The bard gives us advance notice of his upcoming medieval K-pop releases
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Not so enlightened
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by perception of Enlightenment thinkers of the imperialist, colonialist, racist and capitalist nature of their times
The 21 Girondins including Jacques Pierre Brissot, condemned to the guillotine in their prison at the Conciergerie, 30 October 1793. The body of Charles Eleonor Dufriche-Valaze, who stabbed himself in the courtroom, is in the foreground. Painted by François Flameng, lithograph by Eugene Gaujean, 1879
GORDON PARSONS steps warily through the pessimistic world view of an influential US conservative
HENRY BELL takes issue with the assertion that basic income is a remedy for poverty when it doesn’t address the inbuilt inequality of capitalism
RON JACOBS welcomes an investigation of the murders of US leftist activists that tells the story of a solidarity movement in Chile
RITA DI SANTO surveys the smorgasbord of films on offer at this year’s festival
Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis
Richard Whatmore
Penguin, £30
PROFESSOR Richard Whatmore, co-director of St Andrews University’s Institute of Intellectual History, believes that studying the ideas in action of influential figures of the past can lead to our understanding of how we might react to the problems of the present.
Here, he re-examines what he sees as the end of that period in the 17th and 18th centuries called the Enlightenment, which saw mankind escape from the stranglehold of religion and superstition and turn to science and reason.
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GORDON PARSONS recommends a fine introduction to a philosopher who, like Marx, worked to help society to reject illusion and understand the realities of the human condition
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