villages of Vision: A Study of Strange Utopias by Gillian Darley

  Ken Worpole visits utopian villages with Gillian Darley