Fiona MacCarthy looks back on the last debutantes' 'Season', in 1958. By Joseph Mahon.
Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes by Fiona MacCarthy. Faber and Faber, 2006.
Are the rich very different to the rest of us, or is it just that - as Hemingway insisted – that they have lots more money?
Peter Singer deals with the controversial subjects of abortion, euthanasia and infanticide, amongst others, in a revised and updated edition of his classic 1980 text Practical Ethics. Review by Joseph Mahon.
Eric Hobsbawm is summarily dismissive of social democracy in How to Change the World, writes Joseph Mahon
The claim that the Marxist classics offer no clear picture of communist society, or set of policies for that society, is a seductive one if you wish to distance Marx and Engels from Lenin, and from what Kolakowski and Judt call “the totalitarian outcome”. The founding fathers neither envisaged, nor advocated, such an outcome since they specified no outcome whatever, so they cannot be held responsible for the totalitarian one.
Taking a look back at A.C. Grayling's Among The Dead Cities: Is The Targeting of Civilians in War Ever Justified? By Joseph Mahon of NUI Galway.
After a tumultuous week that saw Ireland's economic sovereignty receding before our very eyes, Joseph Mahon reviews a new book about the foundations of the Irish state.
As the centenary of 1916 fast approaches, it is timely to reconsider the 1916 Proclamation - both as one of the foundation documents of the Irish state, and as a set of proposals for the good society.
The authors of The Spirit Level believe Sweden has the best health outcomes in Europe. They are right, but for the wrong reason. By Joseph Mahon.
Sweden has consistently had the best health outcomes in Europe since the European Health Consumer Index was established in 2005. As Dr Arne Bjornberg, lead author of the report, put it in an interview with Clare MacCarthy, "Sweden has been the European champion in treatment quality since this index was launched."
The three choices we have on food ethics, outlined by Joseph Mahon.
Eating doesn't usually give us cause for moral concern; stealing, lying, and hurting people all do. Other practices, such as capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia and war are morally suspect, and we argue endlessly about their correct moral status. But eating, as Peter Singer and Jim Mason observe in their book The Way We Eat:Why Our Food Choices Matter [ Rodale, 2006 ], "is generally seen quite differently. Try to think of a politician whose prospects have been damaged by what he or she eats."1
Political philosophers need to become public intellectuals once again. Book review by Joseph Mahon.
Political philosophy may be defined as a rigorous analysis of the concept of the good society. In this connection, philosophers sometimes distinguish between a good society and the good society.