Philosophy

H.T. Dickinson describes how, in his best-known work, Bolingbroke sought to produce a cure for present-day ills by rehearsing the virtues of an imaginary past.

Michael Grant describes how, during the Roman and Byzantine ages, the co-existence of good and evil in the world led to a variety of dualist religious beliefs.

For two thousand years poets, writes Michael Grant, composers and painters have drawn upon the great archetypal myth of Orpheus—one of the myths that will always stir humanity.

S.G.F. Brandon describes how the earliest representatives of mankind were concerned with three fundamental problems— birth, death and the supply of food—which they attempted to solve by magico-religious means.

G.R. Crone analyses the influences on, and development of, geographical thought over centuries.

Frank Prochaska has made a remarkable discovery in the personal library of John Stuart Mill. It proves that Mill not only read the works of his American contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, but was surprisingly harsh in his judgement of him. 

Once described as “the first Whig,” the great Christian philosopher of the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas, is here introduced by Maurice Cranston as an exponent of order, justice and government.

J.H.M. Salmon explains how spiritual values and political objectives were deeply in conflict throughout the long reign of Louis XIV.

Although the theory of Divine Right may seem difficult nowadays to take seriously, W.H. Greenleaf describes how it has exerted a profound influence upon the thoughts and lives of many Englishmen.

S.G.F. Brandon shows how the idea of a posthumous moral judgment, when the sheep will be divided from the goats, is deeply rooted in our cultural history.