Renowned philosopher and writer A.C. Grayling, author of Friendship, has spent much time consider the connections formed between two people. Hear him speak about these bonds in this interview and video with Yale University Press, London! Yale University Press: How important is friendship in the twenty-first century? A.C. Grayling: Friendship has
Read William Casey King’s “Three Things All Ambitious People Should Know” on the Wall Street Journal‘s “Speakeasy” blog! In credo of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” there seems an implicit acknowledgement of ambition–should one’s desires take you so far. This picture in American life is particularly central to
Arthur Danto, the influential art critic and a professor emeritus of aesthetics and history at Columbia University, once famously declared the End of Art. “In our narrative, at first only mimesis [imitation] was art, then several things were art but each tried to extinguish its competitors, and then, finally, it became
An excerpt from Nigel Warburton’s A Little History of Philosophy, a lively and accessible introduction to Western philosophy, bringing the ideas of the world’s greatest thinkers into focus. from Socrates’ questions about reality to Peter Singer’s thinking on the moral status of animals in our own times. Nigel Warburton— If
Few thinkers, let alone theologians, have managed to inspire the popular imagination as Paul Tillich did in the mid-twentieth century. As a public intellectual, he has been compared to Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose writings also gained mass appeal and whose lectures attracted large audiences in the 19th century. One of
Follow @yaleSCIbooks In the epigram to Christian de Duve’s Genetics of Original Sin: The Impact of Natural Selection on the Future of Humanity we find a verse from the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible where “the woman” eats the forbidden fruit of the tree, then gives it to the
A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicates that the number of people claiming no religious affiliation is on the rise. In response, Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary theorist and critic of religion, has stated he is “optimistic” about this trend. For Dawkins and cohorts
Follow @yaleSCIbooks The Dwight H. Terry Lectures are an annual two-week lecture series that presents leading scholars in religion, science, and philosophy who reflect on how religion can embrace advances in scientific fields of inquiry and remain applicable in our everyday lives. Yale University Press publishes a print accompaniment to
Yale Professor of Political Science, Steven B. Smith has a personal relationship with rapper Ludacris. He is an obsessive Yankees fan, and can often be spotted smoking cigarillos in a bright pink blazer. The portrait of him hanging in Branford College shows him wearing a tie, on the tie: an
“I’m bored,” are dreaded words parents hear from the backseat on a road trip, but the problem may be inevitable. In Boredom: A Lively History Peter Toohey contextualizes boredom using various artistic and literary examples and ultimately theorizes that boredom may actually be a good thing and stimulate creativity. From