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“... acts of violence or heroic self-sacrifice. From a philosophical point of view, the practical power of moral concepts has always been a bit of a mystery. Plato attributed it to the intrinsic attraction of the idea of the good, while anti-Platonists invoked long-range calculations of self-interest. But MacIntyre cut out the metaphysics: all we need to ...”

“... Chinese counterparts, Greek intellectuals were far more often isolated from the seats of political power.’ Second, in Greece there was a ‘lack of bureaucratisation: there was no institution analogous to the Chinese astronomical bureau.’ Third, a Greek was not required to produce any ‘formal qualifications’ in order to teach or to practise as a ...”

“... since 1983, when he was a student of Pashto during the Soviet occupation. When Gorbachev took power and started negotiating the Soviet withdrawal Avetisyan was sent to Kabul for two years as a diplomat. He went back again in 1989, after the troops left, and watched Najibullah’s Soviet-backed regime survive for three more years. When mujahedin leaders ...”

“... no argument from design in Diogenes; on the other hand, ‘that the world is governed by a divine power is a pervasive assumption of Presocratic thought.’ It is in the writings of the fifth-century philosopher Anaxagoras that we find the ‘first Greek manifesto of rational creationism’, and the manifesto includes Anaxagoras’ ‘most decisive ...”

“... get their hands on the sources of wealth in a new free-for-all economy, and used their political power in the new local parliaments to try to legitimise summary privatisations. There were shootings, contract killings, and a virtual end to any tax revenues reaching central or local exchequers. Chechnya produces oil which when refined is used for airline ...”

“... good old things for everyone. There is nothing more unexpected, nothing more dangerous than this power of being at once fiery and puny, contradicting and nonsynchronous. The non-sequiturs are as enraging as the lies and insinuations, I think. The destruction of language and meaning, the erosion of principles of truth and accountability perpetrated by Trump ...”

“... by selective breeding over the previous century. ‘The key,’ Darwin wrote, lies in ‘man’s power of accumulative selection: nature gives successive variations; man adds them up in certain directions useful to him.’ Having established the principles of ‘variation under domestication’, Darwin was ready to state his main theme: that organisms in the ...”

“... about Cuba’s support for armed struggle in Latin America in the 1960s. When Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, levels of poverty and exploitation in Latin America seemed to meet what Marxists called ‘the objective conditions’ for revolution. As a senior US intelligence officer pointed out, the victorious Cubans viewed Latin America ‘as a tinderbox to ...”

“... self-glorification, would probably have regarded all the fuss with disdain. The fourth volume in Jonathan Sumption’s five-volume series on the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) covers the period from 1399 to 1422, so includes Agincourt. Sumption brings his formidable skills to bear on some of the ‘great themes’ of the age: the ‘nascent forces of ...”

“... living proof that one may share Eagleton’s scepticism towards the institutions of established power but still relish the nuances of literary texts as Bayley does, would doubtless see the election as yet another example of how authority leaves room for subversion only to absorb it. An alternative possibility is that the infiltration is that, not of ...”

“... blood. Kessler belonged heart and soul to the cult of Wagner. On 3 March 1894 he wrote: His power over me is as strong as from the first day. One can think whatever one likes, but he lifts one on the wings of his genius to heights and depths of feeling, where the activities of the understanding simply stop and one gives in without willing it to his ...”

“... or sample demonstrations of theoretical routines cried up as novelties. The series edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield under the title ‘Cultural Polities’ has some twenty volumes in store already, covering popular fiction and music as well as canonical literature. Of these, the first four published titles present a mixed impression in ...”

“... the nuclear arms race has also received considerable inspiration from a series of articles by Jonathan Schell which appeared this past February in the New Yorker. These articles have now been reprinted in book form, and are continuing to have a profound impact on people’s thinking about the nuclear threat. The book is divided into three sections. The ...”

“... sense of merely odd, or strange, but weird as Shakespeare might have meant it: ‘having the power to control the fate or destiny of men’, ‘partaking or suggestive of the supernatural’ (OED). Weird, too, in the way that Tennyson meant it, particularly as the word appears in his poem ‘The Princess’. The visitor to Stockbridge is liable to feel ...”

“... Jonathan Raban is afraid of the sea, saying it is not his element, which is probably why he spends so much time on it. He does not claim to be a world-class sailor, though he is obviously a competent one. One good reason for sailing is that, being a writer, he likes to write about having sailed. Sailing is guaranteed to provide alarms and achievements for his pen to celebrate ...”