Taking liberties
True freedom requires not wealth but faith, says social theorist Stein Ringen
Ideas
Acting up
He speaks approvingly of Lenin and Robespierre and packs lecture halls across the world. But is “stand-up philosopher” Slavoj Žižek serious? asks John Clark
Nihil Unbound by Ray Brassier
Daniel Miller gets to grips with nihilism
Thinkers: William Blake
William Blake was a confused failure but a great humanist, says Shirley Dent
Holy communion
New wave atheism is aggressively antagonistic to religion. But, argues Richard Norman, it’s more fruitful to find common ground
The Art of Listening by Les Back
Stuart Sim is impressed by Les Back's approach to sociology
Thinker: Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach was the man who brought religion down to earth, says Nina Power
Native son
175 years after the death of Scotland’s most celebrated novelist, Murray Pittock asks if Walter Scott was an enemy of the Enlightenment, or its champion
Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory by Peter Dews
Daniel Miller reconsiders post-structuralism with Peter Dews
Love, life, Goethe
The great German writer was that wonderful contradiction, a romantic rationalist, says John Armstrong