The Thing Itself: Antony Gormley at the Royal Academy

The Thing Itself: Antony Gormley at the Royal  Academy

There’s a drawing in the Antony Gormley exhibition at the Royal Academy that stood apart from plenty of others that did not detain me. It was larger than many; but what arrested my, by then, slightly bewildered gaze was the seeming familiarity of the subject: a shadowy, indistinct figure shuffling (fleeing?) away from the viewer, along a faintly sketched tunnel or crevice. Apart from the contours of the tunnel and the dark figure, the white paper is blank, suggesting a hostile frozen landscape.

Self-help from Aristotle

Self help from Aristotle

In my on/off time as a student of philosophy, I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with Aristotle. When an undergraduate, I think I avoided him altogether. Later, as a “mature” MA student, I quickly decided to concentrate on other areas of the Ethics syllabus, but not without some preliminary grapplings with lectures and texts concerning the great man.