"Aftermath" at Tate Britain; Postcript - the Royal Academy's Great Spectacle

Aftermath at Tate Britain; Postscript - the Royal Academy's Great Spectacle - 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition

The Exhibition called Aftermath at Tate Britain is a strange affair. Its starting point is the First World War. The Exhibition claims to “explore the impact of the ..War on the art of Britain, France and Germany between 1916 and 1932”.

(Why those dates are chosen is something I’m still puzzling over. 1932 was the last full year of the Weimar Republic in Germany – Hitler came to power in 1933.)

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.

John Gray in Conversation

John Gray in Conversation

I have written before about John Gray in a blog about liberalism and toleration (Feb 2016). To recap: Gray is a genial pessimist about human societies, but a staunch upholder of human decencies. He rebuts any notion of a benevolent Progress, or History, always moving humankind towards a better future.

Lounging at Gatwick Airport

Lounging at Gatwick Airport

I’ve written about the Purgatorio of Stansted Airport. Here I relate a happier airport experience, if not quite Paradisio.

The North Terminal at Gatwick is a pretty functional place, like most other terminals. Its main purpose (like everywhere else) is to inflict you with a Long March through its sinuous arcade of duty free concessions before debouching you into a big hangar with the usual collection of “normal” retail and food outlets.

Flat Minds; Flattish Arguments

Flat Minds; Flattish Arguments

There’s a book out that I’m not going to read. It’s called “The Mind is Flat” and it’s by a psychologist, Nick Chater. Why am I repelled, as if by an opposite magnet? Well, there have been a couple of sniffy reviews, in The Guardian and Prospect. But the main reason is that the author has written a longish summary of his thesis in the former publication https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/01/revolution-in-our-sense-of-self-sunday-essay?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. I find it rather incoherent.

Opera Stagings

Opera Stagings: Carmen and Midsummer Night’s Dream

Two operas with stagings set far from their originals, as once envisaged. At the Royal Opera House, Carmen, seen by the excellent cinema streaming offering, had a high, wide and steeply raked, one-side-of-a-ziggurat, set of steps. Benjamin Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, put on by the English National Opera, was fixated on beds, of the sleep-in sort (but a pun was intended..).

One succeeded; the other not really.

Safety of the People..

Safety of the People or War of All Against All

“Salus populi suprema lex esto”  (“the safety of the people should be the supreme law”) wrote Cicero in the last days of the Roman Republic, before civil wars and dictators fatally threatened the salus.

This principle has been a cornerstone of Western political theory since at least the C17.