The Challenge of Things: Thinking Through Troubled Times

Abstract

Intro -- Title -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction -- DESTRUCTIONS and DECONSTRUCTIONS -- The First World War -- The Ethics of Drones -- Irredentism and Associated Evils -- Guns -- The Berlin-Baghdad Railway -- The Killing of Osama Bin Laden -- The Future of the World -- When China Rules the World -- China and Human Rights -- China's Games -- Opium -- A Christian Nation? -- Unjust Justice -- What We Owe the Dead -- Black Poison -- Death and Taxes -- Religion and Education -- 'Many Faiths, One Truth' -- Religion and Public Service -- The Power of the Press and the Press of a Button -- Irrationality, Immaturity, Braggadocio, Putin -- Spain and Rome -- Superstition -- The Advantages of Atheist Political Leaders -- Hard-Wired for God? -- The Prophetess -- The New Puritanism -- The Global Financial Crisis -- Climate Change -- The Force of Nature -- CONSTRUCTIONS and CREATIONS -- The Public Intellectual -- Wisdom, Mind and Brain -- Neurophilosophy -- The Brain and History -- The Triumph of Science -- Science and Democracy -- Making Mistakes and Apologising -- Does Government Know Best? -- Beyond Subsistence -- A Hard Choice -- Archiepiscopal Ethics -- Free Speech -- The Care and Maintenance of Friends -- The Book of the Dead -- Darwin in Scotland -- Tocqueville on America -- Quantum Dirac -- Thucydides -- Montaigne -- Socrates -- Edmund Burke -- The Unity of the Good -- H. G. Wells and Mr Lewisham -- Fishing with a Golden Hook -- Speeches -- Sleep -- Success -- Retirement -- Happiness -- Teachers -- Education and Rationality -- What is the Point of the Arts? -- Darkness -- The Hinges of History -- The Whole Life: The Point of the Humanities -- Optimism -- Making the World a Better Place -- Index -- A Note on the Author -- Also by A. C. Grayling -- Also available by A. C. Grayling -- Copyright.